In a July 21, 2017 article for Foreign Affairs entitled, “The Hard Truth About Turkey’s Opposition: Why It Will Have Trouble Challenging Erdogan,” POMED Nonresident Senior Fellow Howard Eissenstat describes the state of the opposition in Turkish politics:

It has been over a year since the coup attempt in Turkey, yet the country is still in turmoil. The government has intensified its purge against anyone it suspects is associated with the cleric Fethullah Gulen, who President Recep Tayyip Erdogan alleges orchestrated the effort to oust him, even though Gulen has been living in the United States since 1999. In the process, Erdogan has also taken action against a wide range of other individuals with no clear ties to the Gulen Movement. The Ministry of Justice claims it has initiated “procedures” against 169,000 citizens and has arrested more than 50,000 of them. New arrests are announced almost daily. Another 150,000 have been suspended from their jobs presumably for cooperating with the Gulenists, although no evidence has been offered to confirm this. The April constitutional referendum, which will abolish the prime ministership in 2019, effectively eliminated whatever checks and balances remained in the Turkish government. It provided Erdogan not only with the powerful presidential system that he had long coveted but with unparalleled control over the judiciary and security services. Meanwhile, since it reignited in July 2015, Turkey’s conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (or PKK)—a Kurdish movement that has a broad following in Turkey but has been designated by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union as a terrorist organization—has grown more violent. Casualties on both sides of the conflict continue to rise every week—nearly 3,000 have died since July 2015—and some 500,000 civilians have been forcibly displaced.

The silver lining, if there is one, is that Turkey’s opposition has shown new signs of strength in recent months and has fanned hopes that it could challenge the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections. The hard truth, however, is that this new vigor has likely come too little, too late.

Read the full article here.