It is hard to pinpoint exactly when Recep Tayyip Erdogan slipped from the supreme self-confidence of successful politicians to narcissistic hubris. It might have been after the Arab uprisings in the fall of 2011 during his tour of Egypt when throngs gathered in the capital of that country to welcome the Turkish leader. Coming from a political tradition that regards the Turkish republic’s replacement of the Ottoman Empire to be an (unfortunate) accident of history, the symbolism of the moment was likely not lost on Erdogan.
Or it could have been the crowds—in the hundreds of thousands—who turned out across Turkey to show their support for the “Great Master” in June 2013 while Turkish riot police tear gassed and beat their fellow Turks during the last uprising in Turkey—the Gezi Park protests. Or perhaps it was after the failed 2016 coup when Erdogan, unimpeded by courts, the press, or the public, took the opportunity to clear the field of his opponents—real and perceived in a widespread purge that never really ended.
It is hard to pinpoint exactly when Recep Tayyip Erdogan slipped from the supreme self-confidence of successful politicians to narcissistic hubris. It might have been after the Arab uprisings in the fall of 2011 during his tour of Egypt when throngs gathered in the capital of that country to welcome the Turkish leader. Coming from a political tradition that regards the Turkish republic’s replacement of the Ottoman Empire to be an (unfortunate) accident of history, the symbolism of the moment was likely not lost on Erdogan.
Or it could have been the crowds—in the hundreds of thousands—who turned out across Turkey to show their support for the “Great Master” in June 2013 while Turkish riot police tear gassed and beat their fellow Turks during the last uprising in Turkey—the Gezi Park protests. Or perhaps it was after the failed 2016 coup when Erdogan, unimpeded by courts, the press, or the public, took the opportunity to clear the field of his opponents—real and perceived in a widespread purge that never really ended.
One could draw a straight line from these events (and others) to the Turkish president’s recent move to bring Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu—his last remaining opponent of any significance—to heel. The mayor (who has been in office since 2019) was detained on March 19 on charges of corruption and suspected links to terrorism. He was subsequently removed from office and arrested on corruption charges.
There was a certain irony to both sets of allegations. Credible claims of all kinds of financial chicanery and malfeasance have dogged the Turkish president since at least 2013. They have never been properly investigated because of Erdogan’s grip on power. And the Turkish state’s support for extremist groups from Hamas to the al Qaeda offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra—which became Hayat Tahrir al-Sham—is well known.
The decision to detain and arrest Imamoglu was brazen, but not heedless. Erdogan likely calculated that the Trump White House would not penalize him for disposing of his most potent opponent. And in the weeks leading up to Imamoglu’s arrest, Europeans had been nattering on about Turkey’s importance for their security as the Trump administration has done all but end Washington’s formal security commitment to its NATO allies.
Still, Erdogan may not succeed. He may have read U.S. President Donald Trump and the Europeans correctly. But in his hubris, he seems to have miscalculated how Turks would react. He may not have believed that Turks would turn out en masse to oppose Imamoglu’s arrest, but that is what they have done.
As always with eruptions of popular protest, it is best to ignore the irrational exuberance that has become the stock and trade of social media. To the denizens of X and BlueSky the end for Erdogan is near, but in reality, it is hard to know how this uprising will play out. Whatever the outcome, it is not going to be pretty.
Analysts have warned that if Erdogan’s gambit succeeds, Turkey’s authoritarian trajectory will be assured. That is not the issue, however. Turkey is already there. Yes, there are elections in Turkey and sometimes Erdogan’s opponents—like Imamoglu—win. That is why social scientists categorize Turkey as “competitive authoritarian.”
But that term does not quite capture the nuances of the Turkish case. When Erdogan’s opponents have won, their victories have often proved to be hollow. Since Imamoglu won the Istanbul mayoralty in 2019, the Turkish leader and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have sought to hamstring the mayor and have hounded him in the courts. A variety of mayors from the Kurdish-based Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party have been summarily removed from office and their municipalities handed over to AKP-aligned administrators. The way that Erdogan has instrumentalized the state so that he can reverse election outcomes he does not like suggests that the qualifier in “competitive authoritarian” is basically meaningless.
And therein lies the problem for Turks and others who, over the course of the last week of protests, have dared to imagine what life after Erdogan may look like. The Turkish president’s departure may not necessarily augur better days. Indeed, things can always get worse. Just consider, for example, the chaos that Egypt plunged into after Hosni Mubarak’s ignominious end. With all the excitement among Turks and others about this “now out of never” moment, Turkey is likely entering a period of sustained political and social instability—whether Erdogan remains in power or not.
If the Turkish president is able to sustain his power through the crisis his unbounded ego created, he will step up repression. Imamoglu will not be the only politician in legal jeopardy. And much like after the Gezi Park protests, Erdogan and his advisors will seek to further divide Turks, emphasizing who is authentically Turkish—those who support the president—and those who are not. This will only deepen Turkey’s culture wars and provide justification for ever-increasing coercion and forces against Erdogan’s opponents. Think of Erdogan’s post-failed coup purge of 2016, but worse.
If Erdogan leaves—and here I am reserving judgment about how the Turkish president might go—the victors will have to contend with political and social institutions that have been bent, shaped, and leveraged to aggrandize the power of Erdogan, the AKP, and the extensive list of constituents who benefited greatly from the Turkish state over the last two decades and have much to lose. Even if Erdogan were out of the picture, they would try to use the levers of power to defend themselves and undermine a transition. At the very least, it will be messy. There is a decent chance such a moment could turn violent, however. Since 2016, Erdogan and the AKP have been arming cadres of loyalists.
Maybe the Turks will get lucky and the massive outpouring of popular contempt for Erdogan’s hubris will foster goodwill that overcomes divisions within Turkish society. Certainly, the footage of farmers and others in the generally reliable AKP strongholds of central Anatolia suggests this is possible. The heady moments of the barricade have a way of bringing the most unlikely allies together, but the hard politics of change can just as easily rip them apart.
Erdogan turned 71 years old about a month ago (although he looks much older than his years). He has spent a third of his life sitting atop Turkey’s power structure either as prime minister or president. During the mid-1990s he was the mayor of Istanbul. He must be thinking about his legacy. People with a less grandiose sense of themselves certainly would be doing the same.
No doubt in Erdogan’s mind and those of his loyalists, he has transformed Turkey into a democracy and a powerful actor on the global stage with an economy that ranks among the world’s top 20. There is some truth to this. Early in his tenure, Erdogan expanded political participation in Turkey, undertook political reforms that the EU required for membership negotiations (which never advanced), and oversaw significant economic growth and an expanded middle class.
Yet, while Turkey remains an important and powerful global actor, Erdogan subsequently cratered the economy in the service of his own parochial interests. His yearslong pursuit of low interest rates to juice growth was nevertheless inflationary and contributed to a nasty currency crisis. The Turkish president also backtracked on political reforms such that Turkey is now a case study in de-democratization.
Erdogan had a good thing going around 2007-2008. He had faced down the Turkish Armed Forces, bringing the officer corps under civilian control; won elections with a broad coalition of support; had grown the economy; and had become a darling of the West due to his Islamist Third Way. Erdogan could never leave well enough alone, though. The healthy paranoia and self-confidence of a successful politician metastasized into egomania and vindictiveness. He destroyed every institutional check and balance—such as they were—in the Turkish political system.
Yet he has not been able to intimidate (for now) the last and most important brake on his power: Turks, who despite (or perhaps because of) everything Erdogan has done to undermine the rule of law, remain committed to this principle. It is possible that Erdogan went too far when he sought to short-circuit Imamoglu’s presidential challenge. He may never fully recover from the rage his narcissism has provoked.
Whether he does or does not, Turks are likely to suffer. That will be Erdogan’s legacy.
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