The Strongman Illusion
The Strongman Illusion
Turkey’s slide into authoritarianism was facilitated by collaborators, enablers, and an inept opposition.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has long been regarded as a model “strongman.” A cofounder of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Erdoğan has served as mayor of Istanbul (1994–1998), prime minister (2003–2014), president in a parliamentary system (2014–2017), and president in an authoritarian regime (2018–present). During his time in power, he has been criticized for dismantling fragile checks and balances, enabling corruption, and suppressing dissent. In a world where authoritarian political figures and movements appear to draw inspiration from one another, Turkey’s trajectory offers significant insights.
When Turkey captured international headlines earlier this year, it was in connection with this broader context: Erdoğan was accused of attempting to eliminate his strongest political rival, current mayor of Istanbul Ekrem İmamoğlu of the Republican People’s Party (CHP). It was not the first time the law had been instrumentalized to obliterate opponents. But if this move succeeds, the current authoritarian regime risks turning into an autocracy where elections lose all significance.
The Turkish case illustrates how myriad actors contribute to the dynamics that enable a strongman. Authoritarian governments form gradually. Each infraction chips away at existing democratic regulations and institutions, imperfect as they may have been, paving the way for the next violation. This is a process to which not just the strongman contributes but also his enablers or allies, and even at times the opposition.
Among Erdoğan’s fiercest critics, for instance, are those who were once complicit in eroding Turkey’s institutions and legal norms, including some of the staunch loyalists of Erdoğan’s former ally Fethullah Gülen, a Muslim cleric who lived and died in self-imposed exile in the United States (and whose own organizational principles have been likened to Opus Dei’s). Today, these Gülenists denounce Erdoğan as if he were solely responsible for authoritarianism in Turkey. This conveniently obscures the substantial role that the secretive elites within their own organization played in constructing the current authoritarian system.
The main opposition to Erdoğan, represented by the CHP, has in its own way failed to protect democratic norms. Often forming positions reactively without a concerted effort to mobilize the public, the CHP has relied primarily on the court to challenge the AKP. Until recently the party has been either unwilling or unable to offer a meaningful political alternative, but the tides may be changing. The party’s new leadership has experimented with dynamic campaigns rooted in public mobilization, which demonstrate how, even with limited space to maneuver, it may be possible to build an effective resistance.
To understand how we got here and how we might move forward, it is necessary to look back at Turkey’s recent history, when collaborators and enablers helped to lay the foundations of the authoritarian regime. It is also important to consider the role an inept opposition plays in this process.
The Making of the Turkish Authoritarian Regime
When the AKP won its first national electoral victory in 2002, the result was partly seen as a democratic victory over military influence. Following a coup in 1980, the military reorganized core institutions in Turkey, centralized control over others, and introduced a new constitution. After the transition to civilian governance in 1984, it continued to wield power over Turkish politics in multiple ways for over two decades. It also deployed numerous states of emergency during the dirty war targeting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an armed organization seeking Kurdish independence, especially between 1991 and 1996, a period marked by village burnings, disappearances, torture, and kidnappings. The term “deep state” was coined in Turkey during this time to describe a secretive network of politicians, organized criminals, and security forces. It appeared to have flourished particularly during the post-1980 states of emergency, and its existence contributed to the political unpopularity of the military. In the 2007 national elections, the military warned against the AKP’s candidate for the presidency, arguably boosting the party’s support even more.
Initially, the AKP built its popularity on promises of democratization. While the AKP’s first term did include democratic reforms, in the second term there was a shift in which the AKP−Gülen alliance laid the foundations of the current authoritarian regime, especially following a 2010 constitutional referendum that reformed citizenship rights and restructured the judicial system. The government claimed such changes were needed to “abolish the deep state,” but the deep state was not dismantled; it merely changed hands. Once the judiciary was under the control of AKP-appointed Gülenist cadres—who already held key positions in law enforcement—it became easier to employ methods beyond democratic oversight. These included anti-terror laws and increased surveillance, which led to unlawful wiretapping and bugging. What enabled these changes to gain public consent—they received support from 58 percent of voters—was the government’s ability to set the political agenda around the presence of existential threats to Turkey.
After the 2010 referendum, the AKP gained control over judicial appointments and replaced personnel in law enforcement, the judiciary, and various segments of the bureaucracy with Gülen’s loyalists. During that time, mass trials proliferated under the pretense of dismantling the deep state. The term became a rhetorical mantle used to discredit critical voices—and eventually to criminalize them.
Gülenists imprisoned military officers, journalists, lawyers, prosecutors, and members of law enforcement, often with dubious evidence. The prosecution claimed that unrelated people from different sides of the ideological spectrum were part of the same terrorist organization. Another wave of trials targeted Kurdish politicians. Indictments were based on doctored or fake evidence. Gülenist media appeared to control the messaging about the trials: there were polished narratives for more liberal domestic and international audiences, and conspiratorial rhetoric for grassroots followers.
In this climate, the AKP won the 2011 general elections. Facing term limits, Erdoğan was expected to step down in 2015. As mass trials dominated the media, a surveillance regime controlled predominantly by Gülen loyalists also emerged, paving the way for the use of private information as sources of leverage or for campaigns of intimidation. (Even the offices of Erdoğan and Hakan Fidan, his close ally and then head of the National Intelligence Organization, were routinely checked for bugs.) This is when Gülenist factions—now dominant in law enforcement and the judiciary—turned against Erdoğan. In February 2012, Gülenist prosecutors summoned Fidan over leaked AKP−PKK talks from the Oslo Process, undoubtedly to criminalize Erdoğan, who authorized them. He, in turn, blocked the testimony, rightfully viewing it as a political attack. Regardless, the refusal to comply undermined legal norms.
In 2013, Gülenist prosecutors continued their attempts to bring down Erdoğan and launched corruption probes targeting the prime minister, cabinet members, and their families. Regardless of the veracity of the allegations, the probe appeared to be part of a power struggle, rather than a genuine effort to uphold the rule of law. In response, the AKP replaced the interior minister and high-ranking police officers. When prosecutors told law enforcement to bring in the summoned individuals, the new police commissioner who had been appointed by the AKP reportedly resisted the order; police and prosecutor relations regulated by law were shattered. Gülenist cadres were subsequently removed from key positions and the AKP accelerated a crackdown. Many Gülen loyalists were incarcerated, including ordinary followers uninvolved in criminal activity. Former allies had once again weaponized the law to eliminate perceived opponents, but this time against one another.
During his final term as prime minister, Erdoğan likely understood that staying in power was his only protection against prosecution. In 2014, he assumed the previously symbolic role of the presidency. By the 2015 general elections, the HDP, a pro-Kurdish party, surpassed the 10 percent threshold for the first time, and its candidates entered parliament as a party rather than as independents. The AKP lost its parliamentary majority.
It is the president’s duty to authorize parties to form a coalition government, but Erdoğan withheld the mandate from the CHP, the largest opposition party. Instead, he called snap elections and the AKP unilaterally ended peace talks with the PKK. A brutal counterinsurgency followed, resulting in civilian deaths, lengthy curfews, and blocked medical assistance. In this warlike context, the AKP regained its parliamentary majority.
Months later, Gülen and his loyalists spearheaded a failed coup attempt, collaborating with other factions in the army. Gülenists denied involvement and accused Erdoğan of staging the coup, even as evidence mounted to the contrary. A state of emergency was declared and extended for two years, granting Erdoğan sweeping powers. A 2017 referendum—held under emergency conditions, with media control and a crackdown on Gülenists and critics of the AKP’s shifting Kurdish policies—provided the public mandate for the transition from a parliamentary to a presidential system. Concerns were raised over referendum vote validity, especially after the Supreme Electoral Council accepted unsealed ballots. Opposition actors fearing violence or backlash failed to challenge the government’s consolidation of power.
The tactics deployed during this period—particularly those introduced and weaponized by Gülenists—inflicted lasting damage on an already flawed system. Breaching professional protocols, instrumentalizing law against perceived opponents, undermining evidentiary standards, and surveilling private lives to libel and dox all became standard practice. Altogether, these tactics provided the structural foundations of the current authoritarian regime.
The Criminalization of the Opposition
In March, while Donald Trump was issuing a flurry of executive orders, Turkey made international news when the government arrested the mayor of Istanbul. Ekrem İmamoğlu was detained alongside more than 100 allies, including several other CHP mayors. The charges lodged against them included support for terrorism, extortion, illegal private data collection, and corruption.
İmamoğlu had previously defeated the AKP three times in local elections. When the government annulled the 2019 Istanbul election because of alleged fraud, the rerun resulted in a decisive victory for İmamoğlu, who increased his vote share. He won again in 2024. Each result was a direct blow to Erdoğan, who personally campaigned for the AKP’s candidates. Erdoğan has often repeated that whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey—as the city is the country’s financial heart and a crucial hub for distributing rewards and political patronage. İmamoğlu is now considered Erdoğan’s most prominent rival for the 2028 presidential race.
The day before İmamoğlu’s arrest, Istanbul University revoked his bachelor’s degree, citing irregularities in his transfer from a private university in 1990. The Turkish Constitution requires presidential candidates to hold a university degree, and this move just four days before the CHP’s presidential primary jeopardized his eligibility to run in the next election. İmamoğlu won the primary anyway and has since challenged the revocation of his diploma in court. However, in a sweeping judicial reshuffle in June, the panel of judges overseeing his case, which had requested documentation of the cited irregularities from Istanbul University, was dissolved and replaced with a new bench.
The timing of the detentions and annulment have widely been interpreted as a politically motivated effort to eliminate a strong opponent. The techniques Gülen loyalists had pioneered were now deployed against İmamoğlu and others, including an aggressive media campaign to incriminate them in the eyes of the public before they stood trial. While this was not the first time an opponent had been jailed, it was the first time the main opposition party, which to many represents the establishment, had been targeted in this way. The same tactic rehearsed on pro-Kurdish political parties was now being used against the CHP in what appeared to be an attempt to transform Turkey into an autocracy.
The attacks have been waged by loyalist cadres. Istanbul chief prosecutor Akın Gürlek, who opened criminal investigations into İmamoğlu, has served as a judge in several high-profile cases in which members of the opposition and dissidents were convicted. Gürlek was also the head of the panel of judges that infamously refused to enforce the Constitutional Court’s ruling in a civil rights case, an action that led to his promotion to a senior judicial rank and then deputy minister of justice in the AKP government. Similarly, the rector of Istanbul University, Osman Bülent Zülfikar, served in Erdoğan’s municipal office in the 1990s. Since the failed coup in 2016, Erdoğan has had the power to directly appoint university rectors. While this authority has recently been ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court, a recent renewal of the president’s authority to directly appoint rectors undermined the court’s ruling, allowing him to continue to make controversial partisan assignments.
In recent months, İmamoğlu’s ability to defend himself has deteriorated. In June, İmamoğlu’s lawyer was detained as part of a criminal investigation. The pretrial detention, as Human Rights Watch reported, was based on two incriminating witness statements from suspects cooperating under the “effective repentance” law. (Effective repentance is analogous to a plea bargain in the United States, with the difference that the suspect must express genuine remorse.) With no other corroborating evidence released, the arrest amounts to an assault on the right to legal counsel.
This authoritarian maneuvering against İmamoğlu thrust Turkey into the headlines, but it was the sustained pushback that kept it there. Despite a four-day protest ban issued on the day of İmamoğlu’s arrest, hundreds of thousands flooded the streets for weeks. Perhaps to avoid the impression that İmamoğlu was being singled out, twenty-seven other individuals had their degrees revoked the same day; the unintended result was an explosive reaction from university students across Turkey’s big cities. The protesters were not all CHP supporters, but they were all outraged over the implications of the latest events.
The protesters responded to these dynamics as yet another assault on democracy. Once allowed, the weaponization of existing regulations becomes a permanent fixture in the state’s arsenal. If a degree could be taken away from a high-profile politician with little resistance, the use of this tactic against others would be imminent—not an unfounded concern for students and alumni given the partisan appointments of university leaders. The massive protests aimed to prevent this consolidation from occurring. They were joined in this fight by a newly energetic opposition driven in part by Özgür Özel, the CHP’s chair since 2023, and his team’s efforts to coordinate with trade unions, other parties, and civil society groups. To many, this pushback beyond party lines signaled a growing social alliance in resistance to Turkey’s authoritarian drift.
Today, protests continue in the form of CHP rallies. The new CHP administration appears to appreciate the importance of broad public support and effective mobilization. Contrary to his predecessor Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who generally discouraged mass street protests, Özel invited the public to join in and stand against undemocratic efforts. (In the past, even his own MPs criticized Kılıçdaroğlu for limiting the CHP’s presence to parliament, noting that the party was absent from the streets and neighborhoods, implying a lack of grassroots mobilization.) And unlike his predecessor, Özel did not just file a lawsuit against the aggressive campaigns targeting the protesters and CHP officials; he called for a boycott of companies and media outlets operating as government mouthpieces, including those smearing İmamoğlu ahead of his trial. Gesturing to the Gülen loyalists’ systematic undermining of legal evidentiary standards to eliminate perceived opponents, Özel highlighted how similar tactics are being employed today. Asking for transparency, both İmamoğlu and Özel directly called on the TRT, the national public broadcaster widely seen as a government proxy, to air the hearings live. The government accepted, raising new questions as to whether they will be broadcast without interruption.
Drawing its power from the public for the first time in recent memory, the CHP is mounting a dynamic opposition. Unsurprisingly, the party’s new leadership is now facing a criminal investigation. Additionally, a small group of CHP members are seeking to annul the results of the party’s 2023 convention, where Özel was elected as party chair, on the grounds of fraud. These members do not accept that the convention outcome was a natural outcome of Kılıçdaroğlu’s disastrous loss to Erdoğan in the 2023 presidential election a few months prior. (Kılıçdaroğlu has lost every general election during his tenure as CHP chair from 2010 to 2023, yet he declined to resign as the party head.) Recently, Kılıçdaroğlu appeared to embrace the claims of fraud when he expressed readiness to accept a possible court ruling against the party’s current administration. Now nicknamed “Erdoğan’s Minister of the Opposition,” he also reportedly condemned the mass protests and advised people to await a verdict in İmamoğlu’s case.
As these dynamics show, not all enablers of authoritarianism are partisan supporters of the government. The opposition plays a key role in enabling or countering authoritarian moves. If the pro-establishment wing of an opposition prevails and seeks to maintain the status quo it can curb vital mobilizations necessary to counter authoritarian developments. Moreover, in the absence of a credible program to address the core issues that led to the rise of the strongman in the first place, it is only a matter of time before the opposition’s role becomes limited to determining the pace of authoritarian drift.
Opposition and Authoritarian Drift
When İmamoğlu was first elected mayor of Istanbul in 2019, mayors and other politicians from the now defunct HDP were being targeted with allegations of support for terrorism. Some were arrested, while others were directly removed from office by the interior minister, who invoked powers reserved for exceptional situations. The Supreme Electoral Council refused to issue the municipal mandate to some newly elected co-mayors, even though it had cleared them to run in elections. HDP-governed municipalities were placed under AKP receivership. When CHP mayors and their team members were arrested in March, many feared they would meet the same fate. Rumors swirled that İmamoğlu’s municipal government might be seized by the AKP. At least for now, the large protests seem to have averted this outcome.
Why was the HDP targeted? One reason is that its former co-chair, Selahattin Demirtaş—who has been in prison since 2016—had arguably gained a threatening level of popular support, such as İmamoğlu enjoys today. Another reason is that the CHP let it happen without a fight. In 2015, when the HDP won seats in parliament, Erdoğan was supposed to allow the CHP to form a coalition government. When he called for snap elections instead, Kılıçdaroğlu’s CHP did not forcefully object. In 2016, when the AKP proposed a constitutional amendment to temporarily lift parliamentary immunity to allow the prosecution of MPs with pending legal cases, particularly those in the HDP, Kılıçdaroğlu instructed his party to support it. When Demirtaş proposed challenging the amendment in the Constitutional Court, Kılıçdaroğlu refused and barred CHP deputies from backing the proposal, threatening them with expulsion. With Kılıçdaroğlu’s support, the amendment passed, clearing the path for Demirtaş and others to be sent directly to prison. The party appeared unwilling to register any opposition to the arrest of democratically elected Kurdish politicians or to the placement of their municipalities under receivership.
This isn’t the only example of how the CHP has contributed to the consolidation of authoritarian power. In 2017, when MPs voted in favor of a raft of constitutional amendments to secure AKP power, Kılıçdaroğlu initially declared that his party would challenge the amendments in the Constitutional Court and mobilize public opposition at the grassroots level. Three weeks later, however, he announced that they would not pursue the issue in court. As for the promised grassroots mobilization, it never materialized. Likewise, when serious questions about fraud were raised following the 2017 referendum that changed Turkey’s government into a presidential system, Kılıçdaroğlu refrained from public protest, reportedly fearing political violence.
Kılıçdaroğlu has also proven politically ineffective at the ballot box. In the 2023 presidential race, his strategy was built on projecting a positive image. Photos of him making hand hearts with big smiles were widely distributed, while his campaign talked about inclusiveness. He also promoted the elections as a last chance to rescue Turkish democracy; if the CHP lost, it would be all over. The conditions should have been in his favor: Turkey was facing financial ruin, and only a few months before the elections two terrible earthquakes destroyed several cities, killing more than 50,000 and exposing the government’s disastrous incompetence.
When Kılıçdaroğlu failed to win in the first round, he flipped his rhetoric 180 degrees and started delivering angry and divisive messages imbued with Turkish nationalism. He especially targeted refugees, promising to deport them if he was elected president. At that point, his campaign appeared to have little else to offer; while he was promising to restore democracy in Turkey, it was not clear how. He came across as a leader with no vision, program, or stance of his own, and the aggressive rhetoric was antithetical to the values he had previously endorsed. It should therefore not be surprising that he lost again.
Following the defeat, it was revealed that Kılıçdaroğlu had secretly signed a protocol with the far-right xenophobic party Zafer, promising them three key executive positions in the cabinet, including the interior minister, in exchange for their endorsement in the runoff, which felt like the end of his leadership. How could voters continue to support Kılıçdaroğlu once they knew he almost allowed a far-right party to gain control of law enforcement? The fact that the 2023 campaign emphasized the election as a last chance for democracy led to large-scale disillusionment. Kılıçdaroğlu was expected to resign after the defeat, but he didn’t, and that’s when he was ousted in his party election in November 2023. Now it seems like the government is trying to reverse that outcome by attacking Özel and his team.
Beyond the Strongman
Whatever Erdoğan’s personal political talents, the case of Turkey clearly shows how authoritarian moves in a government depend on broader patterns of collaboration and intimidation driven by self-interest. This does not mean strongmen should not be held accountable—they play a key role in the process. But if we are to gain a deeper understanding of authoritarian drifts, we must also consider other factors and dynamics.
Without concrete solutions to systemic problems, the opposition risks reinforcing the very conditions that enable the rise of strongmen. The CHP’s more recent campaigning with the limited democratic tools that remain, and the government’s ambition to reverse this mobilization, are testaments to the importance of the opposition. A coalition is possible beyond party lines, and the demand for democratization has survived its abuse.
If the opposition neglects the work of mobilizing its base, it is unlikely to succeed in preventing authoritarian drift. A divided opposition that has lost its direction creates the perfect conditions for the consolidation of regime power.
Aslı Iğsız is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University.
