Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the latest example of a leader going from bad to worse – if he or she has not been stopped or at least slowed by being impeded or interrupted. Erdogan just won reelection to another five-year term. This despite each of the following:
— He has already held one of Turkey’s two highest posts for over twenty years. He was a powerful prime minister from 2003 to 2014. And he has been a nearly all-powerful president from 2014 to the present.
— He defied the odds. Predictions were that this time around Erdogan might well not win. Reasons why include Turkey’s prolonged and now perilous economic decline; the government’s sluggish, sloppy response to February’s devastating earthquakes; the rampant corruption that was revealed by the earthquakes; and a political opposition that was relatively unified.
— He claimed at the beginning of his political life to be a democrat not an autocrat. During his early years as prime minister he appeared to pride himself on being a centrist, tolerant of nearly all Turks, no matter their differences. At the same time, he took pains to improve the lives of pious Muslim who had long seen themselves, with reason, as second-class citizens. However, as the years passed, Erdogan became hungrier for power – and then hungrier for still more. To the point where he shut up and locked up his opponents; weakened competing institutions including the legislature and the courts; and wielded near total control over Turkey’s media.
— He changed course not only at home but abroad, proving a reluctant and recalcitrant member of NATO, while repeatedly siding with, and sidling up to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin – even after Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Now, in the wake of this Turkish election, Erdogan is likely not only to move closer to Putin, but increasingly to resemble Putin. To become a mini-Putin. Even more than before Erdogan will almost certainly style himself an Eastern autocrat, not a Western democrat.
Most striking about Erdogan is his trajectory. He began his political life as one sort of leader but over time became another sort of leader. Nor is Erdogan the only leader to have changed, to have become, as the years passed, more extreme in his political opinions and behaviors. A recent article in the Washington Post titled “The Deepening Radicalization of Donald J. Trump,” chronicled how Trump had evolved even in recent years. It left little doubt that a second Trump presidency would enable him to “take revenge on his political opponents and push even further on his most polarizing programs.”
Things change. People change. When leaders change the likelihood is they will continue to change. How? Past is prologue.