“Turkey, once celebrated as a regional “rising star” for its democratic reforms now faces profound political and economic decay. The country is now plagued by rampant inflation, a collapsing currency, rising poverty and unemployment, and deepening authoritarianism,“ writes Bülent Keneş, a senior research fellow at the European Center for Populism Studies, for the Forum 2000 Bulletin.
Bülent Keneş
Participant at the Forum 2000 Conference, senior research fellow at the European Center for Populism Studies based in Brussels
Turkey, once celebrated as a regional “rising star” for its democratic reforms and EU accession progress between 2002 and 2011, now faces profound political and economic decay. In just a decade, major strides in democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and social justice have been reversed. The country is now plagued by rampant inflation, a collapsing currency, rising poverty and unemployment, and deepening authoritarianism.
The judiciary has become a weapon to silence dissent through arbitrary detentions and politicized prosecutions—what many now describe as “lawfare”. Dissenters are routinely labeled as traitors or terrorists without evidence. Corruption is so severe that exposing it comes at great personal risk. The education system has been transformed into a vehicle for Erdoğanist-Islamist indoctrination, rewarding loyalty over merit.
This erosion of democratic norms has created a climate of fear and repression. The educated and ambitious, particularly the youth, are increasingly disillusioned. Unable to see a future under Erdoğan’s regime, tens of thousands emigrate each year.
Turkey now teeters under the weight of ultranationalist and Islamist extremism. Once full of promise, it is mired in lawlessness, nepotism, and ideological control. The key question remains: How did it all unravel—and what lies ahead?
When Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the 2002 elections, it did so on a platform widely regarded as the most democratic and liberal in Turkish history. Despite skepticism from secularists who feared a hidden Islamist agenda, the AKP quickly enacted reforms, easing doubts and gaining public and international trust. At a time when the military still exercised substantial influence over politics, these reform efforts—particularly those aligned with European Union accession goals—ushered in noticeable progress in rule of law, civil liberties, and democratization. Internationally, Turkey began to play a constructive regional role as a mediator and stabilizer.
However, Turkey’s long struggle to become a true rule-of-law state meant that even this reformist decade fell short of producing a fully liberal democracy. It was a hopeful but fleeting chapter in the country’s complicated democratic evolution. Ultimately, the critics proved prescient. By around 2011, Erdoğan and the AKP pivoted sharply. As military dominance receded and Turkey grew more pluralistic and globally integrated, Erdoğan abandoned the democratic facade. For observers like myself, it became clear that once the AKP had consolidated enough power, it began reverting to its original radical Islamist orientation, marking the beginning of a more authoritarian trajectory.
Following this pivotal shift in 2011, Erdoğan’s commitment to democratization gave way to ambitions grounded in political Islamism and neo-Ottomanist ideology. The EU accession process was sidelined, replaced by Erdoğan’s vision of becoming the strongman of Turkey and the leader of the Islamic world. Turkey, once a stabilizing force in international relations, began forging ties with radical Islamist and jihadist groups. Where such alliances weren’t readily available, the regime actively sought to cultivate them—particularly by interfering in the domestic affairs of countries like Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Iraq.
The decline of military tutelage in Turkey, coupled with the eruption of the Arab Spring, laid bare Erdoğan’s long-hidden ideological goals. His inflated self-image as a pan-Islamic leader was most clearly seen in his costly and disruptive attempts to replace secular regimes in Egypt and Syria with Islamist ones. The military overthrow of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the resilience of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—supported by Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia— for a long time, deeply unsettled him, intensifying his fears and paranoia.
These anxieties, amplified by mass anti-government protests in 2013 and a sweeping corruption scandal implicating him and his inner circle, drove Erdoğan toward full-blown authoritarianism. He crushed judicial independence, suppressed the press, and escalated his war on dissent—formally abandoning the rule of law.
To shield himself from mounting corruption and bribery accusations, Erdoğan launched a sweeping censorship and propaganda campaign ahead of the 2014 local and presidential elections. This effort paid off, as he secured the presidency. Yet the role's limited powers did not satisfy his ambitions. Determined to concentrate power beyond even that held by the Ottoman sultans, Erdoğan set out to transform Turkey into a unique form of executive presidency—essentially, a personalized authoritarian regime.
As part of this project, Erdoğan abandoned the Kurdish “peace process” and blamed the pro-Kurdish political movement, particularly Selahattin Demirtaş, a leading Kurdish politician, for the AKP’s parliamentary losses in the June 2015 election. He reignited conflict under the guise of counterterrorism and used fear-based tactics to regain control in the November reelection. Demirtaş and hundreds of Kurdish politicians were imprisoned.
Erdoğan then targeted the Gülen Movement—an influential internal rival—to eliminate obstacles to his power. The controversial July 15, 2016 coup attempt, seen by many as a staged operation, enabled him to execute a vast purge. Over 150,000 civil servants were fired, hundreds of thousands imprisoned, and over 2.2 million citizens were investigated for “terrorism.” Independent media were nearly obliterated.
Ironically, Erdoğan allied with the very nationalist and so-called “deep state forces” he once opposed, gaining support from even the Republican People’s Party (CHP). Bolstered by these alliances, he crushed Kurdish opposition and eradicated Gülenists from the public sector and society alike.
The Erdoğan regime, having eradicated the last remnants of democracy and the rule of law, deliberately weakened Turkey’s ties with Western nations and instead aligned strategically with authoritarian regimes like Russia and China, which have little regard for human rights or the rule of law. From the West’s perspective, Turkey has devolved into an unreliable and unpredictable actor, serving mainly as a “buffer zone” to contain Syrian and other refugees. As trust deteriorated, foreign direct investment came to a standstill, while rampant corruption, wastefulness, and ideologically driven irrational economic policies led to the collapse of the Turkish economy.
Since 2014, every election has been marred by systematic fraud and manipulation. In an environment where dissent is criminalized and opposition constantly persecuted, it is evident that elections can no longer be considered free or fair. Despite this anti-democratic climate—and the rerun of the Istanbul mayoral election—the Erdoğan regime suffered a major defeat in the 2019 local elections, losing major cities like Istanbul and Ankara. Riding a wave of discontent stemming from economic crisis, the CHP made a bold move to break out of political stagnation. Yet this move did not represent a clear rupture with Erdoğan’s systematic lawlessness. On the contrary, the CHP at times supported, and often legitimized, the regime’s unlawful crackdowns on Kurds and members of the Gülen movement.
The CHP failed to grasp that, in Erdoğan’s consolidation of a one-man regime built on radical Islamist goals, it would eventually become the primary target. On March 19, with the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu—Erdoğan’s most formidable rival in the upcoming 2028 presidential race—alongside several municipal officials and other CHP mayors, Erdoğan officially launched the “pivotal war” he had been ideologically and strategically preparing for throughout his entire political career.
With İmamoğlu’s arrest, three major presidential contenders—Selahattin Demirtaş, Ümit Özdağ, and Ekrem İmamoğlu—were all removed from the race by being imprisoned.
This war is expected to be multilayered and prolonged, as signaled by Erdoğan’s attempts to forge new alliances. His ambiguous proposal of a renewed “peace process” concerning the Kurdish issue indicates that this is not just a tactical move but part of a broader, long-term effort to consolidate his Islamofascist regime.
İmamoğlu’s arrest on implausible and unlawful charges—and the subsequent revocation of his university degree of over 30 years to disqualify him from running for president—marks the opening shot in Erdoğan’s final and greatest war to fully solidify his regime.
The outcome of this pivotal and final battle between Turkey’s enduring adversaries—Islamists and secularists/Kemalists—will shape the nation’s course for the next century. The significance of today’s unfolding events, therefore, reaches well beyond short-term political developments; it holds profound implications for Turkey’s historical trajectory.
