Elec­tions, Tac­tics and Vio­lence – Erdoğan’s Soft Author­i­tar­i­an­ism and the Cur­rent Devel­op­ments (Part I)

In light of the recent wave of arrests tar­get­ing politi­cians of the main oppo­si­tion par­ty CHP – includ­ing the promi­nent May­or of Istan­bul, Ekrem İmamoğlu – and the sub­se­quent mass protests across the coun­try, an intense debate has erupt­ed in Turkey on whether Erdoğan’s regime is cur­rent­ly shift­ing from a com­pet­i­tive to a full author­i­tar­i­an regime.

So far, the CHP under its chair­man Özgür Özel has been able to effec­tive­ly mobi­lize pro­test­ers and has man­aged to pre­vent Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan from plac­ing Istanbul’s city admin­is­tra­tion or the CHP itself under state-appoint­ed trustee­ship. How­ev­er, it has not yet suc­ceed­ed in secur­ing the release of its key rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Hence, there is grow­ing spec­u­la­tion that elec­tions in Turkey may be abol­ished alto­geth­er in the near future, and that Erdoğan can no longer be vot­ed out of office. The fol­low­ing con­ver­sa­tion with Ulrike Flad­er address­es these and relat­ed questions.

Dr. Ulrike Flad­er is a senior lec­tur­er at the Depart­ment of Anthro­pol­o­gy and Cul­tur­al Research and mem­ber of the research group “Soft Author­i­tar­i­anisms” at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bre­men. She has been a close observ­er of the polit­i­cal devel­op­ment in Turkey for many years and is con­duct­ing research on its cur­rent author­i­tar­i­an government.

The inter­view was con­duct­ed on 30^th March 2025 by Dr. Çetin Gür­er, polit­i­cal and social sci­en­tist and Asso­ci­at­ed Fel­low at the Insti­tute of Inter­cul­tur­al and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies (InI­IS), Uni­ver­si­ty of Bre­men. Cetin Gürer:’s research inter­ests lie in the field of peace and con­flict stud­ies, plu­ral­ism and mod­els of auton­o­my, the Kur­dish Ques­tion and pol­i­tics and soci­ety in Turkey. He is a reg­u­lar com­men­ta­tor on cur­rent issues in Turkey for the media.

Part One

Dr. Çetin Gür­er: Today, we would like to talk about Erdoğan’s author­i­tar­i­an regime and the recent devel­op­ments in Turkey. The may­or of Istan­bul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was arrest­ed, and many observers now claim that Erdoğan’s regime is mov­ing from a com­pet­i­tive to a full author­i­tar­i­an sys­tem. Would you agree with this? Can we already speak of full author­i­tar­i­an­ism in Turkey?

Dr. Ulrike Flad­er: I wouldn’t go that far just yet. Time will tell. Every author­i­tar­i­an regime can, of course, become more extreme, and there’s no rea­son why Erdoğan would be exempt from even­tu­al­ly becom­ing a full-fledged dic­ta­tor. But based on my obser­va­tions, what we are cur­rent­ly wit­ness­ing is, once again, main­ly about secur­ing Erdoğan’s upcom­ing elec­toral vic­to­ry. That sug­gests that every­thing he’s doing at the moment is still tactical—part of what we, in our research group, refer to as “soft author­i­tar­i­an­ism”. That doesn’t mean it’s not author­i­tar­i­an. Erdoğan’s style of gov­er­nance has been author­i­tar­i­an for quite some time, but soft author­i­tar­i­an­ism is a par­tic­u­lar form of authoritarianism.

The Illu­sion of Elec­toral Removal

Çetin Gür­er: Could you elab­o­rate on that a bit more? Why do you say it’s been author­i­tar­i­an for quite some time? Does that mean İmamoğlu’s arrest is not a new development?

Ulrike Flad­er: We’ve talked about this before: The CHP is cur­rent­ly claim­ing that it is now final­ly clear that Erdoğan can’t be removed through elections—that the regime won’t end at the bal­lot box. But in my opin­ion, this has been clear ever since the elec­tions of June 2015. Back then, the HDP—a left­ist pro-Kur­dish party—won about 13% of the vote, which meant that Erdoğan lost his major­i­ty. That’s when he first refused to accept the elec­tion results, called for new elec­tions, and, in the mean­time, reignit­ed the war against the Kurds. That move brought the ultra-nation­al­ists to his side—something they had pre­vi­ous­ly rejected.

So that was already an author­i­tar­i­an step, clear­ly show­ing that Erdoğan would do what­ev­er it takes to stay in power—and that he could not sim­ply be vot­ed out. I actu­al­ly believe this hasn’t real­ly changed, even if the CHP con­tin­ued to hope that it might remove him through elec­tions. In my view, this has always been a fiction—and this illu­sion is at the heart of soft author­i­tar­i­an­ism. The regime works pre­cise­ly through main­tain­ing the illu­sion that alter­na­tion is still pos­si­ble. That the CHP kept believ­ing it would one day win through elec­tions, is in fact char­ac­ter­is­tic of soft authoritarianism.

Çetin Gür­er: But, it wasn’t just the CHP. Oth­er oppo­si­tion­al par­ties also kept believ­ing that Erdoğan could be defeat­ed at the bal­lot box.

Ulrike Flad­er: Of course, oppo­si­tion­al par­ties have con­tin­ued to win local elec­tions: in Istan­bul, for exam­ple, with İmamoğlu, in Ankara with Mansur Yavaş and also in many cities and towns in the Kur­dish region. This is pre­cise­ly the thing about this kind of regime that for­mal­ly upholds elec­tions: para­dox­i­cal­ly, there remains an albeit very small pos­si­bil­i­ty of alter­na­tion. That pos­si­bil­i­ty is nev­er entire­ly shut down – which is pre­cise­ly why it’s not total­i­tar­i­an­ism. But that doesn’t mean the regime can be brought down through elec­tions. That is an illu­sion. For that you need more than elec­tions. Oth­er­wise, we could still call it an “illib­er­al democ­ra­cy” or defi­cient democ­ra­cy – there are many such terms.

Çetin Gür­er: So if I under­stand you cor­rect­ly, you’re say­ing that İmamoğlu’s arrest does not mark a turn­ing point or a shift into full author­i­tar­i­an­ism. Erdoğan is still oper­at­ing with­in a soft or com­pet­i­tive author­i­tar­i­an frame­work. Is that correct?

Ulrike Flad­er: Exact­ly. When Lev­it­sky and Way speak of com­pet­i­tive author­i­tar­i­an­ism, they argue that the “play­ing field is uneven”.

Çetin Gür­er: What do they mean by that?

Ulrike Flad­er: That the polit­i­cal field, in which par­ties com­pete for pow­er, is unequal. That makes it espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult for the rul­ing pow­er to be vot­ed out. They describe a range of meth­ods with which oppo­si­tion­al politi­cians are imped­ed. Among them are impris­on­ment, being exiled, even murder.

But what I real­ly want to high­light is that in my own research the affec­tive dimen­sion is cen­tral. As an anthro­pol­o­gist, my work focus­es on dif­fer­ent aspects than polit­i­cal sci­en­tists do. Of course, we also look at legal and polit­i­cal prac­tices, but to me in this con­text it was key to under­stand how the oppo­si­tion reacts. And what I’ve clear­ly seen over the past years is a kind of con­stant oscil­la­tion between apa­thy and hope. Every time there’s an elec­tion, peo­ple – even those who firm­ly believe there’s no real democ­ra­cy left – still cast their vote and work hard to mobi­lize for the elec­tion, and have hope – although it’s only a fic­tion. In my opin­ion, this kind of play with people’s emo­tions is char­ac­ter­is­tic of this regime.

Çetin Gür­er: So pro­duc­ing hope is itself a tac­tic of the Erdoğan regime. That many peo­ple still want to believe that democ­ra­cy, elec­tions, and insti­tu­tions are working—at least to some extent—is, in fact, an illusion.

“Even if you ful­ly grasp the author­i­tar­i­an nature of the sys­tem, the mere pos­si­bil­i­ty that it could be over­turned has an extreme­ly pow­er­ful effect on you. As a mem­ber of the oppo­si­tion, you feel you have to act on that chance, no mat­ter how slim it may be”

Ulrike Flad­er: Exact­ly. I would go so far as to say that if it were absolute­ly clear that noth­ing could change, then peo­ple would start turn­ing to oth­er forms of resis­tance. From a posi­tion of pow­er, it’s a smart move. It’s a form of man­age­ment. In fact, I call it a man­age­ment of the oppo­si­tion. And I know that peo­ple actu­al­ly know exact­ly what is going on and nev­er­the­less this form of gov­ern­ment has such pow­er, because they can’t eas­i­ly detach them­selves from the hope that change might still be pos­si­ble.
Even if you ful­ly grasp the author­i­tar­i­an nature of the sys­tem, the mere pos­si­bil­i­ty that it could be over­turned has an extreme­ly pow­er­ful effect on you. As a mem­ber of the oppo­si­tion, you feel you have to act on that chance, no mat­ter how slim it may be and even if Erdoğan finds a way to manip­u­late the elec­tions or revoke the results in the end.

We could talk longer about this, but let’s return to your ques­tion: Is Erdoğan tran­si­tion­ing into full autoc­ra­cy? It is pos­si­ble. There are some signs that he is run­ning out of tac­tics. A soft author­i­tar­i­an regime requires some scope for tac­tics in order to secure that the auto­crat­ic wins the elec­tion. And we’ve seen Erdoğan use such tac­tics over and over again in the past years. There are no total bans on polit­i­cal par­ties. There is no com­plete shut­down of the media. Instead, we see the use of always selec­tive tactics—like impos­ing a broad­cast­ing ban on cer­tain TV chan­nels for two weeks or ten days. To me, that’s a very typ­i­cal exam­ple of this new form of author­i­tar­i­an­ism. We can dis­cuss whether it might also con­tain fas­cist ele­ments. But I still think that “author­i­tar­i­an­ism” is the more accu­rate term at this point.

These lim­it­ed mea­sures that are imple­ment­ed and then tak­en back; this con­stant back-and-forth
is, in my view, pre­cise­ly what makes this style of rule more sus­tain­able and long-last­ing
than a full author­i­tar­i­an sys­tem would be.

Rather Soft Author­i­tar­i­an than Dictator

Çetin Gür­er: In the past, Erdoğan had the back­ing of more than 50% of the pop­u­la­tion. Now, he can’t be sure to win the next elec­tion. Could a major­i­ty-backed author­i­tar­i­an­ism be dif­fer­ent from minor­i­ty-author­i­tar­i­an­ism? Is that per­haps the rea­son why Erdoğan might decide not to hold elec­tions at all anymore?

Ulrike Flad­er: Sure. That’s why I say we’re start­ing to see signs, one of them being whether Erdoğan still has room to maneu­ver when it comes to elec­tions. Because—regardless of whether we call it com­pet­i­tive author­i­tar­i­an­ism or some­thing else—elections remain cen­tral to this type of regime. But the auto­crat has to still be able to make them look legit­i­mate. There­fore, Erdoğan has to be able to cred­i­bly claim he has major­i­ty sup­port. For this, he needs to be able to apply cer­tain tactics.

And that’s the key ques­tion right now: What tools and tac­tics does Erdoğan still have at his dis­pos­al? He has already manip­u­lat­ed elec­toral dis­tricts. He has pres­sured the High Elec­tion Coun­cil (Yük­sek Seçim Kuru­lu). He can still engage in minor elec­toral fraud. He can dom­i­nate the media land­scape before an elec­tion, as he always does. He can deploy the mil­i­tary in cer­tain provinces to keep peo­ple from vot­ing. He can use vio­lence. But even these mea­sures have lim­its. At some point, they won’t be enough to secure his elec­toral victory.

“These lim­it­ed mea­sures that are imple­ment­ed and then tak­en back; this con­stant back-and-forth
is, in my view, pre­cise­ly what makes this style of rule more sus­tain­able and long-lasting”

After the last gen­er­al elec­tions, for exam­ple, Erdoğan pub­licly pro­claimed the elec­tions to have been a “fes­ti­val of democ­ra­cy” (Demokrasi Şöleni). It is inter­est­ing to dis­cuss this fram­ing as such, but here it is more impor­tant to ask why he was able to say that? Because, he was able to argue that he actu­al­ly won the elec­tions democratically.

Now, com­ing back to your ques­tion: If Erdoğan even­tu­al­ly runs out of ways to manip­u­late the sys­tem,
then he may have to stop hold­ing elec­tions alto­geth­er. But I still think there are sev­er­al steps left before we reach that point. The stakes are still fair­ly high: Turkey is still embed­ded in the glob­al community—it’s a mem­ber of NATO, it has ties to the EU, and so on. There are still many rea­sons why Erdoğan would pre­fer to remain a “soft” auto­crat rather than becom­ing a dic­ta­tor. But what I could imag­ine hap­pen­ing is anoth­er esca­la­tion in vio­lence, per­haps anoth­er state of emer­gency or on the oth­er hand a renewed wave of tac­ti­cal inter­ven­tions, declar­ing ear­ly elec­tions or tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ing them, or—perhaps we’ll talk more about this in a moment—exploiting new oppor­tu­ni­ties result­ing from a rap­proche­ment with the Kurds.

I would like to add one more point here, which leads in a new direc­tion, but also serves as an argu­ment that, in my opin­ion, the cur­rent devel­op­ment is not yet a tran­si­tion to com­plete author­i­tar­i­an­ism. It’s very inter­est­ing that Erdoğan is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing two dif­fer­ent kinds of pol­i­tics in par­al­lel: While these cur­rent pol­i­tics are unfold­ing towards the CHP and its sup­port­ers, the gov­ern­ment is con­duct­ing peace talks with the Kurds which could poten­tial­ly lead to some demo­c­ra­t­ic devel­op­ments in the near future—even if it does­n’t real­ly look like it at the moment. This opens a “back door” for Erdoğan. Using dif­fer­ent approach­es towards dif­fer­ent seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion allows him to cir­cum­vent this “total­iz­ing” step towards full author­i­tar­i­an­ism and main­tain an ele­ment of pseudo-democracy.

Soft Author­i­tar­i­an­ism: A Cun­ning Gov­ern­ing with Contradictions

Dr. Çetin Gür­er: Could you explain your con­cept of soft author­i­tar­i­an­ism in more detail?

Dr. Ulrike Flad­er: Sure, I’ve already hint­ed at the con­cept a lit­tle. First of all, “soft author­i­tar­i­an­ism” is a con­tra­dic­to­ry term. Many might imme­di­ate­ly won­der: how can author­i­tar­i­an­ism be soft? It sounds like a con­tra­dic­tion in itself. And that’s exact­ly what we’re try­ing to high­light. First of all, soft author­i­tar­i­an­ism is a hybrid form of gov­ern­ing. It still for­mal­ly looks like a democ­ra­cy, but it is clear­ly author­i­tar­i­an in prac­tice. Just to stress that: We don’t call it “illib­er­al democ­ra­cy” or any­thing sim­i­lar. We refrain from using the term democ­ra­cy. Instead, we clear­ly name it what it is: author­i­tar­i­an. The sec­ond point, which is cru­cial, is that “soft” does not mean an absence of vio­lence. This is one of the main ques­tions that come up.In fact, the term is meant to be some­what provoca­tive, or rather meant to get peo­ple think­ing. Espe­cial­ly when you’re talk­ing about Turkey, and par­tic­u­lar­ly as some­one like me, who has stud­ied state vio­lence against Kurds for many years, it would be absurd to deny the shear vio­lence this gov­ern­ment has brought upon the Kurds: the cur­fews and mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in 2015, the impris­on­ment of Kur­dish politi­cians, or the bomb­ings in North­east Syr­ia. I would even argue that the esca­la­tion of vio­lence against the Kurds after Erdo­gan lost his major­i­ty in the elec­tions of 2015 plays a very key role in Turkey’s author­i­tar­i­an trans­for­ma­tion. And that was bru­tal and obvi­ous state vio­lence. There­fore: “soft” does not mean “non-vio­lent”. Instead, what the con­cept is actu­al­ly try­ing to cap­ture is the flex­i­bil­i­ty of author­i­tar­i­an state prac­tices, the con­stant tac­ti­cal manoeu­vring, this ambigu­ous play, the use of con­tra­dic­tions that con­stant­ly deceives and makes the tran­si­tion to author­i­tar­i­an­ism hard to iden­ti­fy in the beginning.

“What the con­cept is actu­al­ly try­ing to cap­ture is the flex­i­bil­i­ty of author­i­tar­i­an state prac­tices, the con­stant tac­ti­cal manoeu­vring, this ambigu­ous play, the use of con­tra­dic­tions that con­stant­ly deceives and makes the tran­si­tion to author­i­tar­i­an­ism hard to iden­ti­fy in the beginning”

There are count­less exam­ples where the gov­ern­ment does some­thing deeply author­i­tar­i­an
which how­ev­er appears as a demo­c­ra­t­ic or exist­ing legal mea­sure. This is also the rea­son why legal pre­texts, like cor­rup­tion charges, are still need­ed to imprison polit­i­cal oppo­nents or new tax reg­u­la­tions to make it hard­er for crit­i­cal NGOs to oper­ate. One exam­ple I often men­tion is the OHAL Com­mis­sion (Inquiry Com­mis­sion on the State of Emer­gency Mea­sures). This com­mis­sion was offi­cial­ly estab­lished to allow those dis­missed by pres­i­den­tial decrees to regain access to the legal sys­tem, because under nor­mal judi­cial pro­ce­dures they were unable to file a com­plaint, as their cas­es weren’t even accept­ed by the courts. The Euro­pean Court of Human Rights had in fact instruct­ed Turkey to find a solu­tion, which led to the cre­ation of this com­mis­sion. The com­mis­sion there­fore, para­dox­i­cal­ly, opened a legal path­way to seek jus­tice, while at the same time being a com­plete­ly author­i­tar­i­an instru­ment. It nev­er intend­ed to inde­pen­dent­ly review the decrees and delib­er­ate­ly kept peo­ple stuck wait­ing in the process for eight years or longer. This dou­ble game is char­ac­ter­is­tic of the regime. It oper­ates deliberately—one could even say cunningly—by seiz­ing these con­tra­dic­tions.
And this is espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing, because it means that expos­ing con­tra­dic­tions is no longer effec­tive. From a Marx­ist per­spec­tive, resis­tance aris­es from rec­og­niz­ing and reveal­ing contradictions…

Çetin Gür­er: But, this no longer under­mines the system!

Ulrike Flad­er: Exact­ly. Just look at Trump and the whole “post-truth” debate. The dilem­ma that it is no longer pos­si­ble or very dif­fi­cult to tack­le post-truth argu­ments is not just a pop­ulist trait, it is a cru­cial fea­ture of the entire mode of gov­ern­ing. This kind of soft author­i­tar­i­an rule func­tions through inte­grat­ing its con­tra­dic­tions. That’s why you can’t sim­ply point to them and expect the sys­tem to collapse.

Çetin Gür­er: That means con­tra­dic­tions are part of the log­ic of this form of gov­ern­ing. They help Erdoğan stay in pow­er. He doesn’t need to explain or jus­ti­fy them. They can’t be solved with ordi­nary log­ic or rea­son­ing. Many con­tra­dic­tions don’t make the regime dys­func­tion­al— on the con­trary, they make it stronger.

Ulrike Flad­er: Yes. We might usu­al­ly assume author­i­tar­i­an­ism is “straight­for­ward”, even rigid. And peo­ple often angri­ly point out when Erdoğan con­tra­dicts him­self here or there. Although, many peo­ple in Turkey know exact­ly what I’m describ­ing when in every­day life, they say things like: “He’s play­ing with our minds” (Aklımı­zla oynuy­or). I’ve heard this from all sorts of peo­ple. It seems like mad­ness to them. But there’s a method to the mad­ness. And I believe that this method is cen­tral to this style of gov­ern­ment. But I wouldn’t say that the more con­tra­dic­tions, the better.

Çetin Gür­er: But, he does­n’t care whether the gov­ern­men­t’s actions appear con­tra­dic­to­ry or not, because he does­n’t have to jus­ti­fy them, or rather, he does­n’t even aim to be polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect in this regard.

Ulrike Flad­er: For me, the inten­tion behind the indi­vid­ual gov­ern­men­tal mea­sure is in fact sec­ondary. What real­ly mat­ters here is that prac­tices of gov­ern­ing oper­ate through simul­ta­ne­ous contradictions.

Çetin Gür­er: For exam­ple, the gov­ern­ment can be lead­ing a con­flict res­o­lu­tion process with Kurds while oust­ing demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed Kur­dish may­ors from their posi­tions. All of this hap­pens at the same time.

Ulrike Flad­er: For instance. Just the fact that an author­i­tar­i­an regime presents itself exter­nal­ly as a democ­ra­cy— that alone is already a con­tra­dic­tion. But, we also see how this is done on a small­er scale, again and again: A cer­tain mea­sure or legal process appears demo­c­ra­t­ic on the sur­face, but in real­i­ty, it’s author­i­tar­i­an. A well-known exam­ple comes from Poland: The gov­ern­ment low­ered the retire­ment age for judges so that it could fill the new­ly vacant posi­tions with loy­al par­ty sup­port­ers. Or take the most recent con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment in Turkey: It mas­sive­ly expand­ed the pow­ers of the pres­i­dent and lim­it­ed the com­pe­tences of par­lia­ment, while at the same time, increas­ing the num­ber of mem­bers of par­lia­ment and low­er­ing the min­i­mum age for run­ning for office. Two mea­sures that may seem pro-demo­c­ra­t­ic at first glance, but they’re not.

This inter­view was first pub­lished on Dr. Çetin Gür­er’s web­site.