How Erdoğan is attacking democracy in Türkiye and why the West must respond
Last March, a Turkish court jailed Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu pending a trial on corruption charges.
Many have recognised it as a classic example of democratic backsliding: detain the popular opposition leader and dress it up as law enforcement. The move triggered nationwide protests on a scale not seen in more than a decade.
The prosecution of İmamoğlu, who defeated the Istanbul mayoral candidate from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the 2019 election (and its court-mandated rerun) and the 2024 election, was only the beginning in Türkiye. Since then, other mayors from the Republican People’s Party (CHP) have been detained as part of a campaign to weaken and dismantle the opposition.
Read more in the column by Turkish MP Bilal Bilici and Stanford University postdoctoral scholar Eric Baldwin: A verdict for democracy: how the case of Istanbul's mayor changed Türkiye.
The authors argue that İmamoğlu has been targeted because he is a non-polarizing, service-oriented centrist who wins without resorting to the identity politics that Erdoğan relies on to maintain the support of his base.
"Serving as Istanbul’s mayor has burnished that image. Municipal office often gives opposition leaders visibility, administrative experience, and a track record showing that there is another way to govern. That is why cities tend to be the front line in the fight for maintaining democracy," Bilici and Baldwin write.
They also note that this pattern extends far beyond Istanbul. In late 2024, the Turkish Interior Ministry removed elected mayors in Kurdish-majority provinces like Mardin and Batman, replacing them with state-appointed trustees.
The message to voters, the authors argue, is clear: you may vote, but the state reserves the right to correct your choice.
In Türkiye, the silencing of politicians was accompanied by internet censorship, Bilici and Baldwin add.
"When the digital public square is shuttered at the government’s whim, any hope of fair competition vanishes," they write.
According to them, using legal institutions and procedures to shape who can run, who can speak, and who can organise has become the preferred method for limiting political competition while still retaining the veneer of democracy.
Thus, the road to deeper authoritarianism is paved with selective prosecution, administrative exclusion, and pretrial detention – techniques that determine political outcomes before a single ballot is cast.
The authors express concern that Western countries often tolerate democratic backsliding in their strategically important partners for the sake of stability.
"But when incumbents can neutralise their rivals through lawfare, public institutions lose credibility, and politics hinges on the survival strategies of those in power. That is personalisation, not stability," Bilici and Baldwin emphasise.
They argue, policy commitments are less predictable because they are anchored in regime security rather than accountable bodies. A country where the rule of law has collapsed cannot be a bulwark of NATO’s eastern flank.
"A democratic country can retain its outward form even as its leaders use the courts to engineer political outcomes. While voters in such countries fight to choose their candidates without interference from the state’s legal machinery, foreign leaders must pressure these regimes to allow for elections that are both free and fair," the Turkish MP and the Stanford postdoctoral scholar conclude.