After negotiations with the Turkish authorities, Abdullah Öcalan, who has been in prison for two and a half decades, called on the PKK he created to disband and disarm, ending the military dimension of the conflict between the terrorist organization in question and Turkey. With the fall of Bashar al-Assad from power in Syria and his replacement with a government close to Turkey, Ankara achieved one of its greatest foreign policy successes in recent decades. Along with the strained relations between the EU and the US, Turkey's geopolitical weight has increased, in view of the desire and capabilities of our southeastern neighbor to enter into two key roles - a mediator in the war between Ukraine and Russia and a partner in mitigating the deficits in Europe's military capabilities. Turkey was among the invited countries at the meeting of the Chiefs of General Staffs of countries willing to participate in providing security guarantees to Ukraine, convened by French President Emmanuel Macron. Visiting Ankara, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, said that Turkey should participate in the realization of peace in Ukraine, and that Warsaw would work to make the European perspective for our southeastern neighbor increasingly realistic. This was followed by the first comprehensive conversation between the presidents of Turkey and the United States, in which the two discussed the possible lifting of the sanctions imposed on Ankara during Donald Trump's first term. In an interview later given by the US President's special envoy for the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, Steve Witkow, the latter said that we should expect positive news related to Turkey soon.
Considering all these favorable circumstances, both internal and external to the country, Recep Tayyip Erdogan probably thought that his position in power was stable enough to be able to fend off possible discontent that would arise if the Turkish president took a certain risky move.
And this move came. First, Istanbul University canceled the diploma of the mayor of the city on the Bosphorus, Ekrem Imamoglu (such an educational qualification must be possessed by every candidate for president of the country purely formally), and immediately after that, the mayor of the Turkish metropolis in question was detained after being accused of corruption and terrorism (he was subsequently imprisoned in Silivri for corruption, while the terrorism charge is still being discussed by the Turkish prosecutor's office). Despite the assurances of the Turkish authorities that these actions of the judiciary were dictated by its own logic, and not under pressure from the executive, they were not accepted in this way by Turkish citizens.
As a result, the protests that arose in the country developed in different planes. First, from those in support of Imamoglu specifically, they were reformatted into protests against Erdogan's rule in general. Second, they gradually expanded their demographics - the young people who started them were joined by other social groups. In this way, the dissatisfaction that poured out on the streets in Turkey began to change from a sectoral protest to one that increasingly acquired the characteristics of a national one.
However, its success depends on the extent to which the raised political slogans for freedom and democracy will be accompanied by those for economic security and prosperity. Since inflation in the country has been consistently high for years (at the end of last year it was just over 44%), and the Turkish lira depreciated further by about 12 points just within the day that Imamoglu announced that the police were in front of his house to detain him.
But in Turkey, including due to the specifics of Erdogan's opposition parties, the motive for democracy does not have the social charge that those of an empty pocket and identity politics have. In fact, the successful coups carried out in the country since its republican period have led to the limitation, not the expansion, of democracy. And as paradoxical as it may seem at this point, Turkey was actually closest to democracy precisely in the early years of Erdogan's rule at the start of the current millennium. But even then, democracy was not so much a goal for the Turkish prime minister as a means by which he managed to weaken the republic's sanctioning and exclusive secular institutions, which were under the control of the Kemalists.
No matter how long they last and what they lead to, the protests in the country have already achieved success on at least several levels. First, they put President Erdogan on the defensive, as dissatisfaction with his rule took on an organized form and gave new impetus to the issue of the quality of the Turkish president's political product. Second, the arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu managed to consolidate the Republican People's Party (CHP), as it has networks around various figures (chairman Özgür Özel, former chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas and Ekrem İmamoğlu himself), who do not always share the same opinion. Support for the arrested mayor of Istanbul also came from outside the CHP: from the Kurdish People's Party for Equality and Democracy and from the nationalist Good Party (the chairman of the latter, Musavat Dervisoğlu, stated that "the court is not the property of the judge"). In fact, after the loss of the last presidential and parliamentary elections, the broad opposition coalition against Erdogan fell apart, but it remains to be seen whether the arrest of Imamoglu will not provoke processes of consolidation between them again. For the third time, no matter how much Europe does not want to complicate its relations with Turkey in the context of the war in Ukraine, the events in Istanbul have certainly once again put President Erdogan in a situation that complicates dialogue and cooperation with his European partners. Last but not least, although there is still no sociological data on the issue, it is very difficult to imagine how the arrest of Imamoglu would not have a positive impact on the levels of support for him (following the example of Erdogan himself, who went to prison as mayor of Istanbul in 1999 and came out of it as a national hero).
But the most important result of the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul concerns the state itself. Among the relevant observers in recent years, Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rule has been defined as "competitive authoritarianism" and this meant that elections in Turkey were free, although not fair. That is, anyone can run for anything and vote for anyone, but with the clear understanding that the conditions of the election race are not the same. For example, candidates for Erdogan's party can rely on media, economic and legal tools, which, however, become clubs for all those who are competitors of the ruling Justice and Development Party. In 2018, Selahattin Demirtaş was imprisoned while he was the Kurdish presidential candidate. Ekrem İmamoğlu can also participate in presidential elections from his cell until he is sentenced in the final instance without the right to appeal (and provided, of course, that the problem with his diploma had not arisen, which throws him out of the presidential race on technical grounds, although this too is yet to be considered by the court).
The attempt to eliminate him from the electoral battle for president, however, marks a new stage in the growth of Erdogan's authoritarianism: the regime now determines not only the conditions of the competition, but also who will participate in it. If we use a metaphor with a sporting event, up until now the pro-government horse started before the others, and from now on the favored four-legged can also count on the fact that its real competitors will not be running in the adjacent corridors. In other words, the regime now determines not only the conditions of the competition, but also its participants. Hence, Turkish political scientist from the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, Soner Cağaptay, wrote in X that when Ekrem İmamoğlu is removed from Erdogan's "competitive authoritarianism", then only authoritarianism remains.
With the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan scored an own goal. But even if the referee is his, it won't be enough if he loses support in the stands.