Why is Erdoğan upgrading authoritarianism

First they jailed his rival. Now a court has removed the opposition leader who took up the fight. Erdogan's Turkey has crossed the line from flawed democracy into something harder. Why, and how?

Soaked by rain and hail, Özgür Özel leads the march from the raided CHP headquarters to parliament, a walk that has itself since become the subject of an inquiry.

The crux: Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spent the past year dismantling the only party capable of beating him at the ballot box. Last week he reached its leader.

A court in Ankara stripped Özgür Özel of the chairmanship of the CHP (Republican People’s Party); the party that founded the modern Turkish republic a century ago and is now its main opposition. The court’s reasoning was technical, a dispute over how Özel was elected at a party congress two years ago. The effect was not technical at all. For the first time, a Turkish court has told an opposition party who it may not have as its leader.

Since 2024, hundreds of CHP members and elected officials have been detained on corruption charges the party rejects. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Istanbul mayor and the candidate most able to defeat Erdoğan in a national contest, h…