More than 52 million Turks are expected to go to the ballot box on March 30. They will elect mayors and other local administrators, who will be in office for the next five years. In other words, this is not a general election that will change the structure of parliament and the government. That election is scheduled for July 2015. Yet, many see these local elections as extremely significant, because it has taken the form of an implicit referendum on the popularity of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Four important political forces will compete with each other from the outset:
