Some 400,000 members of Erdogans AKP have resigned in recent months and a total of 770,000 have resigned in the last year. The last count of party membership figures on the relevant court website on July 1 placed AKP membership at 9.9 million people.
After the March 31 elections, the former prime minister, Ahmet Davutolgu, set forth a blistering critique of the AKP’s direction, including its alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party after the ruling party performed poorly in local elections, losing five of Turkey’s most populous provinces including Istanbul and the capital, Ankara. He is expected to launch a new chameleon Islamist political party by the end of the year.
Erdoğan has called Davutoğlu and former deputy prime minister Ali Babacan, who is also expected to launch a centrist party with other former AKP heavyweights this year, as “traitors”.
The losses in elections has been blamed on voters’ dissatisfaction with Turkey’s economy, which is still struggling with the effects of a currency crisis last year. The country has been pushed into recession, which means that rising unemployment is no longer manageable, paving the way for wider social unrest and increasing resentment among different segments of society. Still the economic calamity is set to worsen amidst discussions of heavier sanctions by US and the endless war expenditure.
It must be noted, however, that the diminishing economy is only the surface of the water. One of the major blows to the party came from the peoples leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who recommended that Kurds (a significant part of the population) vote for rival party CHP instead, in efforts to create a democratic solution to the Kurdish question. The March re-elections, which Erdogan demanded in hopes of widening the vote margin between AKP and CHP served the opposite purpose following the call of the leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
Analysts said the AKP’s loss in Istanbul’s mayoral elections was Erdogan’s worst political defeat and could symbolise a deeper crisis, suggesting that this might be the beginning of the end of Erdogan’s era. The results and the continuing opposition suggest that voters are souring and that Erdogan’s power is beginning to crumble, Deutsche Welle (DW) reported.
