A shadow of growing despotism lurks over Turkey’s elections
#Erdogan's sagging popularity ahead of Turkey’s #May 14 #elections attests to many Turks’ #disillusionment with the highly #personalized #autocracy Mr. Erdogan has constructed, built on #repression, the #subjugation of dissenting views and once-independent institutions, and a deepening #contempt for human rights and democratic norms.
Mr. Erdogan’s colossal #mismanagement of Turkey’s economy, one of the world’s 20 biggest, has eroded living standards, decimated the #Turkish lira’s value and sent #inflation soaring.
Little wonder so many Turks are angry; his opponent, a colorless former bureaucrat, leads in the polls.
The elections are also a test of the capacity of democratic elections to throw off the yoke of his increasingly one-man rule in a country of 85 million people.
The stakes could hardly be higher, first and foremost for Turks themselves, who might justifiably worry that #authoritarianism would yield to dictatorship if Mr. Erdogan won another term, but also for Washington and its European allies
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/04/turkey-election-erdogan-authoritarianism/