By Murat Somer
When Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was arrested, Turkey’s democratic future reached a breaking point. In this two-part series, Murat Somer examines how that moment united the long-divided social and political opposition, sparking an unprecedented wave of mobilization and strategic innovation that holds the potential to turn into an enduring and consequential democracy movement.
Part I recounts the events that triggered mass resistance. Part II explores the movement’s evolving strategies, emerging alliances, and political stakes for Turkey’s future.
← Missed the backstory? Read Part I: The Arrest that Sparked Turkey’s Democratic Uprising
What is unfolding in Turkey offers vital insights into how democracy can resist, and potentially prevail, amid the global confrontation between rising autocracy and democratic resilience. When institutions and the rule of law erode under the weight of democratic backsliding and pernicious polarization, as they have over the last twenty years in Turkey, it is the combination of popular will, strategic political organization, and skillful leadership that can ignite democratic renewal.
Today’s crisis molds Turkish politics into what might be called two and a half camps. The first seeks to entrench Erdoğan’s regime into a Putin-style autocracy, garbed in far-right Islamism and Turkish nationalism. The second is gradually evolving into a grassroots democracy movementbuilt on bottom-up synergy with political leadership. It unites long-fragmented forces around a shared vision of accountable governance, social and economic justice, the rule of law, and a secular republic. A third, partial camp, centered around the Kurdish movement, shares many of these democratic aspirations but remains focused on a precarious and politically fraught peace process.
While the pro-autocracy camp commands the coercive machinery of the state and enjoys executive-level support from international strongmen, the democracy movement draws strength from public mobilization, youth energy, civic creativity, and Turkey’s rich democratic legacy. Crucially, it also benefits from lessons forged through two decades of struggle against authoritarian drift.
How to Fight an Autocrat: The Collective Know-How and New Strategies
How do you confront an elected government determined to crush opposition and immune to both legal constraint and reasoned debate? In response to Erdoğan’s escalating authoritarianism, Turkish opposition actors have proven creative and agile, crafting responsive, preemptive, and agenda-setting strategies that may serve as a model for other struggling democracies.
Merging political parties and contentious politics on the ground
The main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP), along with grassroot resistance from city squares to university campuses and rural areas, has come to recognize the power of unified action. On the day of İmamoğlu’s arrest, spontaneous protests erupted across the country. Students at Istanbul University led the charge, breaking through police barricades to march on Saraçhane Square, while anti-terror police lined up near the iconic Byzantine aqueducts.
Simultaneously, İmamoğlu, followed by CHP Chairman Özgür Özel, called citizens to the streets, urging non-violent resistance to what they described as Erdoğan’s “coup attempt.” Since then, protests have spread nationwide, with the partial exception of the Kurdish-majority provinces in the East. The CHP has held six consecutive rallies at Saraçhane Square, with reported turnout growing from 100,000 on the first day to over two million during a major rally on March 29. The police crackdown has been harsh and unlawful: hundreds of students have been jailed, and there have been reports of torture and mistreatment.
This is a war of attrition, and sustaining the momentum of non-violent mobilization is crucial for the opposition’s success. The CHP has announced plans to hold two rallies per week, rotating across provinces and districts of Istanbul. Meanwhile, the bottom-up protests have expanded to include farmers, labor unions, and even high school students. Unlike in the past, the CHP allows itself to be guided by them this time, adopting their demands, decisions, and cultural references. A recent viral slogan, coined by a farmer, captures this new spirit: “You cannot govern a state with radishes and turnips, but with justice and rule of law.”—a clever wordplay referring to Erdoğan’s recent threats while elevating the movement’s demand for justice.
Tapping popular legitimacy outside the electoral game
Erdoğan’s autocratic rule has long relied on a majoritarian, plebiscitary logic—carefully timing elections to his advantage and maintaining a veneer of legitimacy. This cycle repeatedly demoralized the opposition, which often fell short in national elections and referenda by narrow margins.
This time, however, the CHP flipped the narrative by creating its own mechanisms of popular legitimacy. In January, it announced a closed primary to choose its presidential candidate as a response to the fragmentation that hampered opposition efforts in Turkey’s 2023 elections. After İmamoğlu got arrested just days before the vote, the party leadership pivoted and reframed the primary as a referendum on Erdoğan’s authoritarianism. A second “solidarity” ballot box was introduced, allowing non-party members to participate. The public responded in droves: long queues formed across the country, and turnout reportedly exceeded 15 million voters, around 1.6 million of them official party members.
Tapping consumer power against oligarchy
At an early rally, the CHP began reading out a list of media outlets that had refused to cover the protests—a list to which the government have repeatedly blocked access— along with the names of their owners and affiliated companies closely tied to the government. These entities were publicly called out and threatened with boycotts unless they start reporting the events fairly. The strategy aimed to mobilize purchasing power against the economic foundations of Erdoğan’s authoritarian coalition and exert pressure through civil disobedience.
Importantly, this approach has not been limited to the CHP. On April 2, young activists independently organized a national shopping boycott, which the CHP later endorsed. Meanwhile, Turkey’s Central Bank has burned through $50 billion in reserves and raised interest rates in an attempt to stabilize the rapidly plunging Turkish Lira, underscoring the regime’s vulnerability to coordinated economic protest.
Establishing concrete demands
Unlike the diffuse and often symbolic Gezi Park protests of 2013, the current democracy movement has articulated concrete, actionable demands: İmamoğlu’s immediate release and fair trial, transparency through televised proceedings, and early elections.To this end, the CHP has launched a mass signature campaign aiming to surpass Erdoğan’s 2023 vote count of 27.7 million. As of April 15, over 10 million signatures had been collected —another example of how the opposition has been successfully tapping into popular will outside traditional electoral cycle.
Practicing constructive polarization
The current struggle pits Erdoğan’s pernicious polarization against the CHP’s emerging practice of constructive polarization. In a forthcoming book, Depolarizing and Rebuilding Democracy, Jennifer McCoy and I distinguish pernicious polarization that is harmful to democracy from constructive polarization that is sometimes necessary for democratic renewal. We do so in terms of three “how”s: how much pernicious polarization vilifies “the other side”, how much it ignores shared ties, and how permanently, rather than temporarily, it reduces politics into binary choices.
Erdoğan has always been a pernicious polarizer, addressing specific audiences such as Islamists and rank-and-file party members with divisive rhetoric, including statements like: “People in the 21st century can either contribute to the rise of Islamic civilization or face reproach.” In his early years in power and when speaking to broader audiences, he also used convincingly inclusive and constructive language. But over time, his discourse has grown increasingly exclusionary, branding critics as “enemies of the nation,” “low-lifes”, “terrorist-lovers,” or “bandits.” This form of pernicious polarization has been vital for Erdoğan to stay in power by cultivating a captive base that perceives the opposition as inherently evil and threatening.
In response, the opposition has experimented with both depolarization and strategic polarization. İmamoğlu’s 2019 “radical love” campaign and former CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s helalleşme (seeking reconciliation for past grievances) initiative were early efforts to reduce polarization. Yet, these attempts proved insufficient to win high-stakes national elections.
Now, the CHP is combining a unifying tone with clearly drawn lines, adopting a strategy of constructive/transformative polarization.
On the third day of protests, Özgür Özel described the political landscape as one divided between pro-democracy and pro-autocracy camps. He called on all media outlets to take a side, warning that silence would be interpreted as support for authoritarianism. Yet, crucially, he avoided vilifying the other side, frequently highlighting shared ties. On March 29, İmamoğlu’s wife, Dilek, captured this spirit, declaring: “Which wall could stop love?”
Özel continues to underscore democratic values as common ground while articulating the broad, cross-ideological coalition that the CHP is trying to build. To this end, he introduces new terms into the Turkish political lexicon—nationalist democrats, conservative democrats, and Kurdish democrats—alongside more familiar categories like social and liberal democrats. Finally, the CHP’s polarization strategy is neither absolute nor permanent; rather, it is rooted in a clearly defined goal: rebuilding democracy.
What is Next?: Pessimistic Intellect, Optimistic Will
Recent opinion polls suggest that Erdoğan’s government is already operating as a minority. İmamoğlu’s arrest has started a long and uncertain process of potential transformation, and not all outcomes are positive. Erdoğan could still prevail and consolidate a fully closed autocracy. He might maintain the present open autocracy, prolonging repression and instability. Or, the crisis could spiral into mutually destructive violence, regardless of who emerges victorious.
But what does the positive scenario look like—and the opposition’s endgame?
The best outcome for Turkey—and for global democracy—is for the opposition to generate enough pressure to provoke dissent within Erdoğan’s regime and compel him to negotiate a peaceful transition. This process could begin with the opposition’s three core demands outlined earlier.
How likely is this scenario?
Nonviolent resistance remains the most effective strategy against authoritarian regimes, but only around half of such movements succeed. Cross-country evidence offers limited grounds for optimism. In cases of prolonged democratic backsliding—defined as lasting more than ten years or two executive terms, such as Turkey’s, only a handful of examples show even partial reversal (like Ecuador and North Macedonia), and no bulletproof example exists of full democratic recovery.
And yet, there remains space for the optimism of the will.
The creativity and persistence of Turkey’s democracy movement, the lessons the opposition has drawn from over two decades of resistance, and the country’s enduring democratic traditions all provide the foundation for hope. Turkey has a strong electoral legacy, and among opposition supporters, especially the youth, a thirst for justice has transformed the current mobilization into a broader fight for dignity.
Turkey also benefits from a deep societal and economic integration with the democratic world, and the opposition has become more adept at engaging international allies. Moreover, Turkish political culture retains a degree of adaptability and negotiation—even under strain. Any shifts in position by Erdoğan’s key ally, the Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP), or by the pro-Kurdish rights DEM Party could significantly reshape the political landscape.
Democrats around the world must pressure Erdoğan’s government to choose dialogue over coercion, to abandon the autocratic path and align with the democratic side of the deepening global divide. This is not only in Turkey’s interest, but also in the interest of regional and international peace, security, and freedom across Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East.
At the same time, the democracy movement must use this difficult moment for reflection. It must confront the flaws of pre-Erdoğan Turkish democracy, those that alienated voters and led them to support an autocrat as a potential savior. It must summon the courage not only to defeat Erdoğan but to imagine and build a more just, free, and inclusive Turkey. That deeper hope is already visible in the movement’s evolution—and in the CHP’s own guiding motto: “To crown the republic with full democracy.”
Murat Somer is a Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Özyeğin University, Istanbul, and a Senior Fellow at the Global Forum for Democracy and Development, based at the Democracy Institute of Central European University in Budapest.
