On March 31, 2024, local elections were held in Turkey to determine the country’s local governments. A total of 35 parties participated in the elections. Their ballot positions were announced by the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) on January 27, 2024. YSK Chairperson Ahmet Yener announced that the voter turnout rate was 78.11%. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) emerged as the first party with a 37.77% vote share, the first time since 1977, while the Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) fell to the second place for the first time in its history with a 35.49% vote share. The New Welfare Party (Yeniden Refah Partisi) came in third place in the local elections nationwide with a 6.19% share. Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Parti) became the fourth party with a 5.70% vote share and increased its vote potential. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) remained the fifth party with a 4.99% vote share in spite of remaining controlling the municipalities it had won in the previous election. The Good Party (İYİ Parti) came in sixth place with a 3.77% vote share, but experienced a significant decline in its vote share (Anadolu Ajansı, 2024).

Newspapers play a crucial role in providing a daily news feed and informing the public while also exhibiting a particular political stance through their ownership structures, ideological discourses, and news content (Yapar, 2012; Değer, 2017; Polat et al., 2018; Avcı and Güdekli, 2018; Ünalan and Şeşen, 2019; Altındal, 2019; Nisan and Boral Aslan, 2020; Küçüksakarya, 2020; Kahveci and Paksoy, 2021; Sunay and Özer, 2021; Erol, 2021). This study aims to examine the headlines of the Turkish press following the local elections held on March 31, 2024 in Turkey and to understand how media institutions with different ideological views presented the local elections. The study first explains the theoretical background. Then, research questions are determined and explained based on the relevant literature. The method is determined through the research questions. The findings are then discussed and analysed. In the conclusion, the contribution of the findings to the literature is presented and suggestions are made for future studies.

This study examines the representation of the March 31, 2024 local elections in the Turkish press. A total of 29 newspapers were sampled, and their headline news published on April 1, 2024 were subjected to content analysis. The data obtained as a result of this analysis revealed that;

• A large majority of the newspapers focused on the local elections in Turkey in their headline news on April 1, 2024.
• The AK Parti and CHP were the most prominent parties in the newspapers while other parties received less coverage.
• Pro-government newspapers represented AK Parti in a supportive manner while opposition newspapers represented CHP in a similar approach.
• İYİ Parti and Meral Akşener were mostly represented negatively by both pro-government and opposition newspapers.
• The impact of the DEM Party was generally overlooked.
• Newspapers focused on big cities and gave less attention to local events.

One limitation of this study is that it focuses only on the headlines of April 1, 2024 and does not consider the content beyond these headlines. Analysing the news and commentaries on the inner pages of newspapers could provide a more comprehensive understanding. Additionally, since this study focuses only on headlines from a specific date, a long-term analysis is necessary to understand the changes over time and how the media approaches election results in more depth. In future studies, it is important to examine the headlines and content of newspapers from different dates in detail and to reveal long-term trends through these analyses. Furthermore, developing a more comprehensive methodology that examines the representation of political parties in newspaper coverage as well as how local events and election results in different regions are covered can help us better understand the relationship between the media and local and national dynamics.