Turkey’s government has undermined voters’ choices in 156 municipalities since the March 2024 local elections through mayoral defections, trustee appointments and judicial action, an opposition lawmaker argued on Tuesday, the ANKA news agency reported.
İbrahim Arslan, a lawmaker from the main opposition New Party representing the central province of Eskişehir, released a study based on Supreme Election Council (YSK) data examining changes in municipal administrations through October 12.
The study put the municipalities’ combined electorate at 36,564,021, a figure Arslan compared with the 57,766,800 people eligible to vote in mayoral elections nationwide in 2024, calculating a share of 63.3 percent.
Candidates who won the municipalities for opposition parties received 13.9 million votes, accounting for 50.45 percent of valid ballots cast there, the study calculated.
Arslan counted 106 mayors who had joined President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) after being elected from other parties or as independents. Of those, 42 were elected from the Islamist New Welfare Party (YRP) and 36 from the Republican People’s Party (CHP).
He accused the government of using threats, blackmail, the prospect of criminal investigations and its control over municipal funding to pressure mayors into switching parties.
The study also identified 13 municipalities where elected mayors were replaced by government-appointed trustees, unelected officials who administer municipalities after mayors are removed from office, and 11 where arrests and changes in city council membership enabled the ruling bloc to take control.
These three categories brought another 130 municipalities under government control after the elections, expanding its reach from the 541 mayoralties won by the AKP in 2024 to 671 municipalities, Arslan calculated.
The broader total of 156 also covers municipalities where elected mayors were jailed or suspended and had not been reinstated.
“The AKP added 130 municipalities it had not won at the ballot box to its tally through methods used after the elections,” he said.
Of the 411 municipalities won by CHP candidates in March 2024, 50 had passed into the government’s control through defections, trustee appointments and changes in city council control, leaving 361 governed by the CHP and the New Party, the study found.
Ten trustee appointments affected municipalities won by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), while three affected municipalities won by the CHP.
The study identified interventions in nine metropolitan municipalities: Adana, Antalya, Aydın, Bursa, İstanbul, İzmir, Mardin, Mersin and Van. Their combined electorate totaled 24.3 million.
The March 2024 elections dealt Erdoğan’s AKP its worst electoral defeat in more than two decades, with the CHP finishing first nationwide and retaining İstanbul and Ankara.
The AKP took control of İstanbul’s Ataşehir district on Saturday after its elected mayor, Onursal Adıgüzel, and his replacement, Murat Güneş, were jailed and suspended. Six city council members elected on the CHP ticket had joined the AKP before the vote to select a new acting mayor.
Forty mayors elected from the CHP have been arrested since the 2024 elections, a tally published by the İlke TV news website showed last week. The cumulative figure covers mayors who were subsequently released and does not represent the number currently in jail.
The crackdown on opposition municipalities intensified after İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, a political rival of Erdoğan, was jailed pending trial in March 2025.
The New Party was formed in July by Özgür Özel and 90 other lawmakers after a court removed Özel from the CHP leadership in May and reinstated former party leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
Opposition parties accuse the government of using the judiciary to reverse their election gains.
Arslan urged opposition parties, civic groups and voters to defend election results through joint action, arguing that abandoning the ballot box would give the government more freedom to override voters’ choices.
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