A lot has been written about how U.S. President Donald Trump is pursuing an authoritarian agenda at residence whereas embracing dictators overseas. However even this criticism doesn’t totally seize the best way he has reconfigured the worldwide order to strengthen the logic of authoritarianism itself.
The outcomes will be seen with regrettable readability in Turkey, the place President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a number one beneficiary of Trump’s force-based worldwide dysfunction. Erdogan has concurrently denounced the US and cozied as much as Trump, all whereas personifying the nationwide power that Turkey depends on in an anarchic and intolerant world. Turkey’s opposition, in the meantime, is animated by an idealistic religion within the discarded liberal order and vows to desert Erdogan’s nationalist international coverage. Except it reconsiders and doubles down on nationalism, Turkish voters will return to Erdogan.
A lot has been written about how U.S. President Donald Trump is pursuing an authoritarian agenda at residence whereas embracing dictators overseas. However even this criticism doesn’t totally seize the best way he has reconfigured the worldwide order to strengthen the logic of authoritarianism itself.
The outcomes will be seen with regrettable readability in Turkey, the place President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a number one beneficiary of Trump’s force-based worldwide dysfunction. Erdogan has concurrently denounced the US and cozied as much as Trump, all whereas personifying the nationwide power that Turkey depends on in an anarchic and intolerant world. Turkey’s opposition, in the meantime, is animated by an idealistic religion within the discarded liberal order and vows to desert Erdogan’s nationalist international coverage. Except it reconsiders and doubles down on nationalism, Turkish voters will return to Erdogan.
Erdogan presents himself because the incarnation of Turkish aspirations for regional and world energy. He has lengthy advocated for a multipolar world order not dominated by nice powers, saying, “The world is greater than 5”—a reference to the everlasting members of the United Nations Safety Council. In pursuit of this imaginative and prescient, Ankara has cultivated robust relations with Venezuelan President Nicólas Maduro. When Maduro was captured by U.S. forces in January, Erdogan’s chief advisor, Mehmet Ucum, acknowledged, “There isn’t a choice aside from power-based battle towards imperialist aggression.”
On the identical time, Erdogan has additionally acted as an acquiescent Trump ally who’s eager to cooperate with the US when it serves his functions. Thus, as his advisor condemned imperialist aggression, Erdogan himself abstained from expressing any criticism of the Maduro raid. After a dialog with Trump on Jan. 27, Erdogan stated, “We are going to proceed to develop the cooperation between the US and Turkey,” including, “It’s in our widespread curiosity that the relations progress in all areas.” Turkey accepted the invitation to affix Trump’s Board of Peace, whereas most NATO allies declined.
The connection that Erdogan enjoys with Trump gives Turkey with alternatives to advertise its nationwide pursuits in tandem with the US. In response to a current survey by the European Council on Overseas Relations, solely 11 p.c of Turks see the US as an ally with whom they share values, however 42 p.c see it as a crucial companion, with whom Turkey should strategically cooperate.
This opportunistic method helps Erdogan make Turkey into a big geopolitical actor, able to projecting army and financial energy from the Center East and the Balkans to Africa and Central Asia. Disparaged by critics as an expression of imperial delusion, the extension of Turkish affect is a supply of nationwide delight and an unquestionable asset for Erdogan in right now’s unsure world.
What’s extra, altering worldwide situations have more and more fused the case for projecting energy internationally with Erdogan’s case for projecting energy in home politics.
Thinker Thomas Hobbes held {that a} sovereign should take pleasure in unconstrained energy in an anarchic world. Turkish ultranationalists—with whom Erdogan has been allied with for the previous decade—have traditionally subscribed to a Hobbesian view of human existence as a warfare of all towards all. The autumn of the Ottoman Empire and the close to extinction of Turkish statehood after World Struggle I incited Turkish nationalists to glorify brute drive as the only means for nationwide survival, they usually have held civil liberties in contempt. Writer Nihal Atsiz, an mental loadstar of Turkish ultranationalists, asserted, “Turks don’t want extreme liberty for a dignified life.” Survival and dignity relied on ethnic purity and uncooked energy.
Nationalism is ascendant in Turkey right now, significantly among the many youth. Nevertheless, it’s not clear if nationalist Turks will countenance continued authoritarian rule. In response to a current survey, the nationalism of the Turkish youth doesn’t appear to have as strongly anti-democratic, far-right overtones, which is in contrast to most different international locations. This implies that authoritarian rule has inoculated at the very least a youthful era of nationalists towards authoritarianism. Be that as it might, Turkey’s predominantly nationalist-conservative citizens will now be on the lookout for robust, if not essentially authoritarian, management that serves nationwide energy pursuits. That places Turkey’s anti-nationalist liberal opposition and its presidential candidate at a drawback.
Ekrem Imamoglu, the presidential candidate of the Republican Individuals’s Celebration (CHP) and who has been jailed since March 2025 on corruption costs, has been anxious to court docket European representatives, and a dinner with the British ambassador in 2022 prompted main criticism. Imamoglu has now made himself much more weak to claims that he’s inattentive to Turkey’s nationwide safety considerations and is ready to supply concessions to the Western alliance.
In a bid to mobilize Western help, Imamoglu has pledged to make Turkey a reliable NATO ally, becoming a member of an anti-Turkey opinion within the West that has referred to as Turkey’s loyalty to the Western alliance into query. Imamoglu has reproached the Turkish authorities for delaying Sweden and Finland’s NATO accession, ascribed equal blame on the Turkish and Greek sides for the continued division of Cyprus, and referred to as for the lodging of Western allies—that’s, primarily Greece—within the jap Mediterranean.
Nevertheless, Turkey had respectable causes to delay the Nordic international locations’ NATO accession. Sweden had lengthy offered a sanctuary for the Kurdistan Staff’ Celebration (PKK), which was designated as a terrorist group by the US and the European Union. Imamoglu’s rhetoric additionally downplays the truth that a U.N. plan for the reunification of Cyprus was accepted by Turkey and Turkish Cypriots however rejected by the Greek Cypriots in a 2004 referendum. Imamoglu has not elaborated on the concessions that he would make to accommodate Greece and Greek Cypriots, however Turkish voters have been duly warned.
Imamoglu wagers that “a extra democratic Turkey might be a extra influential, trusted, and stabilizing drive in a fractured world.” However nonetheless true that rhetoric is, it is going to be ignored right now. To Turkish voters and Western politicians, it feels dated; an idealistic argument that belongs to the sooner age of globalization, when the unfold of democratic values was anticipated to usher in world concord. At a time of geopolitical rivalries, democratic Turkish politicians have misplaced even the pretense of help from the West. Ozgur Ozel, the chief of the CHP, has expressed his frustration with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on a number of events, saying Starmer is ignoring the democratic backsliding in Turkey and is prioritizing his relationship with Erdogan. Ozel stated that Starmer, a fellow social democrat, has “deserted” him.
Extra damningly, the CHP dangers being deserted by newly received voters. The social democratic opposition social gathering carried the native elections in 2024, making inroads into Erdogan’s conservative base. It grew to become Turkey’s main social gathering for the primary time since 1977—the final time it received a common election—and it nonetheless maintains a lead, albeit narrowly, within the polls.
Ozel could finally exchange Imamoglu because the CHP’s presidential candidate, since Imamoglu is unlikely to be free of jail in time to run within the 2028 election. Ozel is keenly conscious that profitable over conservative voters is the important thing to electoral success. In a current dialog for Overseas Coverage, he defined that his technique is to sway conservatives with insurance policies that handle poverty and inequality with out brandishing a leftist banner that places right-wing voters off. That’s a smart technique in a rustic the place inequalities in wealth and revenue have elevated dramatically however solely a minority of the inhabitants identifies as leftist. Nevertheless, financial woes however, conservatives might be prompted to return to Erdogan if the CHP fails to reassure them by matching the president because the custodian of nationwide energy.
The previous could provide clues for the longer term. The CHP succeeded within the Nineteen Seventies as a result of its charismatic chief, Bulent Ecevit, like Erdogan, loved a novel rapport with the favored courses. Ecevit referred to as for social justice and financial redistribution, however he wouldn’t have overcome the culturally and religiously rooted resistance of the conservative poor to the left if he hadn’t additionally been a standard-bearer of Turkish nationalism. In 1974, Ecevit defied the US and ordered the invasion of Cyprus in response to an try by Greece to annex the island. America punished Turkey by imposing an arms embargo in 1975, however Ecevit, who had turn into a well-liked hero, was rewarded on the poll field in 1977, when the CHP scored its largest electoral victory ever.
In Trump’s world, which is ruled by power and drive, nationalism—not liberalism—will resonate with voters. The CHP’s battle towards autocracy might be impaired if it fails to reassure voters that it’s going to battle for the nation’s pursuits. To remain related, the Turkish opposition might be compelled to desert its religion within the democratic West and embrace Erdogan’s rhetoric of Turkish power.
