President Erdogan jails his rival, and endangers Turkey’s democracy

CROWDS OF PROTESTERS streamed onto the square outside Istanbul’s city hall on March 23rd to support their mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, the Turkish opposition’s star politician. At least a million voters had just confirmed Mr Imamoglu as the candidate of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) at the country’s next presidential elections. But the rally was no celebration. The man the opposition supporters had come out to cheer was behind bars.

He will remain there for some time. Earlier in the day a court formally arrested Mr Imamoglu pending trial. The decision means that the mayor will spend months, perhaps years, in prison. The city council, where the CHP has a majority, will elect a substitute mayor on March 26th. Last week the CHP opened its presidential party primary to any Turkish voter who wanted to participate. Large numbers of them did so, even though Mr Imamoglu was the only name on the ballot in the primary.

Turkey is nearing a point of no return. Only last week, its government was still what political scientists call a competitive authoritarian regime: although President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wields unchecked executive powers and de facto control over the courts and most of the media, Turkey’s elections had remained mostly free. But on March 19th police detained Mr Imamoglu, who has emerged as Mr Erdogan’s strongest rival, along with dozens of others, including his top advisers and other local officials. What remains is close to naked autocracy.

Even if Mr Imamoglu is released before the coming elections, expected to take place in 2028 or earlier, he will face a possibly insurmountable hurdle. A day before he was detained the authorities revoked his university diploma, rendering him ineligible to run for president under Turkish law, since the office is open only to graduates. Both the opposition and independent observers say the move was purely political. They say the same goes for the criminal charges leveled against the mayor, which include abetting a terrorist organisation, corruption and rigging government tenders.

The arrests have sparked the biggest protests Turkey has seen in over a decade. Students have clashed with police armed with water cannons and tear gas. The authorities are taking no chances. At least 340 protesters have been detained. The demonstrators are defying a government order that banned public gatherings for a week. Many roads have been closed, and social media have been throttled. Istanbul’s governor has warned that people believed to be headed to protests will not be allowed into or out of the city.

Mr Imamoglu has been fighting the courts for years. Having beaten Mr Erdogan’s candidate in the mayoral election in 2019, he was obliged to run again some months later after authorities overturned the results. (He won by an even bigger margin.) In 2022 he was sentenced to over two years in prison, pending appeal, after he referred to the officials who had stripped him of his first victory as “fools”. He has faced dozens of other investigations. He won last year’s local elections convincingly, and powered the CHP to its best showing at the polls since the 1970s.

Mr Imamoglu’s long survival is precisely what has made him so dangerous to Turkey’s leader, and so appealing to voters. For months he has enjoyed a comfortable lead over Mr Erdogan in the polls. As a presidential contender he has many strengths. He belongs to a secular party, but appeals to the pious. He runs the biggest city in Europe but hails from Turkey’s heartland. He has ample charisma. “Erdogan and his people must have concluded he would be an unstoppable force,” says Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute, an American think-tank.

Mr Erdogan has taken a big risk by wagering that the benefit of removing a top rival is worth the cost of gutting Turkey’s democracy. On at least one count, he may have been right: the reaction from Europe has been muted. European powers are hoping to enlist Turkey to participate in a peacekeeping force after a possible ceasefire in Ukraine, and to play a bigger role in European security more generally. America, for its part, has scarcely reacted at all. On March 21st Fox News reported that Donald Trump, the American president, was considering unblocking the sale of F-35 jet fighters to Turkey. Mr Erdogan is hoping to visit the White House next month. Given Mr Trump’s limited concern about violations of democratic procedure, Turkey’s strongman might as well start booking his tickets.

The financial markets, however, have reacted to the arrests with alarm. In the three days after Mr Imamoglu was detained, Turkey’s stockmarket index fell by 16.3%. To prevent the Turkish lira from crashing, the central bank is estimated to have burned through $26bn in foreign reserves over the same period. With the protests gathering force and Mr Imamoglu now in prison, the pressure on the currency is mounting. Meanwhile, amid clouds of tear gas, Turkish democracy is fading from view. ■