Turkey’s Cautionary Tale

Erdogan arrests his rival, showing once again: The fall of the courts Is the fall of freedom

When Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu—widely seen as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s most formidable political rival—was arrested last week at his home on flimsy corruption charges, Turkey entered a new and dangerous phase in its long democratic unravelling. His detention, followed by mass protests, violent crackdowns, and the arrest of demonstrators and journalists, is the natural outcome of years of democratic backsliding — which began with the dismantling of judicial independence.

Turkey’s descent is not just Turkey’s problem, and it’s not just inconvenient because Turkey is large and important, but rather it is a warning. It is a warning to anyone who is indifferent about the outrageous politicizing of the American justice system — and the efforts by the Trump administration to neuter the checks on power and circumvent the constitution, which are the only two things that make the political judiciary even remotely acceptable.

The architecture of liberal democracy — the system of checks and balances, of independent courts, of protected rights — does not dismantle itself overnight. It is chipped away in full view of the public, under the pretense of “majority rule” and national interest. The public is fed bullshit about how the elitist “deep state” is trying to impede the representatives of the people from doing whatever the hell they want. It is done gradually, even legally, until suddenly a country that holds elections no longer holds power to account.

Americans and others in constitutional democracies would be mistaken to view Turkey’s situation as a distant anomaly. The signs of democratic backsliding, always with the freedom of the courts are politicized or threatened, are visible in many countries once thought immune — most prominently at present in Israel, Hungary and the United States.

Indeed, in Israel, alongside the tragedy there is comedy, as Netanyahu, a criminal defendant at present, has adopted the “deep state” nonsense in an effort to curry favor with his patron Trump. His lickspittle tweet was heavily promoted by Elon Musk, the co-president who is not a natural-born citizen.

Once such processes are successful, as it has been in Erdogan’s Turkey, leaders feel free to arrest their leading political rivals on trumped up charges. The next step from this stage – which we might call fake democracy – is full dictatorship. When that final leap is made, as occurred in Russia, Vladimir Putin’s rival Alexei Navalny turns up dead in a gulag.

To understand how this happens, and why it’s so dangerous, we must begin with a clarification.