İYİ to field candidates in all provinces in Turkey’s 2024 local elections

Duvar English

Making a press statement after the critical General Administrative Board (GİK) meeting of the İYİ (Good) Party held on Sept. 13, party spokesperson Kürşad Zorlu announced that they will nominate their own candidates in 81 provinces in Turkey's 2024 local elections.

"The GİK decided that our party's own candidates in 81 provinces and their districts will be determined by interviewing the people in each electoral district. Our party council was authorized in this process. I wish this decision to be beneficial for the politics we aim to revive,” the spokesperson of the nationalist opposition party said.

As a response to the question about whether they will run candidates against Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş, the spokeperson said, "We are dealing with the issue of candidate discussion free from all the people and discussions you mentioned. A few of our friends had different opinions. We can say that the decision was taken with a majority of votes."

The party’s chair Meral Akşener on Sept. 6 stated that they will field mayoral candidates in Istanbul and Ankara metropolitan municipalities and added that they take the risk of losing both municipalities to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). "We did not establish this party to elect main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) candidates," Akşener said.

Yavaş and İmamoğlu, from the CHP, were the first opposition mayors who garnered enough votes in 2019 to gain mayorship in Istanbul and capital Ankara after a long time. In the 2019 local elections, the İYİ Party and opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) did not field mayoral candidates for Istanbul and Ankara metropolitan municipalities.

Following the party’s statement, İmamoğlu on Sept. 14 said "I do not think that Akşener has closed the doors completely," while Yavaş said, "I aspire for the votes of all parties' voters in Ankara."

Only four members of the 50-member GİK expressed different opinions, although they did not object to the merits of the decision. The members who expressed different opinions argued that the timing was wrong and said that this strategy of the party should be implemented in the general elections of 2028, not in the local elections.

After the general elections held in 2023, in which the İYİ Party ran with the Nation Alliance, the party started to oppose the alliance system on the grounds that it pushed back the party's identity.

Akşener had problems with the alliance, especially during the process of determining the presidential candidate, and has even announced that her party had left the alliance before return back to the table.

İmamoğlu and Yavaş have announced that they will run again in the 2024 elections.