Autocracy is the Greatest Economic Threat to Turkey
Şebnem Kalemli-Özcan: A professor of economics at Brown University and director of the Global Links Lab, she is a former policy advisor at the International Monetary Fund and a former chief economist for the Middle East and North Africa at the World Bank.
Twelve years ago, I published a commentary asking, “Why did Turkey revolt?” Protesters had flooded the streets of Istanbul to protect Gezi Park from being transformed into a shopping center. Today, they have returned, not for trees or green spaces, but in response to the culmination of years of chaos and creeping autocracy. Back then, as now, the protests reflect a profound and growing frustration with the ongoing dismantling of democratic institutions in Turkey.
Last week, Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, who defeated the ruling Justice and Development Party in local elections twice, was arrested on the very day he was expected to announce his candidacy for the 2028 presidential election. The charges against him, including bribery and abuse of power, are widely viewed as politically motivated. İmamoğlu is seen as the most credible contender against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and opposition leaders argue that his sudden arrest is no coincidence.
The public responded with anger. Protests erupted across the country, from Istanbul and Ankara to Izmir, Konya, Diyarbakır, and beyond. For many millions who joined the protests, it is no longer about one man or one judicial decision. It’s about a political system that has lost its legitimacy. The question reverberating through Turkey now is whether the country’s slide into autocracy has finally reached a point of no return.
For those remembering the Gezi protests of 2013, the images are familiar: tear gas in the streets, chants in public squares, police surrounding courthouses and universities. However, this time, the economy is at the center of the unrest. In 2013, Turkey was still considered a success story among emerging economies. Growth was strong, inflation hovered around 6%, and the lira was stable. The Justice and Development Party, still benefiting from the credibility of reforms supported by the IMF in the early 2000s, enjoyed respect from markets and foreign investors.
But that rosy picture has collapsed. By 2025, growth has slowed, inflation has remained in double digits, despite the central bank recently returning to traditional monetary policy. While some foreign capital that had fled due to years of mismanagement began returning last year, İmamoğlu’s arrest has shattered investor confidence once more. The lira has declined, and the risk premium for Turkey has risen.
Just as in 2013, the deeper message of the ongoing protests is clear: economic performance cannot be separated from the health of institutions. You can have capable technocrats in the central bank and the Ministry of Finance, but if the judiciary is politicized, the media is suppressed, and academic institutions are under siege, then these “adults in the room” are not sufficient. Both foreign and local investors assess political risk as economic risk, leading to increased capital costs.
Competitive elections and capable technocrats alone are not enough to sustain democracy. It is the institutions that determine this. When the rule of law is undermined, dissent is silenced, and universities and the media lose their independence, the economy will falter as well.
İmamoğlu’s imprisonment may be the last straw for Turks who understand this connection between institutions and economic stability. More than just a popular mayor, İmamoğlu is a national symbol of political plurality and the potential for democracy. His significant victories in Istanbul reflect a broad desire for change, and his removal now suggests that Erdoğan’s regime is unwilling to allow that change to happen through democratic means.
What makes this moment more significant than Gezi is the scale and diversity of resistance. While the 2013 protests were largely driven by urban secular youth, today’s protests encompass a range of social, generational, and ideological groups. Students, unionized workers, small business owners, conservative youth, liberals, the elderly, and Kurds march together under the unified chant: “Rights, Law, Justice.” Their cause goes beyond İmamoğlu. They are protesting the deliberate use of government institutions to criminalize dissent and entrench economic inequality.
When justice becomes politicized, opponents are deemed traitors, and those connected to the regime thrive while independent voices are punished and marginalized. Structural issues—such as femicides, educational inequalities, and youth disenfranchisement—remain unaddressed, as public resources are diverted toward rewriting history and rewarding loyalists.
This should be a concern not only for Turkish citizens but also for the country’s allies—especially in the United States. Indeed, the similarities with the Trump administration are hard to miss. Unlike many European democracies, which quickly condemned the imprisonment of İmamoğlu, the U.S. response to the erosion of democratic institutions in a NATO member state of 85 million people has been weak.
Worse yet, familiar patterns from those who lived in Turkey over the past decade are beginning to appear within the United States. The Trump administration repeatedly targeted intellectual institutions, especially universities. Since university-educated voters tend to lean towards opposition (Democrats), academia became a scapegoat. Attacks on academic freedom, the rejection of science, and the promotion of conspiracy theories have all been part of the institutional decline witnessed in Turkey since 2013.
Whether in denying the documented link between interest rates and inflation (as Erdoğan did) or rejecting climate science, rewriting January 6th history, and spreading misinformation about COVID-19 (as Trump did), attacks on truth are central to autocratic governance. Universities are not merely centers of learning; they are guardians of the public mind, and without them, democracy crumbles.
Turkey has not yet become a failed democracy, but it is perilously close to becoming one. Whether it returns to a path of institutional reform or continues its descent into autocracy will depend on the choices made in the coming days. The international community—particularly the United States—must pay close attention, not only for Turkey’s geopolitical significance, but also because the unfolding conflict in its streets between students and security forces reflects a global battle between democracy and its foes.
Democracies rarely die suddenly. Their demise is the culmination of a process involving political persecution, the imprisonment or exclusion of dissenters, the criminalization of protest, the monopolization of control over universities, and the silencing of those who know the truth. To paraphrase Dylan Thomas, the Turks are showing that they will not go gently into that autocratic night.
