Ongoing protests in Turkey: Is Erdoğan’s situation worsening?

Pars Today – Over the past month, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) has launched numerous innovative initiatives to spark street protests, placing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a precarious position. Amid Turkey’s ongoing economic crisis, the country has also lost political stability and calm.

According to Pars Today, citing Tasnim News Agency, Erdoğan’s opponents, protesting the arrest of former Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, continue to mobilize people onto the streets with new pretexts and methods.

The Ankara-based newspaper Oksijen, quoting Bekir Ağırdar, head of a Turkish research and polling institute, reported: “69% of Turkish citizens believe that, contrary to claims by the prosecutor and the president, İmamoğlu’s arrest is not related to financial corruption. Citizens say his detention is a political and illegal move to eliminate Erdoğan’s most significant rival.”

The man who arrived on a tractor


Özgür Özel, a young politician, took the helm of the CHP after the 2023 elections and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s defeat to Erdoğan. Unlike Kılıçdaroğlu, Özel has a remarkable ability to organize large-scale street rallies and is a skilled orator capable of mobilizing diverse social groups.

In a speech in Yozgat, unlike Erdoğan, who arrives at rallies with a convoy of dozens of bulletproof black cars, Özel drove a tractor to the gathering, followed by a convoy of farmers supporting the CHP. This imagery garnered widespread attention in Turkish media.

Özel’s actions went beyond riding a tractor. At a rally of hundreds of thousands, he invited a rural farmer to speak briefly before him. An elderly farmer took the stage and said: “Mr. President! A country is governed with justice, not with turnips and radishes!” This short sentence became a viral hashtag and trend, echoed by many Turkish analysts and columnists.

Özel: İmamoğlu must become president


From the morning of İmamoğlu’s arrest, Özgür Özel spent seven consecutive days and nights at Istanbul’s municipal building, turning it into a headquarters for street protests. He even slept on a couch there, only returning home when the government, fearing massive protests, allowed the CHP to choose İmamoğlu’s successor rather than appointing a caretaker mayor from the Interior Ministry.

A $60 billion blow to Turkey’s economy


Another innovative move by Özgür Özel, the leader of Turkey’s Republican People’s Party, was his call for a boycott or economic sanctions against companies, factories, media outlets, and stores known to be beneficiaries of the ruling party’s political favoritism.

Economic experts believe that the economic sanctions proposed by Özgür Özel have inflicted damages amounting to around $10 billion on institutions and companies close to Erdoğan.Meanwhile, following the arrest of İmamoğlu, the Central Bank of Turkey has been forced to continuously inject foreign currency reserves into the market at low rates in an effort to control the exchange rate of the dollar—an operation that has resulted in losses of $50 billion.

Given this, the leadership of Özgür Özel and the widespread protests by İmamoğlu’s supporters have, so far, caused over $60 billion in losses to Turkey’s foreign currency reserves.

This situation has even caused concern for Mehmet Şimşek, the Finance Minister in Erdoğan’s cabinet, who stated: “To overcome the economic crisis, we need political reform and a strengthening of democracy.”

Given the current political and social climate in Turkey, it can be said that the Republican People’s Party has managed to effectively steer the situation in a way that has placed Erdoğan’s government and the Justice and Development Party into an unprecedented deadlock.
The question now is whether, if the protests continue, Erdoğan will eventually concede to holding early elections.

MG/ME