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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is director of the Turkey programme at the Middle East Institute and author of ‘Erdoğan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria’
Just days before Turkey’s main opposition party held Sunday’s presidential primary, Ekrem İmamoğlu, Istanbul’s mayor and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s leading political rival, was arrested pending trial on corruption charges and removed from office. İmamoğlu’s arrest has sparked Turkey’s biggest protests in over a decade, but there is far more at stake than the fate of one opposition mayor.
For the university students at the forefront, the government has crossed the line separating Turkey’s competitive authoritarian system from a Russian-style autocracy. And they are furious, not just at Erdoğan, but also at Europe’s leaders. “Where is the EU, always preaching democracy and human rights, while our future is being stolen, and we’re being beaten for defending it?” a student protesting in Istanbul asked me.
Protesters are taking big risks to defend Turkey’s democratic future. The police are cracking down with increasing violence while the government ramps up online censorship. The authorities have closed roads and imposed a four-day ban on demonstrations. Despite this, close to 15mn people cast their votes for İmamoğlu — surpassing the party’s total votes in the 2023 elections. It was a clear sign that people reject Erdoğan’s power grab.
But the road ahead is bumpy. The next elections aren’t for three years and maintaining the momentum will be difficult, especially if the police uses greater force. Erdoğan can employ some of the same tactics he did during the last mass protests to delegitimise them and consolidate his rule. At the height of the 2013 protests, a woman wearing a headscarf alleged that she and her baby had been attacked by half-naked protesters in central Istanbul. A few months later, a private TV network released security footage proving no such incident had taken place, but by that time Erdoğan had masterfully created a sense of victimhood among his base. He can do the same again now, framing the protests as a plot to overthrow his government and asking his supporters to help resist it.
But it is a risky bet for Erdoğan too. Unlike in 2013, Turkey’s economy is in a fragile state. The finance minister has spent the past two years trying to persuade foreign investors to look past previous instability, but İmamoğlu’s arrest erased much of that work. The Turkish lira, stocks, and bonds have all suffered heavy declines. If calm is not restored soon, economic problems are likely to grow.
Turkey’s youth are right to be angry at western leaders. The country’s transformation into an autocracy is not happening in a vacuum. Erdoğan is capitalising on an unusually permissive international climate. With Donald Trump back in the White House, he faces no fear of a US pushback — Trump is too busy undermining American democracy to hold foreign autocrats accountable. Indeed he lavished praise on Erdoğan in a recent call. Meanwhile, Trump’s coziness with Russian President Vladimir Putin has unsettled European leaders, forcing them to court Turkey for support. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was invited to the UK-led Ukraine summit, and European leaders are excited at the prospect of Turkey deploying troops in Ukraine — so excited that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he backs Turkey’s EU bid.
As Erdoğan takes another step towards consolidating his autocracy, European leaders seem ready to overlook it if it helps bolster their defences against Russia. It would not be the first time the EU has ignored Erdoğan’s attacks on democracy. In 2015, as Brussels scrambled to keep Ankara on board with a plan to stem migration, the EU delayed the publication of a highly critical report on Turkey’s free speech record until after Erdoğan’s re-election. In the years since, Erdoğan has strengthened his autocratic rule and extracted valuable concessions from Europe while its leaders looked the other way.
This is another inflection point in Turkish politics and Europe must not repeat its mistakes. Under Trump there is no longer any pretence that the US stands for democratic ideals. Europe must fill the void. Bolstering defences against Russia is not enough to protect the free world against autocracy. European leaders must defend democratic values, raise their voices against Erdoğan’s brazen attempt to turn his country into Russia, and show the people of Turkey that they are not alone in their fight.
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