nytimes.com | By The Editorial Board | April 2, 2019

Opinion A Wake-Up Call for President Erdogan
In local Turkish elections, the opposition, united and organized, took on an autocrat.

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Just when it seemed that democracy was all but dead in Turkey, voters delivered a sharp electoral rebuke to their authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Unofficial results in municipal elections over the weekend show that Mr. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party lost control of Ankara, the capital, and Istanbul, the financial center and launching pad for Mr. Erdogan’s political career.

Mr. Erdogan was not on the ballot, and his party still controls Parliament, but the vote was the worst election defeat of his nearly two decades in office. And while he won re-election last year, a 2017 referendum that only narrowly gave him new authority over the legislature and judiciary presaged his weakening support.

Opposition candidates in the municipal races capitalized on growing discontent with his repression and economic mismanagement. The results signaled that, if the opposition stays united and forward-looking, it could mount a true challenge to Mr. Erdogan in the next presidential election, in 2023.

The president’s main rival, the Republican People’s Party, and its allies promised political change, job creation, better education and improved social services. Opposition members carefully monitored vote tallies and have even slept on sacks of counted ballots to ensure they are not tampered with by Erdogan loyalists.

Meanwhile, the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party’s disciplined effort in the bigger cities to support Republican People’s Party candidates most likely provided the winning margin in Istanbul and Ankara.

For more than a decade, Mr. Erdogan has dominated Turkey, promoting Islamic religious values and ruthlessly crushing those he sees as adversaries. Over the years, he has manipulated the system to accrue sweeping executive powers, control the army and crack down on civil liberties. His cronies largely control the media, but Turkey still jails more journalists than any other nation.

The president inserted himself directly into the local election process, handpicking a longtime ally, Binali Yildirim, to run for mayor of Istanbul and choosing a former minister to run for mayor of Ankara. Their losses could deprive the president of a vast patronage apparatus that has bolstered his rule.

Appearing at as many as eight political rallies a day, Mr. Erdogan waged an aggressively negative campaign, accusing the opposition of criminality or terrorism, threatening lawsuits and fueling nationalist anger.

It’s not surprising that voters saw the election as a referendum on Mr. Erdogan’s rule. Turkey’s economy fell into recession in March after years of enviable growth. The unemployment rate is now over 10 percent, and is as much as 30 percent among young people. In 2018, the value of the Turkish lira fell 28 percent. Inflation is at 20 percent.

Voters, particularly the young, are also concerned about corruption among members of the Erdogan family and its allies.

Mr. Erdogan’s party is challenging the vote counts but said it would respect the results; despite his autocratic bent, Mr. Erdogan values the legitimacy that elections confer.

The United States and other Western democracies had been losing hope that Turkey can be a reliable ally given Mr. Erdogan’s drift away from democratic values and NATO and toward Russia. The latest election results offer a chance to assure him that any tampering would widen that breach — and further endanger economic and military partnerships.

One concern is that Mr. Erdogan could try to increase his flagging support by undertaking long-threatened military operations against America’s Kurdish allies in Syria. Such a move may backfire, particularly if the operations go poorly.

Especially now that Turkey’s political opposition has shown it is alive and capable of pushing back.