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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 ISTANBUL 000092 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: OSCE PGOV PREL TU
SUBJECT: IN ISTANBUL, BESIKTAS IS A CHP ISLAND IN AN AKP SEA 
 
REF: A. 08 ISTANBUL 590 
     ¶B. ISTANBUL 70 
 
¶1.  Summary.  Besiktas, one of Istanbul's wealthiest 
districts, has long been a stronghold of Turkey's secular 
Republican People's Party (CHP).  In both the 2004 local 
elections and the 2007 parliamentary elections Turkey's 
ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) never got above 20 
percent of the district's vote.  Despite strenuous AKP 
efforts (Ref A), its current CHP mayor Ismail Unal has little 
to fear in the local elections scheduled for March 29, 
because Besiktas' geographic and demographic compositions act 
as a natural gerrymander, rendering the district practically 
impervious to AKP infiltration.  End Summary. 
 
¶2.  Istanbul politics have been dominated by AKP for over a 
decade, since the time that prime minister Tayyip Erdogan 
served as mayor.  In the 2004 local elections, 32 district 
mayorships were contested.  Twenty-four were won by AKP, 5 by 
CHP, and three by another party.  In both the 2004 local 
elections and the 2007 parliamentary elections AKP received a 
smaller percentage of the votes in Besiktas than in any other 
district in Istanbul.  As with the other districts won by 
CHP, Besiktas is small, rich, and long-settled. 
 
¶3.  Besiktas Mayor Unal has lived in the district for 30 
years, and prior to his election was well-known to its 
residents from his work as Secretary General of the Besiktas 
Gymnastics Club, owner of the eponymous and famous soccer 
team -- no small advantage in soccer-crazed Turkey.  Unal 
ascribes his political success to "personal contact and 
communication" -- a strategy more often associated with AKP 
than with the insular CHP.  Indeed, in commenting on the 
Greater Istanbul municipal elections (Ref B), Unal noted that 
CHP's chances depended upon how many votes its candidate 
Kemal Kilicdaroglu can pull from the varos (barrio) areas. 
Reaching out to the varoses is essential to a Kilicdaroglu 
win, says Unal, because of widespread (if, to Unal, 
"unwanted") inward migration.  (Comment:  The population of 
Istanbul has tripled over the past 30 years.)  These poorer, 
less educated and more conservative immigrants from the 
eastern regions of Turkey are the natural base of the AKP and 
have little in common with the secular, upscale base of the 
CHP.  In moving to Istanbul, they settled on the outskirts, 
living in "gecekondu" (literally, "night-built") residences 
illegally constructed on public land, and slowly became 
incorporated in (and, concomitantly, influential in) the 
social and political life of the city. 
 
¶4.  Unlike Kilicdaroglu, Unal does not need to appeal to such 
internal immigrants, because Besiktas is now and will in the 
future be home to very few of them.  According to Unal, there 
are but 750 gecekondus in Besiktas, and all are more than 50 
years old.  (By contrast, the Greater Istanbul municipality 
estimates that over fifty percent of all buildings in the 
city are illegal.)  No recent gecekondu construction has 
taken place in the district for the simple reason that there 
is no vacant land on which squatting can occur.  Thus, at 
most about 10,000 of Besiktas' 200,000 residents are part of 
AKP's natural base.  Besiktas' geographic and demographic 
compositions act as a natural gerrymander, rendering the 
district practically impervious to AKP infiltration. 
 
¶5.  Unal was quick to tell us that not everyone in Besiktas 
is rich, and that it has its share of pensioners and 
students, but socio-economically the majority of these people 
identify with CHP, not AKP.  In fact, Besiktas is something 
of a college town:  Although its population constitutes less 
than two percent of the whole of Istanbul, seven of the 
city's twenty universities have campuses in the district.  In 
recognition of the importance of students to his re-election 
(in Turkey, the voting age is eighteen and students can 
register to vote in the district where they attend school), 
Unal told us that a major part of his campaign will be a 
promise to increase the availability of student housing. 
Other planks of his platform include transparent and 
participatory government; security (particularly, reducing 
drug use among students); the establishment of a municipal 
office in each of the 23 neighborhoods of the district; and 
improving transportation. 
 
¶6.  Comment.  The urbane, refined and intelligent Unal is the 
very embodiment of the classic CHP politician, and is a 
perfect fit for his district.  At one time, these 
 
ISTANBUL 00000092  002 OF 002 
 
 
characteristics would also have marked him a contender for 
higher office.  However, in a country where the great 
majority of voters have come to prefer the more 
rough-and-tumble style of varos-raised Prime Minister 
Erdogan, Unal may have to content himself with a long (albeit 
comfortable) tenure in Besiktas.  End comment. 
Wiener