Recently in the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/opinion/turkey-istanbul-protests.html), the editorial board described the current political situation in Turkey:
“Turkey, at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, is an important American partner, with the second-largest military in NATO. Yet Turkey has been sliding toward autocracy over the past decade. Mr. Erdogan has changed its Constitution to expand his power, brought the courts under his control, manipulated elections, purged professors, shut down media organizations and arrested journalists and protesters.”
“Last month, Mr. Erdogan took the assault on democracy to a new level. With dissatisfaction with his government growing, it detained his likely opponent in the next presidential election, Ekrem Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul, along with almost 100 of Mr. Imamoglu’s associates on dubious charges. The arrests put Turkey on the path that Russia has traveled over the past two decades, in which a democratically elected leader uses the powers of his office to turn it into an autocracy. ‘This is more than the slow erosion of democracy,’ Mr. Imamoglu wrote from Silivri Prison in these pages. ‘It is the deliberate dismantling of our republic’s institutional foundations.’”
While Donald Trump and his cronies haven’t yet duplicated all of these actions, they are clearly moving in that direction. Recently they have arrested a judge, threatened the country’s largest law firms, deported American citizens (admittedly children but still actual citizens), revoked valid visas, tried to silence whole universities, banned journalists, fired thousands of federal workers, and ignored the law, the courts, and the Constitution. So Mr. Imamoglu’s words regarding “the deliberate dismantling of our republic’s institutional foundations” can also be applied to Trump and his minions.
As Brian Greenspun said in his editorial in the Las Vegas Sun on Sunday (https://lasvegassun.com/news/2025/apr/27/please-donald-stop/), “The first move of dictators around the world is to shut down the courts and intimidate the lawyers. The next move is to silence the media. And Trump is doing his best on that score.”
But key questions remain:
- Will they continue to arrest judges who displease them?
- If the Supreme Court rules against them, will they obey or ignore?
- Will they begin arresting the Democratic party leadership and potential opponents?
- Will they continue deporting people including American citizens?
- Will they try to change the Constitution?
Trump has already alluded to being President for a third term if not indefinitely. We have learned to our dismay that he does what he says he is going to do and that he believes he is not bound by any rules or laws. So, if he does run again, we can expect a heavily rigged election in 2028.
The challenge for us now is the one that Ben Franklin posed: “A Republic. If you can keep it.” The response to that challenge requires our strong and immediate actions. Make your voice heard. Write to your representatives at all levels of government. Even if they are Democrats and already agree with your point of view, it’s important to let them know where you stand. Talk to other people and raise your concerns.
As with Mr. Erdogan, dissatisfaction with Trump and his administration is growing. He may well follow the Turkish leader’s example and strike out even more forcefully at our institutional foundations.