ISTANBUL: Immaculately coiffed with a camera-ready smile, Mustafa Sarigul’s composure cracks a little as his campaign bus swings towards Istanbul’s old city walls.

Two months before elections which could reshape Turkey’s political landscape, the main opposition candidate for mayor of its biggest city is taking the fight to a bastion of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party.

At stake is much more than just local politics, and Sarigul’s secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) is hoping for a breakthrough in places like the conservative district of Fatih in Istanbul’s historic heart.

“We haven’t won Fatih for the last 20 years,” said Oguz Kaan Salici, the CHP head in Istanbul.

The municipal elections on March 30 will be the first concrete test of Erdogan’s popularity since street protests swept Istanbul and other cities last summer, and a corruption scandal last month which forced the resignation of three ministers and opened a feud with an influential Islamic cleric.

His problems have been compounded by a dive in the lira currency, prompting a big emergency interest rate rise this week which is likely to dent economic growth just as Turks vote, tarnishing a reputation for strong financial management.

Istanbul will be a bellwether of whether the turbulence has damaged Erdogan — Turkey’s most powerful leader since Kemal Ataturk founded the modern republic just over 90 years ago — and if so, by how much.

Good AK Party showings in Istanbul, the capital Ankara and — a stronghold of the CHP — could encourage Erdogan to run for president five months later. AKP officials are targeting 40 per cent of the municipal vote, a similar level to the last elections in 2009.

But a drubbing could prompt him to change AKP rules and stand instead for a fourth term as prime minister. This, Erdogan could declare, would be necessary to save the party he founded, a coalition of conservative religious, centre-right and nationalist elements once accused of endangering Turkey’s secular order.

Erdogan’s feud with US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who he sees as behind the corruption investigation shaking his government, has damaged the reputation of both, but the AKP would still win an election if one were called this weekend, a survey showed on Thursday.

The significance of the battle for Istanbul — the economic and cultural heart of Turkey — is not lost on Erdogan, who served as its mayor.

Addressing throngs of AKP supporters a short distance away as Sarigul arrived in Fatih, Erdogan evoked the 15th century conquest of the city by Muslim Ottomans, in remarks tinged with religious fervour. “Istanbul is not just a city ... it is the world’s pearl, the mother of all cities ... It is not a melting pot for civilisations, it is a city that builds civilisations,” he said.

‘Respectful secularism’

Erdogan’s AKP has transformed Turkey over the past decade, ending the period of unstable coalition governments of the 1990s, taming a military that toppled four administrations in the second half of the 20th century, and overseeing a tripling in Turks’ nominal wealth.

It has won a growing share of the vote in three successive national elections, trouncing opposition parties too closely wedded to their own segments of Turkish society to mount an effective challenge in all but a handful of regions.

Virtually the whole electoral map — apart from the Aegean coast, the mainly Kurdish southeast and a small region on the European continent west of Istanbul — is under AK Party rule.

But a sense of fatigue is growing, particularly in Western-facing cities such as Istanbul. Many Turks there regard Erdogan’s style as pious hectoring and believe he is interfering in their private lives. Such feelings had been building up long before last summer’s demonstrations.

The protests, which drew a heavy-handed police response, brought together groups ranging from anti-capitalist Muslims and gay rights activists to doctors and lawyers. The political opposition may struggle to achieve this diversity at a national level, but Sarigul hopes it could help him in Istanbul.

“I have always been respectful to all faiths and always defended a secularism that respects everyone,” Sarigul said.

The CHP’s choice of candidate for the district, Sabri Erbakan, aims to appeal to more conservative voters. He is a nephew of former prime minister Necmettin Erbakan, the father of Islamist politics in modern Turkey and of the “Milli Gorus” movement, which seeks to strengthen Islamic values in public life and laid the foundations for the AK Party.

Erbakan is in a closely-watched race. The CHP won 30 per cent of the vote in Fatih at the last election in 2009, compared with 43 per cent for the AKP and 13 per cent for the Saadet Party, both of them rooted in Milli Gorus ideology.

In a political landscape so dominated by one man, Erdogan may also see in Sarigul a charisma that could one day rival his own. They also share a similar temperament, quick to anger and eager to control. As Sarigul’s campaign bus deviated from the planned route and momentarily lost the convoy, he cursed and hammered the glass.

“They don’t have to love us ... the more important thing is the attention we receive,” the CHP’s Salici said, as Sarigul’s well-practised grin quickly returned for Fatih’s residents, some waving back and cheering, as his convoy, snaked its way through the traffic.—Reuters