Why Municipal Elections in Turkey Have Global Significance

Credit: Erkem Imamgolu

When Reccep Tayyep Erdogan's party the AKP won a landslide victory in Turkey's 2002 general elections he became a very different kind of Turkish leader from his predecessors, who were avowedly secular.

For a time, Erdogan presided over a booming economy and was hailed for being a modernizing Muslim leader in a troubled region. His relations with Europe and the United States were strong, and he sought to play a stabilizing role in the Middle East.

But all the while, Erdogan was consolidating his power. It started slowly at first and in recent years the degradation of Turkey's independent institutions has accelerated. This includes clampdowns on media, the corruption of the courts, and a massive political purge following what Erdogan alleged was an attempted coup in 2016.

Erdogan was become the quintessential example of a new kind of leader around the world--the illiberal authoritarian democrat; someone who is democratically elected, but then systematically uses the p…