In Turkey, a vote of confidence for Istanbul’s embattled ex-mayor

ISTANBUL – “We won’t give in to despair,” insisted 38-year-old Aslihan, referring to the massive protests sweeping across Turkey since the arrest of Istanbul’s popular mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.

She was waiting in line to vote in a long-planned primary organised by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) to choose Imamoglu as its presidential candidate.

Following his arrest, the party opened the poll beyond its 1.7 million members to anyone who wanted to vote, turning it into a de facto referendum.

In the end, some 15 million people voted, of whom 13.2 million were not party members, said Istanbul City Hall, which organised the vote. It extended voting by 3½ hours because of the turnout.

Widely seen as the only politician capable of challenging Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,

the 53-year-old’s lightning arrest and jailing

has sparked the country’s biggest protests in more than a decade.

Polling stations opened at 8am local time on March 23 and voters of all ages began flocking to vote at 5,600 ballot boxes installed in 81 cities.

But the party said “millions” had turned out, pushing it to extend the closing time from 5pm to 8.30pm due to the “overwhelming turnout”.

“Whenever there’s a strong opponent (to Mr Erdogan), they are always jailed,” shrugged a 29-year-old voter called Ferhat, who like many, did not want to give his surname. “There is a dictatorship in Turkey right now, nothing else, it’s politics in name only.”

‘Here to support our mayor’

“We’ve come to support our mayor,” said resident Kadriye Sevim inside a tent set up outside City Hall, the epicentre of the massive protests since Imamoglu’s March 19 arrest.

“No power has the right to do this to Turkish youth or the people in Turkey. We will stand against this until the end,” said 18-year-old student Ece Nazoskoc.

Similar crowds were seen waiting to vote in Kadikoy, a trendy district on the Asian side of the city, as well as in Kasimpasa, a working-class neighbourhood on the Golden Horn estuary where Mr Erdogan spent his childhood.

The scenes were repeated across the country, from the capital Ankara to Diyarbakir in the mainly Kurdish south-east, and to Thrace in the far north-west near the Greek and Bulgarian borders.

‘First protests since Gezi’

“We all voted, it was like a party! The CHP people manning the ballot boxes said it was really busy with lots of people from other parties,” grinned Ms Sevil Dogruguven, 51, who works in the private sector in the north-western city of Edirne.

“In the countryside near Thrace, people even came to the town halls to cast their ballots,” she told AFP.

In Ankara, Ms Nurcan Kabacioglu, a retired 57-year-old teacher, was defiant.

“There is no such thing as a hopeless situation, just discouraged people. I never gave up hope,” she said.

Others were feeling a new sense of hope.

“This is the first mass protest since the Gezi protests,” said Ms Aslihan, referring to a small 2013 environmental protest against the destruction of a city park that snowballed into vast nationwide rallies in one of the biggest threats to Mr Erdogan’s rule.

“After Gezi, we got used to the feeling of hopelessness, but the injustice we’re seeing now (and the subsequent protests) has given us new hope,” she said.

“I feel much stronger and more hopeful,” she told AFP. “But I feel this is our last chance.” AFP