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On July 15, 2016, tanks occupied the streets of Istanbul, fighter jets flew over Ankara, and soldiers attempted to overthrow Turkey’s elected government. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appeared on television through a mobile video call, urging ordinary citizens to resist the coup. Thousands answered his appeal, confronting armed troops in defence of a government that many of them believed represented their democratic will.
A decade later, Erdoğan remains in power, but the political circumstances have changed dramatically. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the popular opposition politician who defeated Erdoğan’s party in Istanbul, is imprisoned and facing multiple criminal proceedings. The government insists that the judiciary is acting independently, while critics see the campaign against him as evidence that Turkey’s president is increasingly unwilling to tolerate the possibility of electoral defeat.
The contradiction extends far beyond elections. Erdoğan transformed Turkey from an economically troubled country dominated by secular institutions into a more prosperous, religiously conservative and internationally assertive state. He expanded public services, challenged military interference in politics and gave millions of previously marginalised citizens a greater sense of political representation.
Yet the same leader has overseen the erosion of institutional independence, a devastating currency crisis, increasingly unequal electoral competition and deepening social polarisation. Understanding Erdoğan’s legacy requires explaining both sides of that transformation—and how a politician who rose by challenging an entrenched establishment eventually built a political system organised around his own survival.
The Istanbul Outsider Who Became Turkey’s Leader
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was born in Istanbul in 1954 and grew up in a working-class, religiously conservative family. He attended an İmam Hatip school, part of a Turkish educational network that combined conventional subjects with Islamic instruction. His upbringing placed him within a section of society that often felt excluded from the country’s secular political establishment.
That establishment had emerged from the republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923. Turkey was formally secular, but the state did more than separate religious authority from government. Its military, judiciary and bureaucracy frequently intervened to defend a particular vision of secular modernisation, sometimes restricting religious expression and excluding Islamist political movements from public life.
Erdoğan entered politics through parties associated with Necmettin Erbakan, one of the most influential figures in modern Turkish political Islam. After unsuccessful attempts to enter parliament, Erdoğan achieved his breakthrough in 1994 when he won the mayoral election in Istanbul. His victory surprised an establishment that had long regarded Islamist politicians as unsuitable custodians of a modern metropolis.
Istanbul was experiencing rapid population growth, traffic congestion, pollution, inadequate rubbish collection and periodic water shortages. Erdoğan built a reputation for administrative competence by improving municipal services, investing in infrastructure and responding to practical problems. His popularity demonstrated that a politician identified with religious conservatism could appeal beyond explicitly ideological questions by delivering visible improvements in daily life.
His career appeared to collapse after he recited a politically charged poem at a public rally in 1997. The poem used military imagery to describe mosques, minarets and religious believers, and a court convicted Erdoğan of inciting religious hatred. He lost his mayoralty, received a political ban and served several months in prison in 1999.
The conviction had the opposite political effect from what his opponents might have expected. To many conservative Turks, Erdoğan became a symbol of a system that permitted elections but refused to accept religious politicians as legitimate representatives of the people. His imprisonment transformed him from a successful local administrator into a national political figure.
In 2001, Erdoğan helped establish the Justice and Development Party, commonly known as the AKP. Unlike the explicitly Islamist organisations from which many of its founders emerged, the AKP presented itself as a conservative democratic party promising economic competence, cleaner government, stability, European integration and greater personal freedom for religious citizens.
Turkey’s established political parties were already deeply unpopular after a severe financial crisis. The AKP secured a parliamentary majority in the November 2002 election, although Erdoğan initially remained barred from parliament because of his conviction. His ally Abdullah Gül became prime minister until legal changes and a parliamentary by-election allowed Erdoğan to assume the premiership in March 2003.
Four years after leaving prison, Erdoğan controlled Turkey’s government. His ascent was not simply the victory of political Islam over secularism; it reflected a wider rejection of economic instability, ineffective coalition governments and institutions that many voters believed were unaccountable.
How Erdoğan Delivered Growth and Won a Broad Coalition
Erdoğan inherited an economy that was already undergoing fundamental reform. Following Turkey’s 2001 financial crisis, the government had adopted an International Monetary Fund-supported stabilisation programme involving banking reforms, stronger financial regulation and tighter fiscal discipline. These policies helped repair the foundations of an economy damaged by inflation, banking failures and repeated political crises.
The AKP initially maintained much of that framework while adding an important ingredient: sustained political stability. After years of fragile coalition governments, Erdoğan’s parliamentary majority enabled his administration to pursue economic policies without constantly negotiating its political survival. Investors responded favourably to the combination of financial reforms, predictable government and Turkey’s growing integration with international markets.
The results were substantial. According to the World Bank’s assessment of Turkey’s development, real GDP grew by an average of approximately 5.4% annually between 2002 and 2022, while real income per person doubled. Using the World Bank’s stated poverty measure, poverty fell from more than 20% in 2007 to 7.6% in 2021. The strongest improvements were concentrated in the earlier years, although the longer-period figures also reflect subsequent fluctuations.
Growth transformed the visible landscape of Turkey. Roads, airports, hospitals, housing developments and transport networks expanded, while construction created employment and domestic credit allowed households to purchase consumer goods and property. Businesses in Anatolia, including many owned by socially conservative entrepreneurs, gained access to larger national and international markets.
Erdoğan’s government also invested political capital in European integration. Turkey formally opened accession negotiations with the European Union in 2005, and early reforms reduced aspects of military political influence and expanded certain civil rights. For a time, Erdoğan seemed to demonstrate that a Muslim-majority society could combine religious conservatism, democratic participation and market-oriented economic development.
His coalition extended well beyond traditional Islamist voters. It brought together religious conservatives, rural communities, poorer urban households, small-business owners, entrepreneurs and reform-minded liberals. Each group had different expectations, but many believed that Erdoğan offered something the previous establishment had failed to deliver.
Religious conservatives wanted greater freedom from secular restrictions, including rules that had limited opportunities for women wearing headscarves. Liberal reformers wanted the military removed from civilian politics, businesses wanted economic stability, and poorer families wanted better services and rising living standards. These ambitions temporarily reinforced one another, allowing the AKP to build an unusually broad political alliance.
The government’s achievements were particularly powerful because people experienced them personally. A family gaining access to improved healthcare, a business owner benefiting from better transport, or a religious woman entering a university previously closed to her had tangible reasons to support Erdoğan. His political legitimacy rested on more than speeches or ideological identification; it was supported by material improvements and an expanded sense of belonging.
However, the coalition contained an unresolved disagreement about the purpose of reform. Some supporters wanted stronger independent institutions and a genuinely pluralistic democracy. Others primarily wanted political authority transferred away from the secular establishment and toward the elected conservative majority.
During the years of rapid growth, those objectives seemed compatible. As Erdoğan accumulated electoral victories, it became increasingly clear that weakening the old establishment did not necessarily mean building institutions capable of restraining the new one.
From Democratic Reforms to the 2016 Coup and One-Man Presidency
Erdoğan’s movement toward increasingly centralised government developed gradually. His early reforms had genuinely reduced the political influence of institutions that previously intervened against elected governments, but his administration also began using the police and judiciary against political opponents. The distinction between democratic accountability and partisan control grew harder to maintain.
One important factor was Erdoğan’s relationship with the movement led by Fethullah Gülen, an influential Islamic preacher who lived in the United States. Gülen’s followers had developed extensive networks in education, business, policing and the judiciary. Although Erdoğan and Gülen represented different centres of influence, they shared an interest in weakening parts of the secular establishment, particularly the military.
Their cooperation contributed to a major shift in the balance of institutional power. Investigations and prosecutions targeted military officers and other officials associated with the old political order, often amid disputes about the reliability of evidence and the independence of prosecutors. Once their common opponents had been weakened, however, the relationship between Erdoğan and the Gülen movement deteriorated.
The rupture became especially visible during corruption investigations in December 2013. Police and prosecutors investigated ministers, businessmen and individuals close to Erdoğan’s government. Erdoğan rejected the proceedings as a politically motivated operation organised by Gülenist networks within the state, while opponents argued that the administration was obstructing accountability.
That same year, protests originating in Istanbul’s Gezi Park developed into a nationwide movement. An initial environmental demonstration against the park’s redevelopment expanded into criticism of police conduct, restrictions on personal freedom and Erdoğan’s increasingly confrontational governing style. Security forces responded with tear gas, arrests and force that human rights organisations widely criticised.
The protests exposed the limits of Erdoğan’s willingness to accommodate political dissent. He increasingly described opposition not as a normal feature of democratic government but as the work of hostile interests, including foreign powers, secular elites and domestic conspirators. His political language divided the country between an authentic national majority and forces supposedly attempting to undermine it.
The attempted military coup of July 15, 2016, became the decisive turning point. A faction of the armed forces occupied strategic locations, blocked bridges, deployed tanks and fighter jets, and attacked government institutions, including parliament. Erdoğan appeared on television through a mobile video call and called on citizens to resist, while police and military units loyal to the government confronted the plotters.
Thousands of civilians entered the streets, and more than 250 people were killed during the failed takeover. Turkey’s major opposition parties condemned the attempted coup because it represented an attack on an elected government, regardless of their political disagreements with Erdoğan.
Erdoğan accused the Gülen movement of organising the plot. Gülen denied responsibility, although involvement by people associated with his movement became a central part of the subsequent investigations and political debate. The government had legitimate reasons to investigate a violent attempt to overthrow the constitutional order, but the scale and methods of its response raised additional questions.
Following the coup, the government declared a state of emergency and launched sweeping purges across the military, police, judiciary, universities, schools, civil service and media. Many people were removed or detained on allegations of links to Gülenist organisations. Critics argued that the campaign reached far beyond those credibly implicated in the coup and became a means of silencing broader opposition.
The resulting concentration of power culminated in a constitutional referendum in 2017. Voters narrowly approved changes replacing Turkey’s parliamentary government with an executive presidency. The office of prime minister was abolished, and presidential authority over appointments, administration and important aspects of the state increased considerably when the new system took full effect in 2018.
The Venice Commission’s assessment of the constitutional amendments warned that the changes concentrated executive authority without adequate institutional checks and balances. Under the new arrangement, Erdoğan was no longer simply the dominant politician heading a parliamentary administration. The presidency itself had become the centre of executive government.
Turkey did not cease to hold competitive elections. Opposition parties continued to win major municipalities, and Erdoğan was forced into a second round in the 2023 presidential election. However, formal electoral competition increasingly operated alongside advantages enjoyed by the incumbent government through control of public resources, media influence and restrictions on political freedoms.
The OSCE’s assessment of Turkey’s 2023 elections recognised the presence of genuine political alternatives while finding that the government benefited from an unjustified advantage, particularly through biased media coverage and restrictions on fundamental freedoms. That distinction is essential: elections continued to matter, but the environment in which parties competed was not equally fair.
International institutional assessments reinforce these concerns. In the 2025 World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, Turkey ranked 118th of 143 countries, including especially weak performance on constraints on government power and fundamental rights. International IDEA has similarly identified serious weaknesses in rights, rule of law and political participation while recognising that political representation has not disappeared.
The media environment illustrates the same process. Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey 163rd of 180 countries in 2026, citing restrictions on critical journalism, the influence of authorities over major media organisations and pressure on independent reporters.
Erdoğan’s original democratic argument was that elected governments should not be subordinate to unelected military officers, judges or bureaucrats. Over time, however, the reduction of those institutions’ political authority was accompanied by a weakening of independent safeguards against executive power. Turkey had escaped the political dominance of its old guardians without consistently replacing them with institutions capable of checking the new presidency.
How Erdoğan’s Economic Model Broke the Lira
Economic growth was central to Erdoğan’s political legitimacy. His supporters had associated AKP rule with improving public services, rising incomes, easier access to credit and visible national development. When that economic bargain began to fail, Erdoğan’s personal intervention in monetary policy became one of the most damaging features of his government.
Turkey has historically saved less domestically than it invests, making foreign financing an important part of its economic model. It also imports substantial quantities of energy, machinery, industrial inputs and other goods. Gold adds another complication because Turkish households often purchase it as protection against inflation and currency instability, increasing demand for an imported store of value.
A current-account deficit reflects an economy’s net transactions with the rest of the world, including trade in goods and services as well as income flows. It generally corresponds to investment exceeding domestic saving and must be financed by capital inflows or other adjustments. In Turkey’s case, dependence on imported energy and periods of heavy credit-driven spending have made the economy particularly sensitive to external financing conditions.
During the expansionary years, Turkish banks and businesses borrowed extensively in dollars and euros. Banks could obtain foreign financing, exchange it into lira and extend credit to domestic customers, while companies used foreign borrowing to fund investment and operations. Cheap and abundant financing supported construction, infrastructure, consumption and property development.
The arrangement delivered rapid economic activity but created dangerous exposure to exchange-rate movements. Businesses and financial institutions often earned substantial revenues in Turkish lira while carrying obligations denominated in foreign currencies. If the lira weakened, their foreign debts became more expensive in domestic-currency terms even when the original dollar or euro amounts remained unchanged.
The economy therefore depended on maintaining investor confidence and access to international capital. Foreign lenders had to believe that Turkish borrowers could repay their debts and that the authorities could prevent financial conditions from deteriorating uncontrollably. When that confidence weakened, Turkey faced pressure on both its currency and its ability to refinance foreign obligations.
The vulnerabilities became increasingly apparent in 2018. Investors were concerned about foreign borrowing, inflation, political interference and the central bank’s ability to respond independently. Diplomatic tensions with the United States intensified the immediate crisis, but they aggravated problems that had accumulated during the preceding expansion.
As confidence deteriorated, the lira weakened sharply. A falling currency increased the domestic cost of imported fuel, machinery and other goods, pushing prices higher. Inflation then reduced confidence in the currency, encouraging households and businesses to seek dollars, euros, gold or property instead of holding lira.
This produced a self-reinforcing cycle. Currency depreciation raised import costs and foreign-debt burdens, while inflation and uncertainty encouraged additional currency conversion and capital outflows. The government and central bank attempted to stabilise the situation, including through interventions that placed pressure on foreign-exchange resources, but the fundamental vulnerabilities persisted.
Under conventional monetary policy, a central bank facing persistent inflation and currency instability can raise interest rates to restrain borrowing, reduce excess demand and support confidence in the currency. Higher rates create costs, including slower growth and more expensive loans, but they can also prevent inflation from becoming more deeply entrenched.
Erdoğan rejected that approach. He repeatedly argued that high interest rates were themselves responsible for inflation and maintained that lowering borrowing costs could help reduce prices. His opposition also reflected political and ideological considerations: expensive credit threatened the investment and consumption model supporting his popularity, while he often portrayed interest as exploitative or religiously objectionable.
This brought the president into repeated conflict with central-bank officials. Governors who attempted to tighten monetary policy faced dismissal, undermining expectations that interest-rate decisions would be governed by independent economic assessment. The removal of Governor Naci Ağbal in March 2021, shortly after a substantial rate increase, became an especially visible example of presidential interference.
When the government subsequently pushed interest rates lower despite accelerating inflation, the results contradicted Erdoğan’s predictions. The lira depreciated further, consumer prices rose rapidly and financial confidence deteriorated. Businesses struggled to set prices and plan investments, while households watched wages and savings lose purchasing power.
The consequences were especially severe for people whose incomes adjusted slowly. Rising food, transport, fuel, rent and education costs consumed an increasing share of household budgets, while borrowing became difficult to manage amid uncertainty about inflation and exchange rates. Some families tried to protect their savings by holding foreign currency, gold or real estate, reinforcing the preference for alternatives to the lira.
The crisis also exposed an institutional problem beyond any individual interest-rate decision. Investors were not simply evaluating whether a particular policy was economically sensible; they were questioning whether Turkey’s central bank could maintain a credible strategy when that strategy conflicted with the president’s political preferences.
Following his victory in the 2023 presidential election, Erdoğan allowed a return to more conventional economic management. A new economic team supported substantial increases in interest rates, tighter credit conditions and efforts to rebuild financial reserves and confidence.
The change produced measurable improvements. The IMF’s February 2026 assessment of Turkey acknowledged progress in reducing macroeconomic imbalances, improving reserves and strengthening confidence in the lira, while emphasising the need to sustain disciplined policies and address structural vulnerabilities.
Nevertheless, stabilisation remained incomplete. According to Turkey’s September 2026 consumer-price figures, annual inflation stood at 29.73%. Although significantly below earlier peaks, that figure meant prices were still increasing rapidly rather than returning to their previous levels.
At its September 10, 2026 monetary-policy meeting, the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye maintained its main policy rate at 37%. The combination of high interest rates and continued inflation illustrated the difficulty of repairing monetary stability after a prolonged period of policy mistakes.
Economic recovery also carried costs. Higher borrowing rates restrained investment and consumption, while uncertainty surrounding energy prices and external conditions complicated the outlook. The IMF’s July 2026 projections placed Turkey’s expected real GDP growth for 2026 at approximately 2.9%, indicating continued expansion but not the rapid growth that had characterised the earlier AKP era.
The deeper challenge is institutional credibility. Interest rates can be changed through a single central-bank decision, but rebuilding confidence that monetary policy will remain independent of electoral calculations takes much longer. Investors must believe that difficult economic decisions will not be reversed whenever they conflict with the president’s immediate political interests.
That is why financial markets have reacted strongly to political developments such as İmamoğlu’s imprisonment. Concerns about judicial independence, property rights, regulatory predictability and economic management are interconnected. An economy dependent on investor confidence becomes more vulnerable when too much authority rests with one political leader.
Turkey’s Fight Over Secularism and Religious Identity
When Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded the Turkish Republic in 1923, secularism became a defining principle of the new state. The government abolished religious courts, transformed the legal system and restricted the institutional role of religion. However, Turkish secularism was not simply a neutral arrangement separating faith from public authority; the state also supervised religious institutions and regulated expressions of religious identity.
The military, judiciary and bureaucracy frequently considered themselves responsible for defending that secular order. Religious political parties faced restrictions or closure, while women wearing Islamic headscarves were excluded from many universities and public-sector positions. Graduates of İmam Hatip schools also encountered disadvantages in accessing parts of higher education.
For many observant Muslims, these policies created the impression that the state regarded their religious practices as incompatible with modern citizenship. Erdoğan used that resentment to build political support, presenting himself as a defender of ordinary believers against an establishment that claimed the authority to determine which identities belonged in public life.
His government’s removal of headscarf restrictions was therefore significant beyond symbolism. Changes introduced in stages, including the lifting of restrictions in most public institutions in 2013 and subsequent reforms involving schools, the police, judiciary and military, expanded opportunities for religious women to study and work. Supporters viewed these reforms as long-overdue corrections to discriminatory policies.
Critics, however, argued that Erdoğan increasingly moved beyond protecting religious freedom toward privileging a particular conservative conception of national identity. His rhetoric frequently emphasised motherhood, the heterosexual family and traditional religious values, while he portrayed LGBTQ activism as a threat to Turkey’s moral and cultural foundations.
Alcohol policy became another area of conflict. His government restricted advertising and sales, imposed substantial taxation and introduced financial requirements that smaller producers warned could threaten their businesses. Although these measures were defended partly as public-health policies, Erdoğan’s political language often placed alcohol consumption within a wider cultural struggle over Turkish identity.
Education provides one of the clearest examples of his ambitions. Erdoğan openly expressed a desire to raise a pious generation and expanded the network of publicly funded İmam Hatip schools, which combine conventional academic subjects with religious education. These schools teach subjects such as mathematics and science alongside instruction in the Quran, Arabic and Islamic jurisprudence.
Their expansion raised questions about whether religious education was receiving preferential treatment. A Reuters investigation reported that İmam Hatip students accounted for approximately 11% of the relevant upper-school enrolment in 2018 but received around 23% of government spending allocated to that educational level.
Yet Turkey has not become a theocracy. Its constitution remains secular, civil law continues to govern the country, alcohol remains legal and millions of citizens retain secular or less observant lifestyles. Large urban populations continue to contest the government’s cultural priorities, demonstrating that Erdoğan has not created a single national consensus around his interpretation of religious identity.
Public-opinion research reinforces this distinction. A 2025 Pew Research Center report found that only 32% of surveyed Turkish Muslims favoured granting official legal status to Islamic law for Muslims, while 48% strongly opposed it. These responses concern attitudes toward religious law, not whether individuals identify as Muslim or consider themselves personally religious.
Separate findings published by Konda in 2025 indicated that the proportion of Turks describing themselves as devout had fallen from 55% in 2008 to 46% in its later comparison. The survey also reported an increase in respondents identifying as atheists or nonbelievers, suggesting that greater public visibility for religion under Erdoğan had not produced an equivalent increase in personal religiosity.
Erdoğan’s social transformation is therefore more complicated than the straightforward Islamisation of Turkey. He expanded opportunities for citizens who had been excluded because of their religious identity, but increasingly used state resources and political influence to favour his own conservative social vision.
The result has been a shift in which cultural groups enjoy the greatest political influence, rather than the resolution of Turkey’s longstanding conflict over religion and modernity.
Syria, the Kurds, NATO and the Price of Strategic Autonomy
Turkey occupies an unusually important geopolitical position. It connects Europe and Asia, controls the maritime passages linking the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, borders conflicts across the Middle East and possesses one of NATO’s largest armed forces. Its relationships with Russia, Europe and regional powers make it difficult for any major security arrangement to ignore Ankara.
Earlier Turkish governments often measured international success through closer integration with Western institutions. Erdoğan gradually adopted a different approach, seeking greater freedom to cooperate with or oppose other powers according to Turkish priorities. His objective was not necessarily to abandon NATO or align permanently with Russia, but to make Turkey sufficiently important that other governments would have to accommodate its independent choices.
This approach produced relationships that sometimes appeared contradictory. Turkey continued its NATO membership and maintained strong economic ties with Europe while purchasing Russia’s S-400 air-defence system. It supported Ukraine and supplied military technology to countries opposed by Moscow, yet preserved diplomatic and economic relations with Russia.
Turkey also expanded its domestic defence industry, including drone production, supported Azerbaijan during its conflicts with Armenia and intervened in Libya. These policies increased Ankara’s regional influence while occasionally placing it at odds with traditional Western partners.
Syria became the most consequential example of Erdoğan’s strategic ambitions. Before the Syrian uprising of 2011, Turkey had maintained relatively constructive relations with President Bashar al-Assad. As protests developed into civil war, however, Erdoğan backed opposition groups seeking Assad’s removal and supplied political, financial and military assistance to elements of the rebellion.
Turkey subsequently launched several military operations across the Syrian border. Although officially connected to national security, these interventions also aimed to prevent Syrian Kurdish armed groups from establishing an autonomous region that Ankara feared could strengthen the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
The Syrian conflict imposed substantial costs on Turkey, including terrorist attacks, military casualties, border insecurity and the arrival of millions of refugees. At its peak, Turkey hosted one of the world’s largest Syrian refugee populations, placing pressure on public services and contributing to domestic political tensions, particularly as the economy deteriorated.
The Turkish government provided refugees with access to services, education and healthcare, although living conditions and treatment varied considerably. Erdoğan also gained diplomatic leverage because European governments were anxious to limit irregular migration through Turkey.
Under the EU–Turkey Statement of March 2016, Turkey agreed to cooperate in reducing irregular crossings and facilitating certain returns from Greece. European institutions committed substantial refugee assistance and agreed to accelerate discussions about visa liberalisation and accession-related issues, subject to specified conditions.
These arrangements increased Turkey’s bargaining power but did not grant every concession immediately. In particular, visa-free travel for Turkish citizens was not automatically introduced. Nevertheless, the agreement demonstrated that European governments required cooperation from Erdoğan even as disagreements about democracy and human rights intensified.
The fall of Assad’s government in December 2024 created a new opportunity for Turkish influence. Ahmed al-Sharaa emerged as Syria’s new leader, and Ankara developed closer relations with his administration through discussions about defence cooperation, military training, reconstruction and security along the Turkish-Syrian border.
Turkey did not acquire control over Syria, and the country’s political future remained uncertain. However, its long-standing support for anti-Assad forces and its military presence gave Ankara considerable influence in the post-Assad political environment.
The Kurdish conflict also remained central to Erdoğan’s domestic and international strategy. The PKK launched its armed insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, beginning a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people and shaped Turkish security policy, political identity and relations with Kurdish communities.
Erdoğan’s approach evolved over time. His early governments expanded some Kurdish cultural rights and later entered peace negotiations intended to reduce violence and find a political settlement. When that process collapsed in 2015, fighting intensified, and the government adopted a more confrontational approach toward Kurdish armed groups and political movements.
A potentially historic opening emerged in 2025 when imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan called for disarmament and dissolution. The organisation subsequently announced an end to its armed struggle, and a symbolic disarmament ceremony marked progress toward implementing that decision.
The process advanced further in August 2026 when Turkey’s parliament passed legislation establishing a framework for PKK disarmament and reintegration. Supported by the governing AKP, its nationalist MHP allies and the pro-Kurdish DEM Party, the legislation created legal protections for certain former militants and mechanisms for reintegration.
The agreement represented meaningful progress toward ending a prolonged armed conflict, but it did not automatically resolve the political questions surrounding Kurdish rights, democratic representation or the future of Kurdish-led organisations in Syria. Those issues remain central to whether the process produces a lasting settlement.
Erdoğan’s increased international influence was particularly visible during the July 2026 NATO summit in Ankara. As host, Turkey was able to demonstrate its importance to European security and press its interests in defence cooperation, industrial restrictions and regional policy.
Western governments have often disagreed with Erdoğan’s policies, yet Turkey’s geography, military capabilities and regional connections make complete diplomatic isolation impractical. Ankara has become more capable of negotiating with larger powers on its own terms, although the approach also carries economic, security and diplomatic costs.
That is one of Erdoğan’s most substantial achievements. He has made Turkey a more assertive international actor without securing an uncomplicated relationship with any single bloc. The same independence that allows Ankara to exercise leverage can also produce friction with allies and expose the country to competing regional pressures.
Why Erdoğan Has Remained Politically Resilient
Erdoğan’s remarkable political durability cannot be explained by institutional control alone. Government influence over the media, state resources and legal system provides electoral advantages, but tens of millions of Turks have continued supporting him because they associate his rule with genuine improvements in their lives and political status.
For religious conservatives, Erdoğan represents the defeat of a secular establishment that once restricted their participation in public life. For many working-class and rural voters, he is associated with expanded infrastructure, social services and economic opportunity. Nationalist supporters also regard him as a leader who has made Turkey more independent and more willing to assert its interests internationally.
These attachments are reinforced by a populist political narrative. Erdoğan frequently presents political conflict as a struggle between ordinary Turkish citizens and an assortment of elites, foreign interests and domestic opponents who supposedly refuse to accept the people’s choices. Criticism of his government can therefore be interpreted by supporters as criticism of the social groups whose status improved under his leadership.
His own imprisonment provides the original example of this narrative. Rather than ending his political career, the conviction became evidence that the establishment feared the constituency he represented. Later conflicts with European governments, courts, journalists and opposition organisations could be incorporated into a similar argument about hostile forces attempting to weaken Turkey.
Erdoğan has also shown considerable tactical flexibility. When his conservative electoral base proved insufficient, he moved closer to Turkish nationalism and strengthened cooperation with the Nationalist Movement Party. When inflation and currency instability threatened his government, he eventually permitted a return to conventional monetary policy despite years of resistance to higher interest rates.
Political survival has often mattered more to him than maintaining a completely consistent policy position. This adaptability helps explain why repeated crises have damaged his popularity without necessarily ending his rule.
The opposition has faced its own structural difficulties. Defeating Erdoğan requires cooperation among secularists, liberals, nationalists, conservatives and Kurdish voters, groups that often disagree sharply on religion, identity, national security and the future of the state. Building a coalition united by opposition to Erdoğan is easier than maintaining one around a coherent governing programme.
Even during the severe economic difficulties surrounding the 2023 presidential election, Erdoğan defeated Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in the second round with approximately 52% of the vote. The result demonstrated that his support remained substantial, although the need for a runoff also revealed greater electoral vulnerability.
Turkey’s devastating February 2023 earthquakes created another major test of his leadership. The disaster killed tens of thousands of people and raised serious questions about building standards, emergency preparedness and government accountability. Yet Erdoğan survived the resulting criticism and secured another presidential term, demonstrating the strength of his electoral coalition even amid national tragedy.
The opposition’s municipal victories have nevertheless shown that government dominance is not absolute. Its success in Istanbul, Ankara and other major cities proves that Turkish voters can still use elections to challenge the governing party, even within an unequal political environment.
Turkey’s system bears certain similarities to the illiberal democratic model associated with Viktor Orbán, in which elections coexist with institutional arrangements and media environments that favour incumbents. The countries differ considerably in their political histories, economic relationships and social divisions, but both illustrate how elected governments can weaken constraints on their own authority while continuing to claim democratic legitimacy.
The crucial question is whether Erdoğan’s political system can accommodate a credible challenger who appeals to voters outside the traditional opposition. İmamoğlu’s rise suggests that such a candidate can emerge, but his legal and political circumstances reveal how difficult that challenge has become.
İmamoğlu, a Fractured Opposition and the Battle Over 2028
Ekrem İmamoğlu became a national political figure by defeating Erdoğan’s party in the city where Erdoğan’s own career had taken off. In March 2019, İmamoğlu narrowly won the Istanbul mayoral election, ending approximately 25 years of control by the AKP and its political predecessors.
The governing party disputed the result, and Turkey’s electoral authorities annulled the election and ordered a rerun. Instead of undermining İmamoğlu, the decision helped him present his campaign as a defence of the voters’ right to choose their representatives.
When Istanbul voted again in June 2019, his winning margin expanded from roughly 14,000 votes to more than 800,000. The disputed election transformed a local political victory into a national symbol of opposition to Erdoğan’s government.
İmamoğlu consolidated his position in the 2024 municipal elections, winning re-election in Istanbul by approximately ten percentage points. The Republican People’s Party, or CHP, also emerged as the leading party nationally in the local vote, delivering Erdoğan’s governing movement one of its most serious electoral defeats.
These victories were significant because İmamoğlu appealed beyond the traditional secular opposition. His political style emphasised inclusive language, practical municipal government and the possibility of appealing to religious, nationalist and working-class citizens without requiring them to reject their identities.
That made him a potentially formidable presidential challenger. Erdoğan’s electoral strength had long depended on convincing conservative voters that the opposition represented a hostile cultural establishment. İmamoğlu’s victories suggested that some of those voters might support an alternative when they believed their identities and interests would remain respected.
However, İmamoğlu faced mounting legal difficulties. In 2022, he was convicted of insulting election officials, creating the possibility of a political ban if the conviction survived the appeals process. Further investigations and allegations added uncertainty about his political future.
In March 2025, Istanbul University annulled his diploma over alleged irregularities in his university transfer decades earlier. Since a university degree is constitutionally required for a presidential candidate, the decision threatened his ability to run for the country’s highest office. İmamoğlu rejected the decision as unlawful and politically motivated.
The following day, police detained him along with dozens of other people. Prosecutors subsequently pursued a major corruption investigation involving hundreds of defendants and accusations including bribery, fraud, money laundering and tender-related offences. İmamoğlu denied wrongdoing, while the government insisted that the criminal proceedings were independent of political considerations.
He also faced separate legal cases relating to statements about public officials and accusations of political espionage. The accumulation of proceedings created multiple potential obstacles to his political ambitions, quite apart from the immediate consequences of imprisonment.
His detention triggered some of Turkey’s largest anti-government demonstrations in more than a decade. Protesters gathered in Istanbul and other cities, while police used tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets. Authorities detained nearly 1,900 people during the initial wave of unrest.
The government rejected allegations that the proceedings represented a political campaign against an electoral rival. Erdoğan and his ministers maintained that public office could not provide immunity from investigation and warned against treating judicial proceedings as evidence of a political conspiracy.
The distinction is important. Opposition politicians and municipal authorities are not automatically innocent of corruption, and elected officials must remain subject to the law. The democratic concern arises when investigations occur within a system where judicial independence is widely questioned and legal pressure falls disproportionately on political opponents.
The crackdown extended beyond İmamoğlu. Other opposition mayors, party officials and municipal employees were detained or investigated, increasing fears that the government was using the legal system to weaken opposition-controlled local administrations.
During 2026, the crisis spread to the CHP’s national leadership. A court annulled the party congress that had elected Özgür Özel as chairman and reinstated his predecessor, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Supporters of Özel condemned the ruling as political interference intended to undermine the opposition following its municipal victories.
The dispute eventually produced a major split. In July 2026, Özel and 90 other legislators left the CHP and established the New Party, also known as Yeni Parti. With 91 parliamentary seats at its formation, the new organisation became the largest opposition group in the legislature, while the remaining CHP was significantly reduced.
This development fundamentally changed the opposition’s political position. The CHP’s 2024 victories had demonstrated the possibility of an alternative national coalition, but the leadership dispute divided the organisation that had provided its principal electoral structure.
The emergence of the New Party did not necessarily end opposition cooperation, but it introduced difficult questions about political leadership, municipal allegiances, candidate selection and the relationship between İmamoğlu and the newly established movement. The opposition now faced the challenge of rebuilding coordination while responding to legal proceedings against many of its prominent figures.
Pressure on critical media also intensified. On October 14, 2026, Turkish authorities raided and took control of Halk TV, a major opposition-aligned broadcaster that had reported extensively on İmamoğlu and the government’s actions against opposition politicians.
Prosecutors cited allegations involving bribery, tender manipulation and money laundering, while authorities appointed a trustee and suspended broadcasts. The broadcaster’s supporters and press-freedom organisations denounced the action as another attack on independent journalism, whereas the authorities presented it as part of a criminal investigation.
The incident illustrated a broader concern about the information environment in which the next election will take place. An opposition movement must not only organise candidates and campaigns but also communicate with voters through a media landscape heavily influenced by the government.
The political struggle is particularly consequential because Erdoğan’s current presidential term is scheduled to end in 2028. Under the constitutional framework established after the 2017 referendum, he was elected to the executive presidency in 2018 and re-elected in 2023. The two-term limit creates an obstacle to another candidacy under the ordinary electoral timetable.
Nevertheless, proposals emerged in October 2026 to bring forward the 2028 elections. Presidential adviser Mehmet Uçum suggested that voting might take place in March or April rather than May, potentially allowing Erdoğan to seek another term if parliament formally called an early election.
The constitutional mechanism would require approval from at least 360 members of Turkey’s 600-seat parliament. Erdoğan’s governing alliance did not independently possess that threshold, making support from other political groups necessary. The proposal therefore raised legal and political questions rather than establishing that Erdoğan would certainly run again.
His nationalist ally Devlet Bahçeli supported the possibility of another candidacy, while opposition figures criticised the idea that the election timetable should be adjusted primarily to extend Erdoğan’s political career.
For Turkey, the stakes extend beyond whether Erdoğan personally wins another election. The more important question is whether the political system permits an opposition candidate to compete under conditions that voters can regard as legitimate, and whether its institutions can accommodate a transfer of power without treating that possibility as a threat to the state.
The historical parallel remains striking. Erdoğan first became a national political symbol after being imprisoned as a popular mayor of Istanbul by an establishment suspicious of the movement he represented. İmamoğlu has now become the central opposition figure while imprisoned under a political order shaped by Erdoğan himself.
The two cases are not identical, and İmamoğlu’s legal circumstances cannot be resolved simply by comparing political biographies. Nevertheless, the resemblance exposes a profound tension in Erdoğan’s legacy: the politician who rose by arguing that unelected institutions should not overturn the will of the voters now presides over a system accused of allowing those same institutions to restrict the choices available to the electorate.
Erdoğan’s future remains uncertain, as does İmamoğlu’s. What is already clear is that Turkey’s next political transition will test whether the institutions built during Erdoğan’s rule can sustain genuine competition when the presidency itself may be at stake.
Erdoğan transformed Turkey because he recognised grievances that the old establishment had ignored. Religious conservatives wanted equal participation in public life, the military exercised excessive political influence, unstable governments struggled to deliver services, and the country possessed greater economic and diplomatic potential than it had realised. His early governments addressed many of those problems and created lasting improvements for millions of citizens.
Yet the political system that emerged did not consistently replace exclusionary institutions with independent and pluralistic ones. Authority became increasingly concentrated around the presidency, and the government’s efforts to manage dissent, economic policy and political competition weakened confidence in institutions that need to function independently of whoever holds office.
Erdoğan has made Turkey more influential in international diplomacy and more capable of asserting its interests abroad. At the same time, the country has paid heavily for monetary instability, political polarisation and the weakening of institutional checks on executive authority. His record therefore contains genuine national achievements alongside vulnerabilities that may outlast his presidency.
The ultimate measure of his political legacy will not be whether he can remain in power indefinitely. It will be whether Turkey can maintain the public representation, national confidence and international influence developed during his rule while restoring the legal predictability and political openness that make those achievements sustainable.
Erdoğan’s rise began with the argument that no unelected authority should stand above the will of the people. Turkey’s future now depends on whether that principle remains meaningful when voters are offered the possibility of choosing someone else.
Last Updated on October 27, 2026 by Aseem Gupta