As the results of Turkey’s local elections emerged late on March 31, a meme featuring Vladimir Lenin went viral on social media. It showed the Russian revolutionary leader gazing at a computer, a cup of tea in his hand, saying, “We’ve taken Tunceli.”
It was a playful tribute to Turkey’s communists, a tiny but persevering community that won the mayoral race in the city of Tunceli, a left-wing bastion in eastern Turkey with a predominantly Alevi Kurdish population. Building on its debut in the nearby town of Ovacik five years ago, the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) clinched the victory — its first in a provincial capital — with 32.77% of the vote, outstripping heavyweight rivals such as the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which got 28.21% and 20.59% of the vote, respectively. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) mustered only 14% of the vote.
