5/9/19
When Recep Erdoğan was first elected prime minister of Turkey, in 2003, he vowed to respect the country’s democratic institutions, and to vacate office if he ever lost the public’s trust. The reality of Erdoğan’s rule has been rather more bleak. Although international newspapers and magazines initially portrayed him as a democratic reformer, he systematically expanded his powers and purged opponents from top positions in the army, the civil service, and the country’s educational institutions. When former allies tried to oust him in a coup in the summer of 2016, he used the occasion to consolidate his hold over the country. Thanks to the vast emergency powers he claimed within days of the failed putsch, he was able to dismiss tens of thousands of civil servants he considered politically unreliable, and to jail some of the country’s most prominent journalists. The tremendous power Erdoğan now holds makes it all the more remarkable that a united opposition was, last month, able to gain an unexpected set of victories in the country’s municipal elections: Exploiting anger at Turkey’s growing economic crisis, and fielding a new crop of candidates who are both charismatic and conciliatory, the opposition pulled off two highly symbolic upsets, winning control of the country’s capital, Ankara, as well as its largest city, Istanbul. As a result, Erdoğan has, for the first time since the failed coup three years ago, faced a real trade-off: Would he allow the election results to stand, thereby acknowledging the public’s growing discontent with his rule? Or would he exploit his hold over Turkey’s institutions to have the election annulled, making it blatantly clear to anybody who cared to look that Turkey is no longer a democracy?
Erdoğan went on to use his control over the country’s judiciary to cancel its result. Citing supposed irregularities, the electoral commission announced on Monday that Istanbul would hold new elections in June. The new crop of authoritarian leaders is much more invested in retaining the appearance of a genuine democratic mandate. As a result, they have to engage in a more complicated political calculus: They have to give the opposition enough of a chance to compete in the elections to look credible to a significant segment of the population. But they must also capture political institutions such as electoral commissions to a sufficient extent to ensure that the people can’t actually boot them out of office. A country whose president has the power to annul elections when he doesn’t like their outcome has clearly become a dictatorship. From now on, anybody who still insists on calling Turkey a democracy, or treating its elections as a fair barometer of public opinion, is a liar or a fool. Erdoğan’s loss of democratic legitimacy does not imply that he is about to lose power. As the long history of dictatorships demonstrates, many people are willing to support a leader who openly opposes democratic institutions—and many autocrats are able to stay in office for years or decades after they have become deeply unpopular. But it does suggest that his rule will, from now on, be based on a much more precarious foundation. With his claim to a popular mandate gone for good, Erdoğan will likely face an even more determined opposition—and need to resort to ever more naked oppression to stay in power.
