Analysis: June was an absolutely terrible month for autocrats
It all started in March, when Turkey held municipal elections. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, AKP, lost in the country’s biggest cities. When Erdogan saw that his handpicked choice to lead Istanbul had lost by a thin margin — just 13,000 votes — he claimed the results were fraudulent. He easily persuaded the subservient electoral commission to cancel the results.
Istanbul is not only the country’s largest, most important city. It is also where Erdogan was born and rose to power, eventually becoming the most powerful Turkish leader in a century. But not unlike the situation with Putin, Erdogan’s assault on democratic institutions, his near-obliteration of critical media, and his increasingly authoritarian rule became much more troubling to millions after the economy stopped growing.
When the revote was held last weekend, the opposition candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu of the Republican People’s Party, CHP, won a landslide victory over the president’s man. It was a humiliating outcome for the president. Thousands who had voted AKP the first time switched, giving Imamoglu a margin of. For the first time in 25 years, Erdogan’s home town is not in the hands of his political party. And now several of Erdogan’s former allies say they will form their own parties to challenge the AKP.
Americans, too, are facing a kind of tipping point—one that will have reverberations in all these countries. Normally, this would be a good moment for Washington and its democratic allies to use their leverage in support of pro-democracy movements—and indeed, the U.S. Congress is doing so, introducing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which calls for U.S. sanctions if Beijing curtails Hong Kong’s freedoms.
But the support of the United States for global democracy is less clear under the current administration than it has been for some time. This is something voters could have a say in—and, if they don’t, the week’s good news could prove to be a mere bump along the road to further erosion of democracy.
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