Turkey’s rising political star set for major fight - European News | Latest News from Across Europe | The Irish Times - Tue, Feb 04, 2014
Mustafa Sarigul, taking on the AK Party for the mayoral seat of Istanbul.
The walls of the local municipality’s conference room are lined with pictures of Mustafa Sarigül meeting the famous: Pope Benedict, Kofi Annan, Shimon Peres. There’s even one of him with Abdullah Gul – Turkey’s president and a chief political foe.
But today, it’s Istanbul mayor and AK Party member, Kadir Topbas, who’s in Sarigül’s sights.
Born in a rural hamlet in eastern Turkey in 1956, Mustafa Sarigül has made Sisli in Istanbul his den: he’s been mayor of the financial hub since 1999. With the mayorship of Istanbul up for grabs next month, a powerful political position the ruling AK Party is loath to lose its grip on, it also means that Sarigül is now the focus of much attention, both good and bad.
Political tensions in Turkey have been growing in recent months, escalated by a graft probe against family members of government figures in December that prompted a ruthless backlash against the investigating police and judiciary.
On a recent Monday night, two gunmen emptied 15 bullets into Sarigül’s local municipality building, but no one was injured. “This is an attack against democracy ahead of the elections,” Sarigül told Turkish media.
At an extraordinary congress of the opposition People’s Republican Party (CHP) in 2005, Sarigül was ousted “due to some unjust claims made against me”, he says. Fists apparently flew. Differences have recently been overcome and last November Sarigül was invited to return. Sensing an opportunity, in December he was voted by CHP members to take on the AK Party for the mayoral seat of Istanbul.
“Mr Topbas has been mayor for 10 years – he is tired, that party is tired, they have lost the energy for Istanbul, for the future of Istanbul … Istanbul needs a new dynamism, a new energy,” he said.
InterferenceIstanbul, he says, has not been governed from Istanbul for a long time. “The central government interferes in Istanbul’s affairs. There are many projects that are put by the government, not by Istanbul municipalities.”
Though Istanbul is replete with districts inhabited by liberals and secularists, there are vast swathes that identify with the AK Party’s conservative Islamist principles. In the district of Fatih, pictures of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and deposed Egyptian president and Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi line street corners. But Sarigül is unperturbed. “Most of our time is consumed in such areas because we know that if we go there and talk to people, we can get their support.”
The residents of Istanbul are perhaps most annoyed by the spate of construction projects engulfing a city that boasts a 2,600-year history. Since last May, urban regeneration and its various forms have become a lightning rod for public dissent. Last summer, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to support a sit-in of environmentalists at Istanbul’s Gezi Park that was violently put down by police. Sarigül’s aides say he was in Gezi from the start. Not only that, the police pepper-sprayed him.