4 ms·

Turkey is a dictatorship, no?

• nolok 4y ago
  In theory no, they have election and he / his party has lost elections "recently", notably the mayoral election in ankara and istanbul. He even cancelled and ordered the redo of one of those elections because he didn't like the result (in a not so legal way), but his party still lost it and they did let the transition of power happen. In practice the fairness of national elections are in doubt, but more importantly Erdogan willingness to leave office if he loses is the big unknown. Given that he has purged all institutions, including the army, to only have his people everywhere, what happens if he refuses could go from Trump "but at the end he still had to go because enough people kept their sanity" all the way to lukashenko "and then he stopped pretending there were elections".
• mda 4y ago
  I guess not, he is likely to be taken down in next elections, provided the opposition does not screw up big time.
• can16358p 4y ago
  I might get into trouble if I answer this question.
• dreamcompiler 4y ago
  You might be thinking of Turkmenistan. Until Erdogan came to power, Turkey was arguably more democratic and more secular than the US. In recent decades whenever Turkey occasionally got a leader who began to act too Islamist or too dictatorial, the army would stage a coup, toss the rascal out, and restore democratic rule. This happened in 2016 but for the first time since Ataturk, the coup failed (badly!) and Erdogan emerged even more powerful. I worry for the future of Turkey.