Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
The arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the leading political rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on corruption charges — after being accused of both corruption and terrorism — marks yet another sign that Turkey is becoming the next Iran: A state where elections are tightly controlled, rigged in advance and reduced to a democratic façade without free and fair campaign conditions.
Turkey’s Islamist ruler has not yet established an official Turkish equivalent of Iran’s Guardian Council — a 12-member body that vets all candidates in elections and disqualifies those who pose a perceived threat to the mullah regime. However, the arrest of İmamoğlu, following the earlier imprisonment of popular Kurdish political leader Selahattin Demirtaş, who has been in jail since 2016, confirms that a de facto Guardian Council is taking shape in Turkey.
In this evolving system, Erdogan, a self-styled, caliph wannabe, holds unchecked authority over who can truly challenge him in elections. This power-hungry and corrupt dictator sees himself as divinely ordained to rule Turkey and has made it his mission to spread his divisive political Islamist ideology beyond its borders. He does not hesitate to use any means necessary — including violence, bloodshed and the operations of his loyalists and proxies both within Turkey and abroad — to achieve his ambitions.
For over a decade Erdogan has systematically weaponized the criminal justice system, installing loyalist judges and prosecutors while co-opting opposition figures through bribery, blackmail and intimidation. His goal is to ensure that any candidate who makes it onto the ballot is already set up for failure. This strategy of divide-and-rule within the opposition may soon become institutionalized — much like Iran’s Guardian Council — if Erdogan succeeds in drafting a new constitution to replace the current one. His ultimate objective is to dismantle Turkey’s already flawed parliamentary democracy and cement his autocratic rule.
Behind this charade lies Erdogan’s ultimate objective: to establish a constitution that reflects his political Islamist ideology, imposing a rigid, unchecked system of governance on Turkey’s 85 million citizens. Having already transformed the secular parliamentary system, he is now accelerating toward a theocratic dictatorship. While he has not yet fully realized his vision, every move he makes brings Turkey closer to that reality.
İmamoğlu posed a significant challenge to Erdogan. He ran three times for Istanbul mayor against Erdogan’s candidate, winning on all three occasions — including a rerun in June 2019, which was triggered after the government-controlled election commission controversially annulled the March 2019 results. The popular mayor is now positioned to become Erdogan’s main challenger in the May 2028 presidential election, or possibly even sooner if snap elections are called.
Some of the allegations against İmamoğlu and his associates appear credible, based on the evidence presented so far. This is not surprising, considering the widespread corruption and kickbacks that plague municipalities in Turkey, regardless of whether they are controlled by the ruling party or the opposition. However, this does not justify an outright arrest, especially at the investigation stage. It is clear that the entire operation is politically motivated.
Should İmamoğlu be convicted — a highly likely scenario — he would be disqualified from running, forcing the opposition to field a less popular candidate. Like a meticulous gardener, Erdogan has been shaping Turkey’s political landscape to ensure the survival of his authoritarian regime. By rigging the electoral process from the outset, he secures the desired outcome, a tactic that has been key to his prolonged hold on power, even as Turkey faces deepening economic and financial hardship.
İmamoğlu is not the first politician to be forced out of the game by President Erdogan, and he most likely won’t be the last. There has been no shortage of public figures neutralized by the regime. For example, Meral Akşener, a nationalist politician who mounted a serious challenge against Erdogan before suddenly withdrawing, was reportedly blackmailed, targeting a family member. Erdogan threatened to imprison Akşener’s son over unlawful business dealings, compelling her to strike a deal and ultimately withdraw from politics after the 2023 presidential election.
In the 2014 presidential election — Turkey’s first direct popular vote for the presidency — Erdogan managed to manipulate the opposition into selecting a weak candidate, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, a low-profile figure proposed by far-right nationalist leader Devlet Bahçeli. After the failed bid Bahçeli quickly aligned with Erdogan, suggesting that Erdogan had struck a deal with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) long before the election to secure a victory. The public was largely unfamiliar with İhsanoğlu, and as expected, he lost.
Similarly, in 2018 the opposition put forward Muharrem İnce, a controversial politician known for allegations of womanizing and excessive drinking. On election night, İnce was conspicuously absent, conceding defeat before the results were even clear. He later formed a splinter party, allegedly to fragment the opposition and further Erdogan’s interests.
Sinan Oğan, a candidate supported by a coalition of four far-right parties, received millions of dollars from Erdogan’s camp after splitting the opposition vote and subsequently endorsing Erdogan in the 2023 runoff election.
In the same election, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the main opposition challenger leading the six-party Nation Alliance, failed to unseat Erdogan. Kılıçdaroğlu was led to believe he could win by co-opted opposition media and some of his senior advisors, who secretly aligned with Erdogan, despite having lost eight previous elections as Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader since 2010.
Examples of co-opted, intimidated, and bought-off opposition figures are scattered throughout Turkey’s political graveyard.
Above all, launching and sustaining a viable opposition platform in Turkey has become nearly impossible, as all levers of power remain firmly under Erdogan’s control.
Turkey’s mass media is almost entirely under government control, following the closure of hundreds of outlets and the imprisonment or forced exile of numerous journalists since 2015. This enables the government to shape the national narrative and public agenda before, during and after election campaigns. Any opposition candidate can be easily discredited in the public eye through a relentless barrage of lies, manipulations and half-truths.
Furthermore, Erdogan’s crackdown on business figures aligned with opposition groups — such as the Gülen movement, a faith-based organization opposed to his corrupt governance — has severely weakened the opposition’s ability to finance election campaigns. The unlawful seizure of assets worth tens of billions of dollars and the imprisonment of businesspeople who refused to endorse Erdogan’s rule have sent a chilling message to Turkey’s business community.
If, despite these underhanded tactics, an opposition figure manages to prevail, Erdogan has contingency plans in place. He has repeatedly launched criminal proceedings, often based on fabricated charges, to remove democratically elected officials — particularly Kurdish mayors. Should public outrage or protests arise in response, he does not hesitate to unleash state security forces to violently suppress dissent.
While Erdogan has methodically dismantled parliamentary democracy, he has been aided by the dismal legacy of the main opposition CHP. For decades, the CHP spearheaded authoritarian policies that alienated the Turkish public, enforcing militant secularism and repressive measures, including censorship, criminalizing dissent and denying conservative women access to education.
Erdogan has skillfully capitalized on public resentment toward the CHP, keeping it alive as a weak and ineffective opposition. Despite the CHP’s recent attempts to distance itself from its past actions and offer apologies, it has yet to convince mainstream Turkish voters of its commitment to democratic principles. The CHP’s credibility gap with voters persists to this day.
One must also consider the shadowy and stealthy role of Turkey’s intelligence agency, MIT — an unaccountable entity at Erdogan’s disposal — engaged in false flag operations, influence campaigns and intimidation tactics to suppress opposition forces. MIT has been granted carte blanche by Erdogan to smear opposition figures, pry into their private lives, threaten to leak compromising information about their personal affairs, abduct individuals to secret black sites for torture and orchestrate disinformation campaigns through operatives working under the guise of journalism.
As a result of all these factors, Turkey today has no real opposition and lacks political pluralism. Only regime-approved candidates are allowed to play the role of the opposition, as long as they do not pose a serious threat to Erdogan’s rule, adopt the regime’s narrative and confine themselves to the strict red lines drawn around them.
Ultimately, one must concede that Erdogan has effectively assumed the role of another Ayatollah or Supreme Leader in the Middle East, wielding absolute authority over all state affairs, including the military, judiciary, intelligence apparatus, legislature and media.
