Turkey’s autocratic slide

As many LGM readers are likely aware, the situation in Turkey is taking a turn. Erdogan has seemingly engineered the arrest of his leading rival for the presidency. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, on assorted corruption charges.

Turkey arrested the top political rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on accusations of corruption and terrorism on Wednesday, days before he was set to be named the opposition’s candidate in the next presidential election.

The opposition blasted the arrest of the rival, Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu of Istanbul, as politically motivated and said that the government was trying to remove a potential political threat to Mr. Erdogan.

Mr. Imamoglu, 54, accused Mr. Erdogan, his associates and state prosecutors of orchestrating his arrest.

“This immoral and tyrannical approach will undoubtedly be overturned by the will and resilience of our people,” he said in a voice message sent when the police were at his home to arrest him and shared by his aides.

In a video shared on social media, also before his arrest, Mr. Imamoglu spoke from inside his closet as he knotted his tie and said that the government was “usurping the will of the people.”

“We are facing great tyranny,” he said. “But I want you to know that I will not be discouraged.”

Critics have long accused Mr. Erdogan, who became prime minister in 2003 and president in 2014, of using state institutions, including the courts and the security services, to undermine his political rivals. Mr. Erdogan’s defenders cite his history of electoral victories as proof of his popularity.

Mr. Imamoglu had on three occasions since 2019 beaten candidates chosen by Mr. Erdogan to run Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city and economic powerhouse. And Turkey’s main opposition party was expected to formally nominate him as its presidential candidate during a primary on Sunday.

The head of the main opposition party, Ozgur Ozel, called on party members to go ahead with the scheduled primary vote.

“We are faced with a coup attempt against our next president,” Mr. Ozel wrote on social media.

In Brussels, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called the arrest “deeply concerning.”

Erdogan is taking a “belt and suspenders” approach here, also attempting to exploit an oddity of Turkish constitutionalism, a provision that a university degree is a requirement for presidential candidates. (I wasn’t aware of this provision and did a little bit of digging to see if I could find out if it exists elsewhere. There appears to be a similar provision Azerbaijan. I also found some accounts of a Nigerian legislative debate about adding such a provision, but nothing about how it turned out.)

In another move that Mr. Imamoglu’s supporters say seeks to exclude him from the presidential race, his alma mater, Istanbul University, announced on Tuesday that it had annulled his diploma, citing improper procedures in his transfer in 1990 from a university in Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus.

The Turkish Constitution stipulates that the president must be a university graduate.

Mr. Imamoglu has argued that there was nothing improper about his transfer and that a previous government inquiry into the matter had found nothing amiss.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7vzp3e62d4oThis has led to some substantial protests in recent days, in Istanbul and elsewhere. Ever eager to demonstrate his alliance to the autocrats of the world, Elon Musk and co. have apparently been deleting accounts of opposition leaders and those covering the protests. Imamoglu doesn’t appear to be backing down, insisting he’ll never bow to Erdogan and petitioning to have his trial, should it come to that, televised live.

The next election isn’t scheduled until 2028, but there is an expectation that parliament will call for an early election, which would allow Erdogan to run again without violating the Turkey’s presidential term limits.

I have nothing particularly interesting or insightful to say about this grim situation, but I thought we could use a thread to discuss the situation here. I don’t know with certainty the charges are entirely meritless, although it seems to be pretty clear that even if there’s some fire behind the smoke, any corruption he’s involved in is within the norm for Turkish politics and almost certainly pales in comparison to Erdogan and his AK Party cronies.