President Recep Tayyip Erdogan entered this year facing a knot of political problems with little precedent in his two decades at the summit of power in Turkey.
Voters were angry about persistently high inflation. His political party’s popularity had sunk. And his opponents had coalesced around the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, who made it clear that he was gunning for the presidency.
Then on Wednesday, just four days before the mayor was set to be designated as the political opposition’s presidential candidate, dozens of policemen arrested him at his home on accusations of corruption and terrorism.
Mr. Erdogan’s foes consider the arrest a ploy to abort Mr. Imamoglu’s presidential campaign before it even begins. At stake is not only who will be Turkey’s next president, analysts, opposition leaders and foreign officials say, but to what extent Turkey, one of the world’s 20 largest economies and a U.S. ally in NATO, can still be considered a democracy.
“Turkey has never been a perfect democracy, but arresting a presidential candidate is taking this imperfectness to another level,” said Arife Kose, a doctoral candidate who studies Turkish politics at the University of East Anglia in Britain. Using the state’s power to foreclose competitive elections, she said, “means that it is getting closer to a fully authoritarian country.”
Mr. Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics since 2003, first as prime minister then as president since 2014. During that time, he has overseen tremendous economic growth and repeatedly led his ruling Justice and Development Party to victory at the polls.
But over the last decade, his critics say, he has solidified his control by eroding Turkish democracy, stocking the state bureaucracy with loyalists, co-opting the news media to limit negative coverage and cultivating state prosecutors and judges to legally punish his foes.
Still, most experts have not considered Turkey an outright autocracy, because many civil freedoms remain and opposition parties have contested elections — and sometimes won, as they did in municipal races across the country last year.
The question now, analysts said, is whether Turkey will remain a mix of democracy and autocracy or shift significantly toward the latter.
Barring Mr. Imamoglu from the presidential race would put Turkey in league with countries like Russia, Belarus or Azerbaijan, where elections happen but make little difference, said Hasan Sinar, a professor of criminal law at Altinbas University in Istanbul, who is also defending another elected Istanbul official accused of terrorism links.
“They have elections, but they are so-called elections because the president himself is designing the opposition and deciding who is going to run against him,” he said.
Mr. Erdogan on Thursday dismissed opposition calls for protests over the mayor’s arrest as “theatrics.”
“The opposition never responds to the allegations brought forward by the judiciary,” he said. “Instead, they confine the matter to political slogans, resorting to the easy way of provoking their base and deceiving the public.”
The political turmoil came as Turkey found itself well-positioned to benefit from recent global events. A rebel group it supported leads the new government in Syria. The Trump administration has shown little interest in whether its foreign partners follow democratic standards. And concerns that the United States will stop supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia have pushed European leaders to seek stronger defense ties with Turkey.
Those interests could blunt foreign criticism of Mr. Erdogan’s governance, analysts said. U.S. officials have said little about Mr. Imamoglu’s arrest, but some European leaders have expressed concern.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany on Thursday called the arrest a “very, very bad sign” for Turkey’s relations with the European Union.
“We can only call for this to end immediately and for the opposition and the government to stand in competition with each other, and not the opposition being brought to court,” he said.
Mr. Erdogan’s current, second presidential term ends in 2028. The Constitution allows only two terms, but he could legally run again if Parliament called early elections, which are widely expected. That could put Mr. Erdogan, 71, on the ballot against Mr. Imamoglu, 54.
The mayor’s arrest followed a series of recent government moves against perceived critics.
Since January, a well-known journalist and an agent who represents famous actors have been arrested in connection with anti-government protests more than a decade ago that the state suppressed and criminalized.
Last month, two top officials in a prominent business association criticized the government’s economic program, the prosecutions of prominent figures and insufficient adherence to the rule of law. State prosecutors indicted them both on charges of spreading false information and recommended prison sentences of up to five and a half years.
Since October, the authorities have removed three Istanbul district mayors on accusations of corruption and terrorism. One has been replaced with a government appointee.
Less prominent figures have also fallen afoul of the government. An astrologer was detained last month and accused of insulting Mr. Erdogan and another senior politician. The Trade Ministry investigated a food vlogger who positively reviewed a restaurant subsidized by Mr. Imamoglu’s city government to see if he had been paid to do so.
Mr. Imamoglu became mayor in an upset victory in 2019. The government got the results thrown out, citing alleged irregularities, but in a redo, Mr. Imamoglu won again by an even larger margin. He was re-elected last year, defeating a candidate backed by Mr. Erdogan.
During his time as mayor, the government has launched 42 administrative and 51 judicial investigations of Mr. Imamoglu, his aides said, which together seek to hobble his administration and remove him from the presidential race. In one case, he stands accused of corruption during a previous job as a district mayor. He was convicted in another of insulting public officials by calling the judges who overturned his initial victory in 2019 “fools.” He has appealed the verdict.
Before his arrest this week, his alma mater, Istanbul University, announced that it had annulled his diploma, citing improper procedures in his transfer from a university in Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus in 1990. He has vowed to appeal, but if the decision stands, it could bar him from the presidency because the Constitution stipulates that the president must have a university degree.
Despite these roadblocks, Mr. Imamoglu’s popularity has remained high, making him a threat to Mr. Erdogan, said Berk Esen, an associate professor of political science at Sabanci University in Istanbul.
“He made it clear to Erdogan that the train is moving, it is coming in his direction, and he won’t be able to stop it with the normal means,” Mr. Esen said. As a result, Mr. Erdogan “went for the jugular.”
Prosecutors have accused Mr. Imamoglu of leading a criminal organization and overseeing bribery, bid-rigging and other crimes at City Hall. He stands accused in a second investigation of supporting terrorism through his political coordination with a pro-Kurdish group.
Turkey’s opposition has vowed to go ahead with the primary on Sunday to name him its presidential candidate and called for protests against his detention.
The government has banned public demonstrations in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, shut down main streets and subway stations, and restricted access to social media platforms that activists use to organize. It has called on people to trust the legal process and insisted that the courts are independent.
“Attempting to associate judicial investigations and cases with our president is, to say the least, an act of audacity and irresponsibility,” Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc told reporters on Wednesday, calling the separation of powers “a fundamental principle.”
“The judiciary does not take orders from anyone,” he said.
