Istanbul's election rerun takes place in less than two weeks, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party is changing the foundation of its campaign strategy.

Residents of Istanbul will once again head to the polls on June 23 to vote for the mayor of their city, Turkey’s commercial capital and where Erdogan rose to power after his unexpected mayoral win in 1994. Since then, Erdogan has remained virtually undefeated electorally, save for a major defeat in the June 2015 elections, when his party lost the parliamentary majority needed to form a government on its own. Yet Erdogan didn't concede and forced an election repeat. Five months later, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won back its parliamentary majority and kicked off Erdogan’s steady march toward one-man rule.

Back then, the defeat was due to Kurdish votes going to the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). For the AKP, now is the time to woo the Kurdish vote in Istanbul before the critical rerun, as HDP voters constitute some 10% of total voters in Istanbul. The HDP didn’t nominate any candidate for the March 31 race and instead supported the opposition bloc's candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu.

In response to this state of affairs, the AKP has adopted a new strategy for the election rerun that has three important pillars.