President Erdogan’s biggest enemy is Turkey’s failing economy – not Ekrem Imamoglu

Turkey’s president will not be able to exert his hold on power while the economy collapses all around him. It has proved a more lethal threat to his party’s authority than the war in Syria or the threat from Isis

It is usually a sign of trouble when the more minor personalities in a nation’s politics become globally famous. So, for example, is the case with the speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, a global star thanks to Brexit. So, too, with his counterpart in Venezuela, acting president Juan Guaido. So too, perhaps, for Ekrem Imamoglu, newly elected mayor of Istanbul. Usually Turkish municipal elections stir relatively little interest outside the country’s borders.

But Mr Imamoglu’s achievement is notable because he has seized power in Turkey’s largest city for the opposition People’s Republican Party (CHP) from the ruling Justice Development Party (AKP). It was one of a number of unexpected setbacks for Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan throughout the main cities, including in the capital, Ankara. The Kurdish-led leftist People’s Democratic Party (HDP) also made gains in eastern Turkey. That will annoy the president even more.

It is a hopeful development, much-needed proof that democracy is still functioning in Turkey, after a fashion, despite everything. The results demonstrate that Turkey is not yet a one-party state, and that President Erdogan can be beaten, even with the media slanted against the opposition parties. The defeat in Istanbul is especially poignant, as it was where Mr Erdogan himself launched his political career as mayor in 1994.

Less optimistically, the government is challenging many of the results, alleging fraud and demanding recounts. It is the Erdogan way, and it may succeed, such is his grip on power and taste for intimidating anyone who stands in his path. Like all authoritarian rulers, he does not give up power lightly, if at all.

By all accounts the man who has put up the greatest challenge to the president is a fine campaigner. Unlike Mr Erdogan, Mr Imamoglu is a moderate, mild-mannered centrist, a sort of Turkish version of Emmanuel Macron, and his quiet persuasion attracted votes from all sections of, and nationalities in, Turkish society. For a country that has seen much of its secular tradition dismantled by Mr Erdogan, as well as having surfed the erosion of civil and human rights, it is an important moment. Not yet a turning point, perhaps, but a sign that Mr Erdogan is, after all, mortal.

Yet Mr Imamoglu did not win his victory alone. He had enormous help from the Erdogan government’s mismanagement of the economy and of Turkey’s relations with the United States. The country’s trade war with America has served it especially poorly. The Turkish lira has since collapsed, sparking inflation while the economy has slid into recession.

Turkey went into a sharp recession at the end of last year, with output down around 4 per cent over the past few months – a sudden contraction in sharp contrast to Turkey’s previous strong record of growth. Turkey’s 80 million people need to know that the government will help to create the conditions for job creation, and it is visibly failing to do so.

The effects of the recession are felt most acutely in the cities, where Mr Erdogan’s appeal of nationalism, religion and social conservatism is not nearly as potent as it is in the countryside. Whether through the ballot box, internal unrest or military intervention, Mr Erdogan will not be able to exert is hold on power while the economy collapses all around him. It has proved a more lethal threat to AKP authority than the war in Syria or the threat from Isis.

So Mr Erdogan desperately needs to repair his relations with the United States, and loosen his ties to Vladimir Putin. Russia, after all, has been Turkey’s; traditional regional rival, and even in recent years tensions between the two powers have flared up. Historically, and as a fellow Nato member, Turkey should be closer to the United States, and yet Mr Erdogan’s obsession with Fethullah Gulen – a troublesome opposition cleric living in Pennsylvania whom Mr Erdogan is campaigning, fruitlessly, to have extradited – has clouded his judgement.

President Erdogan blames Mr Gulen for the attempted coup against him in 2016. Whether he is right about that or not, Mr Erdogan has a much more formidable set of enemies ranged against him now – recession, inflation and unemployment.