#Turkey
Podcasts
From Competitive Authoritarian to Hegemonic: Berk Esen on the Decline of Turkish Democracy and the Prospects for Its Revival (Part 2)
In Part 2 of our latest episode in the special series produced in partnership with the Journal of Democracy, Berk Esen turns to the other side of the equation: how Turkey’s opposition is pushing back against an increasingly hegemonic regime. This episode builds on Part 1, where we explored the regime’s authoritarian escalation through the courts, media, and economic coercion.
25.08.2025
News
Rebels with a Welfare Cause: Turkey’s Youth Rising against Authoritarianism
After Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu’s imprisonment in March 2025, youth-led protests swept Turkey. Fueled by digital activism and pop culture, this new resistance converges with social policy innovations in opposition-run cities, marking a generational shift in how dissent and governance challenge authoritarianism.
22.08.2025
Podcasts
From Competitive Authoritarian to Hegemonic: Berk Esen on the Decline of Turkish Democracy and the Prospects for Its Revival (Part 1)
In Part 1 of our latest edition in the special series in partnership with the Journal of Democracy, Berk Esen unpacks how Turkey’s competitive authoritarian regime is veering toward full autocracy.
13.08.2025
News
A Doomed Bid to Erase Dissent: İmamoğlu and the Future of Turkish Opposition
As the crackdown on Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu intensifies, the stakes for the democratic opposition in Turkey grow higher. This analysis explores how legal repression, symbolic erasure, and authoritarian overreach may backfire — entrenching resistance, destabilizing governance, and echoing global patterns of democratic decline, without yet sealing Turkey’s fate as another Venezuela.
10.06.2025
News
All Together or None of Us – Part II: Turkey’s New Democracy Movement and Future
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
24.04.2025
News
All Together or None of Us – Part I: The Arrest that Sparked Turkey’s Democratic Uprising
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.
23.04.2025
News
What’s Radish Got to Do with Turkish Democracy?
When a Turkish proverb resurfaces at the heart of a political storm, it’s worth paying attention. Through the recent arrests of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and his colleagues, Ece Özbey traces the chilling implications of the deepening erosion of democratic norms and judicial independence in Turkey—and the defiant stirrings of civic resistance under Erdoğan’s tightening grip on the country.
28.03.2025
News
Why Misinformation Thrives in Autocracies: Spread from the Top, Delivered by TV, Believed by Partisans
Misinformation thrives in competitive autocracies, where governments manipulate information to control narratives and foster uncertainty around political events. Yet, its dynamics in these contexts remain underexplored. Our recent study on Turkey reveals that partisanship and selective exposure drive misinformation beliefs – but surprisingly, not via social media, rather through television.
11.02.2025
Podcasts
What Drives Ordinary People to Espouse Authoritarian Figures? Kristóf Szombati on the Spatial Origins of Right-Wing Authoritarianism
The countryside has often been seen as a space where politics flows to, but does not grow out of. When it comes to the authoritarian right, this could not be further from the truth. So what draws people in rural areas to seek an ordered world? In this first episode of their new podcast This Authoritarian Life RevDem Editor Kristóf Szombati and his co-host Erdem Evren embark on an exploration of the origins of contemporary authoritarianism by inspecting the case of rural Hungary, where Kristóf had worked both as an anthropologist and a community worker. What dislocations fueled the rise of the far-right Jobbik party and what did Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party offer to temper popular discontents?
15.10.2024
Why Did Erdoğan’s AK Party Win Again in 2023?
Despite expectations of an opposition victory, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) secured the highest vote share and were reelected in 2023. The long-term project of national developmentalism and strong support from women, along with more specific factors like Kılıçdaroğlu’s candidacy and the February 6th earthquakes, significantly influenced the results.
21.05.2024
News
Opposition resurgence in Turkey’s local elections and its wider implications
After five years, the opposition achieved another remarkable victory at the Turkish local elections of March 31. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) emerged as the largest political force at the national level, consolidating its power in local governments across the country. Unofficial results indicate that in addition to the major cities it won already in 2019, the CHP also triumphed in another four as well as in eleven provinces.
8.04.2024
News
What can Ukraine learn from Turkey’s failed EU candidacy?
The European Union (EU) has reinvigorated its most successful foreign policy tool after Russia started its war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022. Enlargement policy had successfully persuaded candidate countries to reform their domestic institutions and policies within a specific timeline under the credible promise of membership but it had lost steam in recent years. The EU was occupied by both internal and external challenges in the region and its commitment to enlargement gradually declined. Candidate countries, on the other hand, were not enthusiastic for more reforms in the last decade. Among these, Turkey stands out as the least successful and may even be seen as a failure. Will Ukraine be able to join the EU before 2030, or will it share the fate of Turkey? What lessons can be drawn from Turkey’s experience with the EU? I will try to disentangle these questions in this short op-ed. I argue that, in order to avoid Turkey’s fate, Ukraine should benefit from the [...]
25.03.2024
