Opponents say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is manipulating the courts and media to cement his power and is now trying to block a leading contender from running for president.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan entered the year facing a tangled web of political problems unprecedented in his two decades at the top of Turkey's power.
Voters were angry about persistently high inflation. His political party's popularity had fallen. And his opponents had coalesced around Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who had made it clear that he was aiming for the presidency.
Then on Wednesday, just four days before the mayor was due to be nominated as the political opposition's presidential candidate, dozens of police arrested him at his home on corruption and terrorism charges.
Mr. Erdogan’s opponents see the arrest as a ploy to cut short Mr. Imamoglu’s presidential campaign before it gets underway. At stake is not only who will be Turkey’s next president, analysts, opposition leaders and foreign officials say, but also the extent to which Turkey, one of the world’s 20 largest economies and a U.S. ally in NATO, remains a democracy.
“Turkey has never been a perfect democracy, but the arrest of a presidential candidate takes that imperfection to a new level,” said Arife Kose, a doctoral student studying Turkish politics at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. The use of state power to rule out competitive elections, she said, “means it is moving closer to being a fully authoritarian country.”
Mr Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics since 2003, first as prime minister and then as president since 2014. During that time, he has delivered enormous economic growth and led his ruling Justice and Development Party to repeated election victories.
