Two years after Turkey’s March 31, 2024, local elections reshaped the country’s political map, a union representing municipal workers said 85 municipalities have changed hands through trustee appointments, removals, arrests and shifts in city council control, in what it described as a broad assault on the opposition’s election gains, Turkish Minute reported.
The statement from the Confederation of Public Workers’ Unions’ Municipal and Local Administration Services Union (Tüm Bel Sen), came after Uşak Mayor Özkan Yalım was jailed in a bribery investigation on Monday, while Bursa Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Mustafa Bozbey was detained along with dozens of others in a separate probe on Tuesday.
The March 2024 local elections marked one of the biggest setbacks in years for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), as the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), emerged as the leading party nationwide and held on to major cities including İstanbul and Ankara while expanding into other urban strongholds. The union said that after the vote, the government moved against municipalities won by opposition parties through a mix of trustee appointments, suspensions, judicial action and political engineering in local city councils.
According to the union, trustees were appointed to 13 municipalities over the past two years: Hakkari, Esenyurt, Batman, Mardin Metropolitan Municipality, Halfeti, Tunceli, Ovacık, Bahçesaray, Akdeniz, Siirt, Van Metropolitan Municipality, Kağızman and Şişli. It said elected mayors or co-mayors were removed from office in 30 municipalities and that party control changed in 55 others through methods such as altering city council arithmetic.
The union said the affected municipalities accounted for 8,845,767 votes in the 2024 elections, or 20.5 percent of all votes cast nationwide, leading it to argue that the will of roughly one in five voters had been nullified. It also said 19 mayors were in pretrial detention as of March 31, 2026, including Yalım.
The figures reflect the deepening legal and political pressure on Turkey’s opposition, especially the CHP and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), whose local gains have repeatedly been rolled back through court cases and trustee appointments.
The latest moves added to that pattern. In Uşak, Yalım was detained in a bribery investigation and later jailed along with other suspects. His assets were subsequently seized and trustees from the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF) were appointed to companies linked to him, according to Turkish media reports.
In Bursa prosecutors ordered the detention of 59 people including Bozbey, accusing them of crimes including bribery, money laundering and running a criminal organization in connection with construction projects dating back to his time as mayor of Nilüfer, a district in Bursa province. Turkish media reported that authorities also ordered the seizure of dozens of homes, companies, workplaces and a foundation as part of the investigation.
Tüm Bel Sen union also said pressure on municipalities has not been limited to removals and prosecutions. It pointed to budget controls, cuts in central government transfers and tighter approval requirements for major local investment projects, saying these measures had reduced municipal autonomy and turned local administrations into extensions of the central state.
