Strongmen die, but authoritarianism is forever

A few summers ago, a Turkish military officer stopped me to chat after a lecture I gave at a conference in Washington. During our conversation, he observed that Western analysts tend to exaggerate the importance of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, insisting that "He is just a man, but we [the armed forces] have been around for a long time and will still be here when he is gone". The suggestion was that the military can wait out Erdogan – this was before the failed July 2016 coup – and when the Turkish leader does finally leave office, Turkey will revert to something resembling a pre-Justice and Development Party (AKP) status quo.

This idea – that if Erdogan were to lose an election, retire, or die, Turkish politics would automatically change – is not limited to the officer I met. Any number of Turkish academics, journalists, and policymakers have expressed their belief that Turkey would return to a system that was democratic enough to inspire hope that one day Turkey could join the club of democracies.

Foreign Policy