Opposition’s paradox of victory: electoral success and authoritarian retrenchment in Turkey

This study examines the transformation of Turkey’s opposition politics between the May 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections and the 2024 local elections. Following the ruling party’s victory in 2023, political capital within the opposition shifted from formal party structures to influential metropolitan mayors operating outside party hierarchies. This trend, reinforced by the local election successes of Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş, challenged President Erdoğan’s preferred model in which strong party institutions sidelined prominent mayors, as before the last presidential race. The opposition’s 2023 defeat revealed the limitations of a party-centred strategy in confronting incumbents, weakening institutional control and enabling mayoral figures to emerge as potential presidential contenders. The paper analyzes this decline of party dominance, the rise of mayoral autonomy, and Erdoğan’s strategic response–marked by judicial interventions against municipalities and the CHP, including İmamoğlu’s imprisonment–highlighting how electoral gains paradoxically triggered authoritarian recalibration rather than democratic consolidation.