In March 2026, more than 400 defendants went on trial at the Marmara Prison complex in Silivri, 70 kilometers outside Istanbul. Among them was Ekrem İmamoğlu, Istanbul’s jailed mayor and the leading opposition candidate for president. The charges include corruption, organized crime, and espionage; taken together, they could bring İmamoğlu more than 1,900 years in prison. Rights groups and observers call the case a politically driven effort by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to remove his strongest rival before the next presidential election. The pressure has spread beyond İmamoğlu: Turkish authorities are also investigating dozens of municipal officials from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), including the mayors of Mersin and Beşiktaş. İmamoğlu’s trial is something much larger than an ordinary corruption case or a local legal fight. It offers a clear example of “stealth authoritarianism” and lawfare at work inside a competitive authoritarian regime.

The Mechanics of Stealth Authoritarianism

Ozan Varol’s theory of stealth authoritarianism helps explain these developments. Modern autocrats seldom need military coups or openly violent repression; those methods invite international sanctions and damage their standing at home. Instead, newer authoritarian leaders preserve their power through legal tools found in democratic systems, including prosecutions for non-political financial crimes, libel lawsuits, and regulatory action.

In İmamoğlu’s case, the government has pursued several legal attacks at once. He faces financial-corruption charges and espionage allegations, while Istanbul University annulled his diploma—an action that makes him legally ineligible to run for president. Critics argue that state prosecutors and a judiciary aligned with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) give the purge a legal appearance, wrapping political repression in the language of law and due process. That cover makes it harder for people in Turkey and abroad to tell legitimate prosecution from political abuse.

Tilting the Playing Field in Competitive Authoritarianism

Nancy Bermeo describes this use of legal institutions as executive aggrandizement followed by strategic election manipulation. Elected leaders gradually weaken limits on their authority through formally legal steps, including court-packing and moving control over judicial appointment boards into executive ministries. After that horizontal accountability has been stripped away, the government can shape the contest well before voters cast their ballots—excluding major opposition figures, targeting party leaders, and restricting the opposition’s access to the election.

Turkey aligns with both stages in Bermeo’s sequence. The 2017 constitutional amendments changed the council responsible for appointing, promoting, and disciplining judges and prosecutors, giving the president and parliamentary majority greater influence over who sits on it. İmamoğlu’s prosecutors and judges now operate within a system where the executive faces few external limits on the judiciary—the condition Bermeo places before electoral manipulation. The government disputes that interpretation and maintains that the courts are independent. The timing of the measures against İmamoğlu offers the strongest evidence for the second stage. Istanbul University annulled his diploma on March 18, 2025, leaving him ineligible to run for president. Police detained him the following day, just days before his party’s primary was set to confirm him as its candidate. He has remained in custody. In May 2026, a court also denied requests for his release in the separate espionage case. Many regard him as one of the few opposition figures capable of defeating Erdoğan in an election due by mid-2028. His detention therefore removes the strongest challenger without changing the election timetable.

These practices keep competitive authoritarianism running: multiparty elections remain in place, but incumbents routinely use state power to make genuine competition nearly impossible. The AKP’s arrests of İmamoğlu and opposition mayors across Turkey make the rules themselves part of the contest. Removing the ruling party becomes prohibitively costly, weakening partisan alternation—the peaceful transfer of power—while formal elections continue.

The Erosion of Mutual Toleration

The trial also shows how mutual toleration—a basic democratic norm—can break down. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that democracy depends on an unwritten agreement: rival parties must recognize one another as legitimate opponents, not enemies whose existence threatens the state. Juan Linz made a similar point, warning that democracy starts to unravel when leaders portray the opposition as inherently disloyal, criminal, or subversive.

Levitsky and Ziblatt identify one clear warning sign of authoritarian conduct: treating legitimate political opponents as criminals or threats to national security without evidence. Erdoğan’s government has followed that pattern by portraying mainstream opposition leaders as criminal masterminds or foreign agents, implying that an opposition victory cannot be tolerated and that state institutions may be used to eliminate political rivals.

The espionage case supplies the national-security side of the indicator. Prosecutors claim that information belonging to millions of users of the municipality’s Istanbul Senin app was sent abroad and put up for sale; each defendant could receive a sentence of up to 20 years. That allegation recasts a prominent opposition mayor as both a criminal suspect and a security danger. The effort to discredit him reaches beyond İmamoğlu himself. Before the May 2026 CHP ruling, Erdoğan and Bahçeli publicly told Özel to separate himself from İmamoğlu. Their message implies that the government sees him as an unacceptable partner for any opposition group. The conflict is no longer mainly about policy. It is about who can claim political legitimacy. Levitsky and Ziblatt warn that authorities may frame efforts to block an opposition victory as necessary to protect the state—especially when they portray the opposition as a criminal network. This case can be viewed as weaponization of the justice system, while the government denies political interference.

Conclusion

Ekrem İmamoğlu’s trial shows how democracies can be hollowed out today: not through one dramatic rupture, but through the gradual use of legal procedures to weaken political competition from within. Concepts such as stealth authoritarianism and executive aggrandizement offer a way to examine Turkey’s political system beyond the government’s “anti-corruption” claims and to see how democratic choice is being deliberately narrowed. İmamoğlu’s trial serves as a warning that when would-be autocrats master lawfare, the judicial system ceases to be a guardian of rights and instead becomes the ultimate weapon for consolidating authoritarian rule.