THE OBSERVER – EDITORIAL: Voters suffering from the president’s terrible economic policies might have finally had enough
Courts in Turkey generally bow to the wishes of the country’s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This is unsurprising, given his purges of judges and prosecutors during his two decades in power. So last week’s court verdict sentencing Istanbul’s popular opposition mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, to more than two years in jail and banning him from public life followed a familiar pattern.
That this decision was politically motivated goes without saying. Little of importance happens in Erdoğan’s Turkey without his direction or consent. In short, a working-class populist who began life as a reformer fighting for social justice has developed into a cantankerous, dictatorial bully.
For Erdoğan, politics is personal – and İmamoğlu represents possibly the biggest threat to his re-election hopes in next year’s presidential poll. İmamoğlu has already bested the president once. In 2019, he triumphed in Istanbul’s re-run mayoral contest after Erdoğan’s ruling AKP party refused, Trump-like, to accept his initial victory. » | Observer editorial | Sunday, December 18, 2022
