Election security

How Authoritarians Manipulate Elections


When Recep Erdoğan was first elected prime minister of Turkey, in 2003, he vowed to respect the country’s democratic institutions, and to vacate office if he ever lost the public’s trust. The reality of Erdoğan’s rule has been rather more bleak. Although international newspapers and magazines initially portrayed him as a democratic reformer, he systematically expanded his powers and purged opponents from top positions in the army, the civil service, and the country’s educational institutions. When former allies tried to oust him in a coup in the summer of 2016, he used the occasion to consolidate his hold over the country. Thanks to the vast emergency powers he claimed within days of the failed putsch, he was able to dismiss tens of thousands of civil servants he considered politically unreliable, and to jail some of the country’s most prominent journalists.

But even as the dictatorial nature of Erdoğan’s regime became apparent, and the freedom to criticize him more constrained, Turkey continued to hold multi-party elections, which gave the opposition some ability to compete at the ballot box. In June 2018, Erdoğan won 53 percent of the vote in an election many observers said was tainted by violent attacks on the opposition; from then on, Erdoğan styled himself president of Turkey.