Why do deputies want to be mayors in Turkey?
26 deputies out of a total of 600 who were elected to parliament in the 2023 parliamentary elections, which were declared “perhaps the last, the most important election in the history of the country, on which our fate depends”, appeared as mayoral candidates this year. In the 2019 municipal elections, this number was 19, and 5 of the deputies who were candidates lost their mandate after becoming mayor. In the 2014 local elections, 10 of the 26 deputies who were candidates for mayor were elected and left the Turkish Grand National Assembly. This tradition started with Melih Gökçek, who was elected Mayor of Ankara Metropolitan Municipality in 1994, while he was an Ankara deputy of the pro-Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party.
While the behavior of giving up one’s current parliamentary seat in order to become a mayor is so common, we never come across an example of the opposite. It is interesting that this striking exception, which shows that the phenomenon expressed in common political theories as “the tendency of politicians who want to participate in national politics to use the local area as a springboard” is not valid in all cases, has not been sufficiently emphasized. On the contrary, in the case of Turkey, the opposite view, which sees the deputy position as a stepping stone to the mayoralty, is gradually gaining ground. It should also be noted that after the 2017 presidential referendum, we should refuse to discuss this in the context of the legitimacy of the view that attributes it to the dysfunction of the parliament. What makes being a mayor more valuable than being a member of parliament is an important question in itself, and at this point two details need to be emphasized.
First, the ease with which one can navigate between the national and local levels points to the existence of a “limited number of political elites.” This handful of extremely powerful actors is a product of the exclusionary mechanisms of institutional politics in Turkey, which are squeezed into central party organs controlled by capital and suppress independent outlets. This is why the name of Sarıgül, the dubious former mayor of Şişli who was elected as the deputy of Erzincan last year, could be mentioned for the mayoralties of Erzincan, Ordu and Hatay at the same time. It is useful to think more about this power which, thanks to its wide network of relationships, can mobilize local groups with decisive influence with a single signal to produce consent.
Second, there is a very serious ethical violation in which the politician who asks for votes to become a member of parliament before the elections does not remain faithful to the contract made with the voters and betrays the power of attorney given to them. While the global crisis of representative democracy is obvious, it is thought-provoking that representation, which is barely achieved in some regions with their limited resources, can easily be sacrificed in this way. This being the case, we must accept that it is not only the violent practices of the AKP government that make the parliament dysfunctional, but also that this is fed by pacifying counter-initiatives.
