In the new episode of our special series produced in collaboration with the Journal of Democracy, we are joined by Edgar Şar and Pelin Ayan Musil to discuss their article “Why Oppositions Lose Together and Win Alone,” published in the July 2026 issue.
For years, the conventional wisdom held that the only way to defeat an entrenched autocrat was to unite the opposition. In Hungary and Turkey, oppositions did exactly that, and they lost. Then single parties, running alone, broke through where the grand coalitions had failed. Was unity the problem all along, or just the way it was done? And why did one breakthrough end in a change of government while the other was followed by a crackdown? With Turkey’s opposition now in turmoil and Hungary’s new government confronting the state Orbán built over sixteen years, the authors also look ahead: can winning alone ever be enough?
Edgar Şar is a research affiliate at the CEU Democracy Institute’s De- and Re-Democratization Workgroup, a lecturer at Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul, and a co-founder and the current co-director of the Istanbul-based think tank IstanPol.
Pelin Ayan Musil is associate professor of political science and senior lecturer at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Anglo-American University in Prague.
The interview was conducted by Ece Özbey. Alina Young edited the audio file.
