More than 1,000 people have been detained following mass protests in Turkey over the jailing of opposition leader Ekrem İmamoğlu.
The popular mayor of Istanbul had emerged as the most likely candidate to end President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s two-decades-long rule before he was arrested last week along with other opposition figures and charged with corruption.
Erdoğan has long been “removing checks on his own power and manipulating state institutions to give his party electoral advantages”, said Foreign Affairs. But with this “brazen act of political suppression, the Turkish government has taken a momentous step towards full-fledged autocracy”.
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Turkey is “nearing a point of no return”, said The Economist. Until last week, its government could still be classed as a “competitive authoritarian regime” by political scientists. Erdoğan does wield “unchecked executive powers and de facto control over the courts and most of the media”, but Turkey’s elections had “remained mostly free”. With the detention of İmamoğlu, his top advisers and other opposition officials, “what remains is close to naked autocracy”.
During his more than two decades in power, Erdoğan has “dismantled Turkey’s democratic institutions, consolidating his control into a system of one-man rule”, said Foreign Affairs. He has stacked the judiciary with loyalists and “muzzled” the media, with 90% of news outlets now owned by pro-government businesses.
Erdoğan has jailed political rivals in the past and İmamoğlu is certainly a threat. He is widely seen as the only candidate capable of unifying a fractured opposition and defeating Erdoğan at the ballot box.
By sanctioning İmamoğlu’s arrest, Erdoğan has “crossed the line that separates Turkey’s competitive authoritarian system from a full, Russian-style autocracy in which the president handpicks his opponents and elections are purely for show”.
Soner Çağaptay, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that İmamoğlu’s detention is a “decisive moment” in Turkish political history. “From that point on,” he told Politico, the country is in “an authoritarian system, sadly”.
What next?
The question now is whether Turkey’s biggest protests in over a decade will “escalate into a real crisis” for President Erdoğan, said Sky News.
While some countries have been quick to condemn the Turkish government’s attack on democracy, there is unlikely to be any major international pressure given the precarious state of world affairs. With global events “bolstering his leverage over the west, Erdoğan is well placed to act with impunity, knowing that his strategic importance will likely shield him from serious repercussions”, said Massimo D’Angelo on The Conversation.
This means any attempt to force the president to change course will have to come from inside Turkey. Despite his arrest, İmamoğlu was confirmed over the weekend as the Republican People’s Party’s presidential nominee for the election scheduled for 2028. Under the constitution Erdoğan is barred from running again, although he could get around this by calling an early vote, which Al Jazeera said was now “likely”.
The president is playing a “high-risk, high-reward game”, said Foreign Affairs. “If he succeeds, he’ll head into the next election against an opponent he chose himself, effectively securing his rule for life.”
