Turkey

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

Turkish parties have always been authoritarian. Tezcan Gümüs on the results of the presidential election in Turkey

Turkey's presidential election was held on 28 May, with incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan winning against Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Kasper Ly Netterstrom talks to Tezcan Gümüs, author of “Turkey's Political Leaders - authoritarian tendencies in a democratic state”, about the reasons for his victory and its consequences.

15.06.2023

“In a way, the Turkish opposition is a huge success” Murat Somer on the political situation in Turkey

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has dominated Turkish Politics since 2002, but now the country finds itself in a massive economic crisis and the president has never been this unpopular. With elections to be held within a year, the long-oppressed opposition is therefore eyeing a historic opportunity to get rid of Erdoğan and his increasingly authoritarian regime. But what is the state of the Turkish opposition, and are they ready to seize the moment? Kasper Ly Netterstrøm talked about it with Professor Murat Somer from Koç University in Istanbul.

11.07.2022