Coups are supposed to be considered as the fastest way to erode a democracy. Soldiers seize power and elections disappear. But sometimes the coup is only the beginning of the real threat. Turkey shows this. In July 2016, a coup attempt against President Erdoğan collapsed within hours and democracy seemed to survive. Turkey still holds elections, and opposition parties still compete in them. However, according to Freedom House rates Turkey as “Not Free”. If the coup failed and democracy still remains, what exactly broke Turkish democracy, and how did it break without seizing power?

After the coup attempt, the government used the state of emergency to expand their control over the judicial system. Due to this circumstance, fair trials became harder to get, and the courts became a tool for punishing political opponents. As the courts lost their independence, the separation of powers weakened and balances stopped working. This way works better than just removing and cancelling elections because this way seems more neutral and under the judicial system. When a court arrests a rival by law, it looks like justice not a political punishment. Scholar Ozan Varol calls this strategy as “Stealth authoritarianism” to weaken and interfere with opponents by using the law not a force while keeping a democratic appearance. In Turkey, democratic erosion came less from coups than from courts that are against the opposition.

The process began with a real crisis. The government blamed that coup on the Gülen movement and declared a state of emergency. But the purge went far beyond the plotters. According to Freedom House, thousands of judges and prosecutors have been replaced with government loyalists since 2016. Under the presidential system approved in a 2017 referendum, the president and parliament now choose the board that appoints judges. Berk Esen and Sebnem Gumuscu (2025) call this pattern “autocratic legalism,” which means “the use and abuse of law to suppress dissent and undermine opponents.” Even without any direct instruction, this pattern can give strong pressure to judges and make it harder for them to act independently.

According to Freedom House 2026 report of Turkey, it gives 32 out of 100 points and labels the country “Not Free”. However, this total score includes many different things, such as press freedom and minority rights. To see what happened in Turkey, we need to look at two minor scores. Turkey gets 1 out of 4 for judicial independence. It gets 0 out of 4 for due process, which is the right to a fair legal process. Freedom House rates this score by asking a question: “Does due process prevail in civil and criminal matters?” A score of zero means that, in Freedom House’s view, the fair and legal judicial system process disappeared in Turkey. This is not only a legal problem but also a political one, because many political conflicts are related to judicial law. For example, when an opposition politician was charged with a crime, a judge decides the outcomes. If that judge was not independent and the process is not fair and legal, the decision can easily depend on power. The same problem connects elections. In Turkey, even the Supreme Electoral Council, which oversees elections, is run by judges. Freedom House reports that these judges are appointed by the ruling party dominated judicial bodies. This means the trials of opposition politicians and the oversight of elections connected to the same court system, and the government has strong influence over that system.

Ekrem İmamoğlu’s story shows how this works in real life. In March 2019, he won the election for mayor of Istanbul. According to Demirel-Pegg and Dusso (2022), the ruling party challenged the result of the election, and the Supreme Electoral Council cancelled it. Istanbul voted again in June, and İmamoğlu won with 54% of the vote. After few years, he became known as Erdoğan’s political rival and opponent.

In 2025, prosecutors accused İmamoğlu of corruption and organized crime. According to Human Rights Watch (2026), a court ordered his detention on the same day his party (CHP) chose him as its presidential candidate, and he spent a year in detention before his trial began. When the trial opened in 2026, these charges were still accusations, not proven facts. Human Rights Watch describes the case as politically motivated and has raised concerns about whether he can get a fair trial.

In this case, the decisive steps derived from inside the judicial system, and both came just as İmamoğlu became a political rival of President Erdoğan. Ozan Varol calls this strategy as “stealth authoritarianism,” in which governments use the law, rather than force, to weaken their political opponents. One of its main tools is charging rivals with “non-political crimes,” such as fraud or money laundering. Because such charges do not look political, look like ordinary criminal cases, the government can pressure or sideline a rival candidate without looking like political revenge. Jennifer Gandhi (2018) explains why this strategy works so well. When leaders follow legal procedures, there is “no bright line” that clearly informs citizens that democracy is getting attacked. As a result, it is becomes hard for citizens to recognize that something is wrong and resist together.

International IDEA‘s 2025 rankings show where Turkey’s weakness lies. Turkey ranks 104 out of 173 countries for Representation and ranks 143 for Rule of Law, its lowest ranking among the four categories. This gap shows that the decline is uneven. Elections, which hold a Representation, still partly work, but legal limits on government power are among the weakest in the world. In other words, Turkish citizens can still vote, but the courts that hold those in power accountable become much weaker. Varol adds that when democracy is weakened through legal institutions rather than force, the decline becomes much harder to detect. He also argues that keeping a democratic appearance gives such governments legitimacy at home and abroad. This shows why Turkey keeps holding elections while courts lose their independence.

Turkey’s case demonstrates that democracy today can be slowly emptied out by their own courts and judicial system. Some may argue that some of prosecutions of opposition rivals were simply about corruption, and every state has the right to punish officials who against the law. But taken together, the evidence reveals the larger pattern. This is the signs of stealth authoritarianism, not ordinary law enforcement.