Is Turkey’s Declining Democracy a Model for Trump’s America?

Last week, Turkish authorities arrested Ekrem Imamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul and the expected leading challenger to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the country’s next Presidential election, scheduled for 2028. Imamoğlu, who is a member of the Republican People’s Party (C.H.P.), has been accused of corruption and supporting terrorism; he’s denied the charges and called them politically motivated. In response to Imamoğlu’s detention, nationwide protests have broken out at a scale not seen in at least a decade. Erdoğan has been running Turkey since 2003, and he has maintained his hold on power, in part, by cracking down on political opponents and on the media. Some of those opponents come from Turkey’s long-persecuted Kurdish minority; last month, Abdullah Öcalan, the incarcerated leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.), called for a ceasefire in the P.K.K.’s long-running insurgency against the Turkish government, as part of a process that could potentially lead to the group disarming, and to him being freed from prison.

I recently spoke by phone with Jenny White, professor emerita at the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies and an expert on modern Turkey. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Erdoğan struck at his opponent now, the way his rule has changed over the past two-plus decades, and the similarities and differences between his authoritarian style and that of Donald Trump.

With the arrest of Imamoğlu, do you think that we’re entering into a new period of Erdoğan’s rule, or does this feel like a continuation of the same?

I think it’s absolutely a new page. And whether or not that page will be turned is very important. The outcome is as yet unclear. But if the page is turned—that is, if Erdoğan manages to get away with this—then Turkey is no longer what is called a “competitive authoritarian” regime. This is a regime with real elections, but the elections are not totally fair because the government controls a giant chunk of the media, or the media is owned by pro-government businesses. In Turkey, the opposition never gets real time on television, and they can’t get their message out through the media. So the elections are not fair. But there are elections and they still have a chance to work.

There’s real competition, despite everything. But if Erdoğan manages to basically get rid of the opposition candidate—and he is talking about not only doing that but also restructuring the leading opposition party, the C.H.P.—then there is no real opposition, there’s no competition, and you won’t have real elections. And then you have full autocracy. That’s what happens if you turn the page.

Why is Imamoğlu in particular so threatening to Erdoğan?

Well, there are some quite concrete things, like that he keeps winning elections. The preëlection polls in 2022 even had Imamoğlu winning the election against Erdoğan. So why didn’t he win? Because the then head of the C.H.P., Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, basically said, I want to be the candidate. Even though he was this kind of gray, non-charismatic person. And they made some other mistakes, such as cobbling together a coalition of six parties, including some very small parties, to pool the votes. That diluted the identity of each party. They called themselves the Table of Six. Instead of a party, you had a table of six who were always squabbling. But Erdoğan still won only fifty-two per cent.

Moreover, Imamoğlu beat the A.K.P., Erdoğan’s party, in the 2019 Istanbul mayoral election. And the A.K.P. didn’t like the result. So they annulled the election and had them redo it, at which point Imamoğlu won with an even bigger margin. And he won again in 2024. So, he is able to win elections. He has a nationwide reputation—it’s not just Istanbul. And, despite all of the obstacles that the regime constantly puts in his way, he has managed to do things for the city. For instance, he got money for the transit system by going all over Europe, talking to mayors and taking out loans from European banks. There are reports claiming that when the C.H.P. wins a municipality, the outgoing A.K.P. administration empties the coffers and sells off all the buildings. So, when the C.H.P. comes in, they have nothing. Imamoğlu was very creative. He’s a good speaker. He is very modern, and he’s relatively young.

He also opened a bunch of day cares. To give you a sense of some of the absurd things happening now, there were reports that the government was going to investigate him for improperly opening these day cares. Another absurd thing that just happened is that the university where he got his college degree annulled his diploma. You need a college degree to be President.

There are many opposition parties in Turkey. Scholars of democratic decline often talk about the need for the opposition to be united. It doesn’t always work. It didn’t work in Hungary, and it didn’t work in Turkey, in 2023. Why not?

There just seemed to be a dilution of identity. If it’s one powerful party and a bunch of little parties, what do the little parties stand for?

Imamoğlu can still run for President from prison, correct?

Except now he doesn’t have a college diploma. Broadly, I’m thinking about what happened after the Gezi protests, in 2013. The Gezi protests were about a piece of land, a park, one of the last green areas in Istanbul that the government wanted to make into a mall. There was a violent police response, and you had nationwide protests, but they were sort of diffuse and there were no leaders. In fact, many protesters were very proud of that, saying they weren’t associated with parties or groups. It was just people out there. And so they were. The rhetoric of the government at the time was exactly the same as the rhetoric now. Erdoğan just came out and said, Oh, these people are vandals. They’re destroying our heritage. They’re causing economic problems for the people. And it worked.

But this time it’s about voting, and your ability to vote in a meaningful way. Turks are very proud of having elections. And the ability to vote means something. It’s not just a park. It’s something much more existential.

There have been a lot of events in the past five or six years in Turkey that were expected to wound Erdoğan’s popularity, such as his erratic economic management, or the government’s failure to protect people from the aftereffects of a horrific earthquake in 2023. And yet here we are. Is your sense that he is more vulnerable now? Or has he somehow been able to maintain his popularity?

I’m not sure you can call it real popularity. He’s got a base, but there are all these polls that show the youth are really sick and tired. The proliferation of Islamic schools and programs is part of Erdoğan’s attempt to mold Islamic kids with Islamic ethics. But the youth see on social media and television how people live elsewhere. More than fifty per cent of Turkish youth want to leave the country. The demonstrations you see now are led by young people who have just had it.

Another issue is that the A.K.P. has wrapped up most of the economy in its own network, and it’s hard to get a job without knowing someone in the party. That matters. The fact that he has co-opted so much of the economy means that people are afraid that if they don’t vote for Erdoğan, they will lose their jobs. They’re afraid that the C.H.P. will come in and fire everyone and put their own people in. And the economy now is in such terrible shape. It’s a very, very dire situation for a lot of people. And they don’t dare make a change because what little they have may disappear. I think that that’s part of what’s keeping Erdoğan in power.

Do you think Erdoğan would win a totally free election in Turkey in 2025?

I’m almost positive he would not.

Is your sense that the anti-democratic moves he makes are to stay one step ahead of political failure, but that the moves themselves also drive his unpopularity? It almost seems like a feedback loop: you have to keep cracking down because the things you’re doing are making you more unpopular. Or is that not right?