With Erdogan Rival Detained, Critics See Democracy Eroding in Turkey

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan entered this year facing a knot of political problems with little precedent in his two decades at the summit of power in Turkey.Voters were angry about persistently high inflation.His political party’s popularity had sunk.

And his opponents had coalesced around the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, who made it clear that he was gunning for the presidency.Then on Wednesday, just four days before the mayor was set to be designated as the political opposition’s presidential candidate, dozens of policemen arrested him at his home on accusations of corruption and terrorism.Mr.Erdogan’s foes consider the arrest a ploy to abort Mr.

Imamoglu’s presidential campaign before it even begins.At stake is not only who will be Turkey’s next president, analysts, opposition leaders and foreign officials say, but to what extent Turkey, one of the world’s 20 largest economies and a U.S.

ally in NATO, can still be considered a democracy.“Turkey has never been a perfect democracy, but arresting a presidential candidate is taking this imperfectness to another level,” said Arife Kose, a doctoral candidate who studies Turkish politics at the University of East Anglia in Britain.Using the state’s power to foreclose competitive elections, she said, “means that it is getting closer to a fully authoritarian country.”Mr.

Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics since 2003, first as prime minister then as president since 2014.During that time, he has overseen tremendous economic growth and repeatedly led his ruling Justice and Development Party to victory at the polls.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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