Ömer Murat*
In the 2000 film “Gladiator,” starring Russell Crowe, the Roman emperor secretly arranges for his gladiatorial opponent to be stabbed in the back before their showdown in the Colosseum. The ruler thereby projects the image of having defeated a celebrated warrior through personal skill and courage, gaining the prestige and public applause that a real victory would confer while avoiding any actual risk.
A similar logic appears to underpin recent developments in Turkish politics. Although Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has the power to remove his political opponents from the arena via the courts, he is concerned about the autocratic appearance that overt suppression would create. Instead, he preserves the veneer of a fair electoral contest while ensuring his opponents enter the arena fatally wounded. They are, in effect, stabbed in the back before the campaign can begin.
A key reason for preserving this carefully managed façade is Turkey’s strategic relationship with the West. As a member of NATO and the Council of Europe, Turkey occupies a different position from many authoritarian states in the Middle East and Central Asia. An openly rigged electoral process would invite sharper scrutiny in Western capitals and raise uncomfortable questions about Turkey’s place in those institutions. Maintaining the appearance of democratic competition helps protect those ties, even as democratic standards continue to erode.
The architecture of this system took shape after the 2017 constitutional referendum, which replaced Turkey’s parliamentary system with an executive presidency and concentrated sweeping powers in Erdoğan’s hands. The vote was marred by serious irregularities, most notably the electoral board’s controversial decision on election day to allow ballots without official seals to be counted.
A later international academic study found statistical evidence consistent with organized ballot stuffing at numerous polling stations during the referendum and concluded that without those anomalies, voters would likely have rejected the presidential system. The same researchers later identified similar statistical irregularities in the 2018 elections.
The judiciary itself has undergone profound change. After a coup attempt in 2016, thousands of judges and prosecutors were dismissed. They were replaced by a large number of newcomers. Official data later showed that a significant proportion of the approximately 21,000 current judges and prosecutors had three years of experience or less. This rapid turnover produced a bench that is more responsive to political signals than to independent legal reasoning. Empowered by these partisan courts, Erdoğan has successfully orchestrated the arrest or political disqualification of formidable rivals who posed genuine democratic threats.
The most recent illustration came on May 21, when the Ankara Regional Court of Justice annulled the Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) 2023 leadership congress. The decision effectively removed the party’s current leader, Özgür Özel, and reinstated his predecessor, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
The ruling appears aimed at weakening the CHP’s more dynamic figures, particularly İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş, both of whom are widely seen as stronger potential challengers to Erdoğan. By dismantling the party’s current leadership structure, the court decision risks reshaping the CHP in a way that better serves Erdoğan’s political interests.
For years, the stability of the current system rested on an implicit three-way accommodation involving Erdoğan; Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP); and Kılıçdaroğlu. This governance structure operated as a delicate tripod, maintained through the indirect, tacit alignment of these three figures. Kılıçdaroğlu’s sudden removal from this equation has destabilized the regime, revealing how much the ruling establishment relied on the predictable dynamics of the previous opposition leadership. As a leader who facilitated the ruling party’s successes from the disputed 2017 referendum through the 2023 elections, Kılıçdaroğlu represents the comfortable status quo that the regime desperately seeks to revive.
The court ruling can also be interpreted as an attempt to forcefully reinsert the former CHP leader into the equation after the party, under Özel, resisted efforts to make it more compliant and kept its strongest potential presidential contenders in play. Both mayors have been widely projected to defeat Erdoğan in a direct matchup. Erdoğan perceives them as his greatest vulnerability and prefers opponents whose profiles allow him to exploit traditional cultural divides between secularists and conservatives.
It is anticipated that Kılıçdaroğlu will be used to marginalize capable challengers like İmamoğlu. The objective is to field a presidential candidate who can temporarily placate the opposition base but who lacks the broad appeal necessary to attract center-right voters. If the ensuing grassroots backlash becomes uncontrollable, the reinstated leader could transfer the party leadership to a figure acceptable to Erdoğan, deliberately fracturing the anti-government coalition.
These domestic political machinations are unfolding against the backdrop of profound economic vulnerability, poised to worsen as political and social instability deepens following global market shocks triggered by the Iran war. To maintain international legitimacy amid domestic overreach, Erdoğan has sought to appease Western financial and political capitals. It is hardly a coincidence that, just before the court annulled 2023 party congress of the CHP, he spoke with US President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Turkey’s treasury and finance minister, Mehmet Şimşek, and Central Bank Governor Fatih Karahan were courting foreign investors in London. Erdoğan assumes that as long as Turkey accommodates the White House’s strategic imperatives and the financial demands of international markets, it will be insulated from international blowback regarding its democratic backsliding.
US Ambassador to Turkey Thomas J. Barrack’s approach appears grounded in transactional diplomacy: Granting Erdoğan the international validation he seeks will ensure compliance with Washington’s strategic priorities. However, this calculus overlooks a fundamental geopolitical truth: Major global powers rarely commit long-term resources to prop up a regime rapidly losing domestic support and institutional legitimacy.
Ultimately, a government dependent on repeated borrowing cannot reassure international investors while dismantling the rule of law at home. That contradiction weakens the claim of rational economic management, fuels perceptions of political risk and can drive up borrowing costs. In this sense, the court ruling on the 2023 CHP congress is less a display of Erdoğan’s unassailable power than a sign of anxiety and strategic exhaustion.
In a global economic climate defined by stubborn inflation and volatile energy markets, economies like Turkey’s require legal and political predictability above all else. By cementing Turkey’s reputation as a jurisdiction devoid of judicial independence and fraught with political risk, recent court rulings will only deepen the nation’s economic malaise.
Political sociology demonstrates that top-down electoral engineering frequently misfires. In Hungary, despite extensive state resources and media dominance, a grassroots movement coalesced around a center-right candidate and delivered a decisive defeat to the long-ruling populist government of Viktor Orbán, demonstrating that even formidable institutional advantages can prove brittle when public sentiment shifts decisively.
Turkey’s March 2024 local elections already showed the limits of resource mobilization and narrative control: Despite commanding the bulk of media and state apparatus, the ruling alliance lost ground in major cities. When citizens conclude that the political system no longer offers meaningful choices, accumulated grievances can override propaganda and institutional barriers alike.
The May 21 court decision, far from demonstrating consolidated strength, more plausibly reflects acute anxiety about the opposition’s trajectory and the regime’s eroding popular base. By resorting to judicial instruments to reshape the main opposition party, Erdoğan has reinforced perceptions of arbitrariness rather than resolving the underlying sources of instability.
Once an electorate collectively resolves to break free from authoritarian governance, the superficial legal and political barriers erected by the regime inevitably crumble before the tide of democratic change. Recent judicial interventions do not signify a regime securing its future. In politics, as in the ancient arena, contrived victories rarely confer lasting legitimacy, and they can accelerate the very unraveling they are meant to prevent.
* Ömer Murat is a political analyst and a former Turkish diplomat who currently lives in Germany.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Turkish Minute.