Emamoglu’s visit to Diyarbakir: The elite unite to face the tyranny of Erdogan

Nora Bandari

In a move that poses a threat to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Istanbul Mayor Akram Emamoglu visited the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey on August 31 in support of the former mayor, who was sacked for alleged links to terrorism and replaced by Erdogan.

Emamoglu explained during his visit that there must be a stance against injustice regardless of who is affected, which prompted the Turkish president to send a threat to the mayor to remove him from office.

On August 21, the Turkish Interior Ministry sacked three Kurdish mayors despite winning the local elections at the end of March, belonging to the Kurdish Democratic People’s Party.

The Turkish government attributed the impeachment decisions in the cities of Diyarbakir, Mardin and Van to what it claimed to be the association of its superiors with terrorism, belonging to a terrorist organization, which aroused the displeasure and anxiety of the Turkish elites, especially with the direction of Erdogan to appoint his loyalists by administrative decisions contrary to the law, in addition to widespread criticism and protests in the predominantly Kurdish areas east, and southeast of Turkey.

Reasons for isolation

Erdogan’s decision to sack the three mayors without legal support is due to two reasons. First, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which lost the major municipalities to the most important source of funding, lost its main source of funding. Clearly, when the opposition took over, the corruption of the party during his rule was revealed, so there is no way to stop these scandals except by isolating the mayors.

The second reason is that within a short period of time, the mayors of Ankara and Istanbul showed strong performance in managing the municipal funds and providing services to the citizens, which increased their popularity. So he sought to dominate it illegally.

The Turkish opposition believes that the problem lies mainly in the transformation of the regime into a presidential one and give unspecified powers to Erdogan to give him immunity and encourage him to fight on more than one front whose consequences are disastrous for the country.

Visit messages

The mayor of Istanbul and the Turkish opposition, too, see the state of confusion and splits in the Justice and Development Party, which made Oglu visit Diyarbakir in order to weaken Erdogan’s authority and avoid the repercussions of the crises that caused it.

Karam Said, a Turkish researcher at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, points out that the visit of the Istanbul mayor to Diyarbakir carries three messages. The first is that he is dedicated to his presence not only in the political scene but in the Turkish scene as a whole. He has a charisma and he has been able to present a political speech that is different from that of the former Turkish opposition.

His remarks touched on the concerns of the Turkish opposition, and the re-election in Istanbul was an opportunity to increase Oglu’s popularity.

He stressed in a special statement to the Reference that Emamoglu will be a real competitor to “Erdogan” in the upcoming presidential elections in 2023, because the Kurdish voice will be a decisive factor for those who win the presidential seat, about 18 percent of the votes in the hands of the Kurds.

The second message, according to Said is that the visit is a message from the Turkish Republican People’s Party to launch initiatives to settle the Kurdish crisis, which has killed nearly 40,000 people since 1984 as a result of the conflict between the Turkish government and the Kurds, and this will be peacefully in cooperation with all parties.

The third message from the visit, says the researcher in the Turkish affairs, confirms that the alliance between the Turkish political forces represented in the opposition Republican People’s Party and the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, dealt a blow to the Justice and Development Party whose candidate was defeated In the Istanbul municipal elections. The Republican People’s Party candidate Akram Emamoglu won the post of the mayor of Istanbul by about 14,000 votes, thanks to the support of the Kurds.