'Elections, regardless of their results, do not change what Turkey has experienced under Erdoğan’s leadership,' writes Enes Kanter Freedom
n an interview with CNN journalist Becky Anderson on May 19, 2023, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan fell short of an outright election victory, hecriticism of Turkey’s long slide toward authoritarianism: “How could someone who is going into a runoff election instead of completing the election in the first round be a dictator?”
The Turkish President seemed startled over the charges leveled against him and did not mask his discontent. “That is the reality,” he explained. “We have an alliance with 322 MPs in Parliament and the leader of this alliance will go for the runoffs in the first position. What kind of a dictator is that?”during his 2020 campaign. But the broader target of Erdoğan’s chiding is the Western world, which has depicted him as a strongman leader over his now 20-year rule.
This argument not just reeks of gross logical errors, but it is also misleading. That Erdoğan “gracefully” consented to the result does not obviate the fact that the elections were hardly fair. In itsafter the vote, the observing delegation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that while the contest was “competitive and largely free,” Erdoğan had an “unjustified advantage” over the opposition due to restrictions on the press and free assembly.
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