Recent Developments in Turkish Domestic Politics

At least three developments are driving recent Turkish domestic politics.

1. The crackdown against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political opposition has become so severe  as to be drastically accelerating his longstanding backsliding on democracy. To this might be added the current cartoon controversy over blasphemy and censorship, but this is beyond the scope of the present article.

2. The so-called Turkish-PKK peace process—which has been hailed internationally as contributing to peace, but in the eyes of this author still seems dead or arrival because it entails merely a PKK surrender without any government concessions on Kurdish rights—is the second development.

3. Chronic economic challenges have revived and intensified so as to make one query how Erdogan manages to remain in power, and is the third development. All three of these developments are intimately connected to Erdogan’s desire to remain in power beyond the next scheduled presidential election in 2028 despite being constitutionally ineligible for another third term.  

Erdogan’s crackdown on his political opposition, of course, is nothing new. The pro-Kurdish HDP (now DEM) has seen its democratically elected mayors removed from office and replaced by government appointed trustees for several years. In addition, HDP/DEM leaders have also been languishing in prison for years, Selahattin Demirtas being a prime example. The former HDP leader twice ran for president against Erdogan before being arrested. 

What is new, however, is the wave of arrests and removal from office against the CHP, the main opposition party, originally founded by Ataturk himself more than a century ago. Highlighting this crackdown against the CHP is the arrest and imprisonment of Ekrem Imamoglu, Istanbul’s popular mayor who twice defeated Erdogan’s chosen candidate to unseat him in 2019. Seen by many as Erdogan’s main challenger in the next scheduled presidential election in 2028, Erdogan has sought to meet the challenge by simply jailing Imamoglu on vague, trumped up charges of corruption. 

Although Imamoglu’s arrest was initially met by huge demonstrations demanding his release, these protests have been petering out. And now other CHP mayors in Adiyaman, Antalya, and Adana have also been arrested. Once again Erdogan seems to be outlasting his political opponents who are many, but apparently lacking the necessary unity to beat back his continuing assaults on Turkish democracy. 

Erdogan’s vague willingness to engage in a new peace process with the PKK reputedly holds the possibility of a Kurdish peace that will end more than a half a century of fighting. Indeed, in its 12th Congress held in May 2025, the PKK supposedly voted to disarm and even dissolve itself in what it argued was promoting a democratic peace. Erdogan has encouraged this sop to the Kurds in order to eliminate much of the Kurdish opposition to his continuing rule. Indeed, the Turkish president seems to believe the so-called peace process will even win him enough Kurdish votes to change the constitution and thus permit him to seek and win yet another term in office. 

How the PKK thinks it can ride such a government tiger proven many times over to be its mortal enemy is beyond this author. Indeed, the only question is when the Elon-Musk moment of breakup with the president will occur. When it does, it will be interesting to see who will have gained most from the entire misleading process, Mr. President, as Erdogan is often informally called, or the PKK, which seems beholden to the cult of personality of its longtime imprisoned Reber(Leader) Abdullah (Apo) Ocalan?

Finally, the long-suffering Turkish economy (with its victimized population) continues its demoralizing decline, offset and appeased so far by Erdogan’s cynical strategic salary concessions to the anguished victims that feed continuing inflation, manipulation of his divided opposition, and numerous foreign-policy initiatives that still resonate with many as the supposed harbinger of a return to former Ottoman grandeur. The new Turkish lira, which for a while did hold its value of almost parity to the US dollar, has now officially declined to almost 40 to the dollar, which itself has been slipping. For a long time Erdogan incompetently insisted on multiplying the problem by keeping interest rates low, instead of raising them as any economist would advise to combat the ruinous inflation. Grandiose building projects including two gigantic suspension bridges across the Bosporus, the new enormous Istanbul International Airport (IST), colossal Grand Camlica Mosque north of Istanbul’s center, and mammoth Presidential Complex or White House (Ak Saray) have all further challenged the ailing economy. Since it was built on supposedly protected land, opponents have taken to referring to Erdogan’s new home as the Kac-Ak Saray or illegal white palace, in reference to Erdogan as a would-be sultan. Incredible financial corruption bordering on sheer authoritarian kleptocracy, and selfish nepotism have both compounded Turkey’s economic woes.   

How all this can redound to Erdogan’s reelection when he is constitutionally ineligible for a third term—which ironically, he is already serving—is simple. Mr. President plans to change the constitution so that he will be eligible for yet another term. Indeed, he already did this by changing the constitution in 2017 to allow his term in 2023 claiming he was no longer restricted from another term because of the new document. Thus, if constitutional legerdemain worked once, why not try it again? His current strategy to allow a new Kurdish peace process is a simple attempt to win Kurdish support to do just so, but now on the backs of a CHP whose main leader he has already incarcerated. Whether Erdogan can accomplish all this depends on how successfully he can play his weakened opposition and his own health, which at 71 appears not so robust. 

Michael M. Gunter is the author of Erdogan’s Path to Authoritarianism: The Continuing Path, 2024.