Erdogan’s rise reflects democratic decline, with increasing authoritarianism, media suppression, and opposition suppression, undermining Turkey’s secular republic.
London: “Democracies always become tyrannies”, argued the ancient Greek philosopher Plato in his seminal work, the ‘Republic’ around 375 BC. Alive today, he would have plenty of evidence to support his theory. Take Hungary, for example. Under its prime minister, Victor Orban, the country is fast moving from a democratic state into an authoritarian one. In Russia democracy lasted a mere 10 years or so after the collapse of the Soviet Union. When Vladimir Putin came to power at the turn of the millennium, democracy was quickly extinguished. Putin immediately took control of the media, appointed obedient judges and ordered the lights to be extinguished of anyone who might be a threat to his reign, leading figures such as Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny. Now consider Turkey, which is fast becoming an authoritarian state under its president, Recep Erdogan. Huge crowds across the country are brutally treated as they protest to keep the flame of democracy alive. The founding father of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, will be turning in his grave.
When Ataturk emerged victorious from what was later referred to as the Turkish War of Independence, he set about abolishing the Ottoman Sultanate and in 1923 proclaimed the foundation of the Turkish Republic. As president, Ataturk initiated a rigorous programme of political, economic and cultural reforms, specifically aimed at building a republican and secular nation-state. An extensive compulsory education system was developed across the country, with free primary schools. Even the alphabet was changed into a Latin-based one. Women received equal civil and political rights for the first time under his presidency, fulfilling his ambition to create a homogeneous and unified nation.
Since becoming Turkey’s president in 2014, the 71 year-old Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gradually
It wasn’t long before Erdogan formed his own party, the Islamic rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), and remains its chairman to this day. From 2003, Erdogan spent three terms as prime minister, presiding over a period of steady economic growth and winning praise internationally as a reformer. For the first time in Turkey’s history, the middle classes expanded and millions were taken out of poverty as Erdogan espoused huge infrastructure projects to modernise the country. But success went to his head and many saw the beginnings of autocratic behaviour. There were also early signs of endemic corruption in government ministers, all of which led to protests among those who claimed that Erdogan was acting more like a sultan from the Ottoman Empire than a democrat. A long champion of Islamic causes, he condemned feminism and insisted that men and women cannot be treated equally. Erdogan also angered many when he turned Istanbul’s historic Hagia Sophia back into a mosque. Built as a cathedral 1,500 years ago, the Ottoman Turks had turned the magnificent building into a mosque, but Kemal Ataturk had converted it into a museum as a symbol the new secular state.
Banned by the constitution from running again as prime minister, in 2014 Erdogan stood for the largely ceremonial role of president, with clear plans to transform the country into an autocracy. Sensing this danger and concerned about the threat to democracy, a group of rebel soldiers staged a violent coup in July 2016, which very nearly succeeded. Its failure, however, resulted in huge numbers of public servants being sacked and more than 50,000 people detained, including soldiers, journalists, lawyers, police officers, academics and politicians from the opposition. Erdogan emerged from the failed coup stronger than ever and from almost losing control of the country he became untouchable. He soon achieved his dream of turning Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential autocracy, scrapping the post of prime minister and consolidating his hold on the country. Erdogan then began to mould Turkey in his image, fiercely nationalistic, conservative and most of all, Muslim.
Erdogan’s support lies mostly in the rural regions of Turkey and as a result in 2019 his party lost the three big cities of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir to the main opposition social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP), founded almost a century earlier by Kemal Ataturk. Losing Ankara, the city where he had been mayor, was a bitter blow to Erdogan and he never accepted the result. Instead he has spent the last five years eroding democracy, eliminating opposition media, stifling dissent, packing the judiciary and purging Turkey’s army and civil service. Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, has become Erdogan’s nemesis. He was ahead of Erdogan in opinion polls before he was banned by the courts from running in the May 2023 presidential elections for allegedly insulting a public official. As president, Erdogan has repeatedly used the courts under his control to target activists, politicians, and journalists.
Last week Imamoglu, Erdogan’s most potent challenger, was again thrown into jail on spurious charges moments before he was about to be nominated as his party’s candidate for the next presidential election, scheduled for 7 May 2028. The resulting protests, the biggest ever against Erdogan, reflect Imamoglu’s popularity and the disconnect between Istanbul and the Anatolian heartland, Erdogan’s religious-conservative power base. Some 15 million people, the vast majority not even CHP party members, showed up over last weekend to symbolically vote for Imamoglu as the CHP’s candidate. The nervousness on international markets wiped out 79 percent of Turkey’s foreign exchange reserves from last year in just three days and prompted a draconian month-long ban on short selling on the Istanbul stock exchange.
But Recep Tayyip Erdogan is unlikely to be troubled by the protests. Although Imamoglu’s arrest is seen by many as a clear escalation in Erdogan’s tendency to wield his powers to eliminate rivals, he is seen as a strong leader on the world stage. Analysts believe that Erdogan has chosen this geopolitical moment to bury for good the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Political rivals see the would-be-caliph ditching what’s left of Turkey’s democracy by neutralising the opposition and shifting to full-bore autocracy. After all, his dear friend Donald Trump regularly calls for his political opponents to be locked up, and is hardly likely to lecture Erdogan for doing so. Last week Trump was reported to have called his political adversaries “scum,” “savages” and “Marxists,” before adding they’re “deranged” and “thugs” for good measure. Not words that Erdogan would have used, but he and Trump have lavished praise on each other for years, and the Turkish leader has said he supports his American counterpart’s peace initiative in Ukraine.
Both Trump and Erdogan are joining the band of once embattled and would-be autocrats taking advantage of the change in the geopolitical air and calculating that they are on the cusp of a new era in which they can erase the rules and norms of the old and replace them with ones more to their liking. They look to each other for inspiration in ways to run their countries, such as weaponising policies affecting social minorities and attacking or even closing down social media and public broadcasting. It was not a coincidence that at the very moment Erdogan was banning public gatherings in Turkey and restricting public access to social media, the man who idolises Trump, Elon Musk, suspended the accounts of Turkish opposition leaders on his platform, X.
So Plato’s wise words appear to have been a precognition; democracies do morph into tyrannies. Those who have closely followed Erdogan over the years shouldn’t be surprised. However, back in 1996, when he was the popular opposition mayor of Istanbul, he was reported saying “democracy is like a tram – you ride it until you reach your destination”. The tragedy for Turkey under Recep Erdogan is that he seems to have arrived.
* John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth.