November 21, 2025 | The National Interest
President Erdogan’s Decapitation of the Turkish Opposition
The US and NATO need to stand up for what remains of Turkey’s democracy.
November 21, 2025 | The National Interest
President Erdogan’s Decapitation of the Turkish Opposition
The US and NATO need to stand up for what remains of Turkey’s democracy.
Excerpt
The latest moves in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s death-by-lawfare sentence against Turkey’s liberal opposition show a dangerous blend of desperation and cunning in his bid to perpetuate autocracy.
Erdogan has spent the past trying to silence the Republican People’s Party (CHP)—the one political party strong enough to challenge the dictator-in-disguise. Between arrests of major opposition figures like Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu and kangaroo court orders to dissolve CHP leadership, this strategy constitutes a quiet and protracted auto-coup. While waiting on results from his latest legal onslaught, Erdogan has turned his gaze to Ankara, looking to finish off the party’s chances of running a strong presidential candidate in 2028.
The stakes have never been higher, the pretexts never flimsier, and the damage to Turkish democracy never greater. With Erdogan theoretically term-limited and expected to relinquish the presidency in three years’ time, the opposition senses that the time has come to end authoritarian one-party rule.
The Method in Erdogan’s Madness
Erdogan’s strategy is designed to perpetuate the regime and its stranglehold on Turkish politics and society:
Sinan Ciddi is a senior fellow on Turkey at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington, DC. William Doran is a student at Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service and a research intern at the Turkey Program at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.