Turkish author and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk warned in a Guardian opinion piece on Friday that the jailing of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu marks the collapse of what remains of democracy in Turkey.
Pamuk described an unprecedented security crackdown in İstanbul following the arrest of İmamoğlu, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main political rival, on charges of corruption and terrorism, which the author called politically motivated.
“Turkey’s democracy is fighting for its life,” Pamuk wrote, adding that the charges came just days before İmamoğlu was expected to be named the main opposition’s presidential candidate.
The novelist, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, said he had not seen such a level of government repression in five decades of living in the city, citing the closure of metro stations, bans on protests and a heavy police presence in central İstanbul.
Pamuk also warned of the “coercive uniformity” imposed by the Turkish state over the past decade, accusing the government of turning the country into an “electoral democracy” without true freedoms of speech or dissent.
Drawing parallels to Erdoğan’s own jailing in 1998, Pamuk suggested that the president may be repeating history by using imprisonment to silence a popular political challenger, a move that could backfire by increasing İmamoğlu’s public support.
The essay concluded with a bleak outlook, describing the arrest as the end of even limited democratic processes in the country. “This is unacceptable and distressing, and that’s why more and more people are joining the latest protests,” Pamuk wrote.