İzmir mayor Cemil Tugay joins Erdoğan’s AKP, but opposition retains council majority

İzmir metropolitan mayor Cemil Tugay joined President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) at a ceremony in Ankara on Wednesday, 7 October 2026. The move gives Turkey’s ruling party the mayoralty of a city that elected Tugay as an opposition candidate in 2024, but opposition parties still hold a majority in its municipal assembly.

Erdoğan presented Tugay with an AKP badge and welcomed him to the party. Tugay told reporters that good things awaited İzmir and there was no reason to worry, according to Bianet. The announcement changed the mayor’s party affiliation immediately; the reporting so far does not establish what changes, if any, it will bring to city policy.

How İzmir voted for Cemil Tugay in 2024

Tugay won the March 2024 metropolitan mayoral election for the Republican People’s Party (CHP) with 48.97% of the vote. AKP candidate Hamza Dağ received 37.06%, leaving a margin of about 314,000 votes, Euronews reported. Tugay had previously been elected mayor of İzmir’s Karşıyaka district in 2019. His move now gives the AKP a mayoralty it did not win in that election.

İzmir’s metropolitan municipality has been led by centre-left or left-wing mayors since 1999. Tugay’s switch therefore carries political weight beyond a change of party membership: it puts an AKP mayor at the head of the administration in a city long associated with the opposition. That change does not, by itself, transfer the city council’s seats to the ruling party.

Why the opposition still controls the municipal assembly

The distinction matters for decisions that affect residents. According to Medyascope’s account of municipal powers, the mayor directs the administration, manages staff, represents the municipality and implements an approved budget. The assembly separately approves the budget, zoning plans, strategic plan and borrowing. Tugay can lead the mayor’s office, but the reported seat count does not give his new party a council majority to pass those decisions on its own.

Medyascope said a mayor can return a council decision for reconsideration within seven days if he considers it unlawful. A renewed vote by an absolute majority of all members makes that decision final, after which the mayor can seek review in an administrative court. The reports do not show how the assembly’s groups will vote on future proposals or whether Tugay can secure support for particular priorities.

What Tugay said before joining the AKP

The switch reverses Tugay’s earlier public position. Euronews reported that in 2025 he said there was ‘not even a one-in-a-million chance’ he would join the AKP and argued that a mayor elected for the CHP had no right to change parties. After leaving the CHP in June 2026, he served as an independent. In August, he again said he would remain independent and that joining any party was out of the question.

Euronews reported that Tugay met Erdoğan at the presidential complex on 30 September, before the public announcement. His move also follows two other party switches among İzmir district mayors: Medyascope reported that Foça mayor Saniye Bora Fıçı joined the AKP on 10 September and Çiğli mayor Onur Emrah Yıldız did so on 29 September. Those earlier changes provide local context, but they do not establish why Tugay made his decision.

Claims of pressure and the unanswered questions

New Party leader Özgür Özel said Tugay and other elected officials faced threats, blackmail and pressure, according to Euronews and Agence France-Presse. Political analyst Berk Esen told AFP that some mayors were switching out of fear and described the defections as part of an effort to reverse the AKP’s 2024 local election defeat. Those are attributed allegations and analysis, not established findings about Tugay’s motives.

The wider political dispute has included arrests and court cases involving opposition mayors. Bianet reported that more than 35 mayors had been arrested and removed from office since operations began in March 2025. The cited reporting does not establish that those cases caused Tugay’s switch. His stated confidence in the AKP and opponents’ claims of pressure offer competing accounts, while the immediate institutional position is clearer: an AKP mayor faces an opposition-majority assembly.