President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is throttling Turkey’s democracy

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been running Turkey for 22 years, and has spent much of that time eroding its democracy. His government controls the courts, the security apparatus and almost all the media. Yet until last week Turkey remained a place where the opposition could, in theory, win elections, and occasionally did, at least at the local level. Since the arrest on March 19th of Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and Mr Erdogan’s strongest rival, along with many of his associates, that may no longer apply.