It’s been a little over two weeks since Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu — the man most likely to challenge Erdoğan in the next presidential election — was detained, alongside several members of his inner circle.* The charges read like a greatest-hits list of autocratic accusations: corruption, extortion, bribery, money laundering. What they lacked in credibility, they made up for in audacity. İmamoğlu denied all allegations, calling them what they clearly were — politically motivated pretexts. A bare-knuckled executive coup, Erdoğan edition.
The public response was as swift as it was staggering. For six days straight, millions of people poured into Saraçhane, the heart of the Istanbul municipality. What began in İstanbul soon rippled across the country, reaching deep into the conservative bastions of the ruling AKP: Çorum, Konya, Sakarya, Bursa, Kırıkkale. This wasn’t just another protest — it was a rupture.
Even Turkey’s notoriously sluggish opposition seemed jolted into action. The Republican People’s Party (CHP), which had initially stumbled through its talking points, finally found its footing. On Sunday, March 23, 15 million people — many of whom were not party members — cast symbolic votes in a primary to elect a presidential candidate for 2028. It wasn’t about electoral math. It was about solidarity. Days later, the CHP called for a nationwide boycott of AKP-linked businesses, culminating in a mass “day of no shopping” on April 2.
Erdoğan’s response was predictable, practiced, precise. Rubber bullets, tear gas, truncheons. Over 300 students remain in pretrial detention. Journalists were targeted too: Swedish reporter Joakim Medin jailed; BBC veteran Mark Lowen expelled for allegedly being a threat to public order. News stations broadcasting protests were swiftly silenced. Even solidarity became a subversive act.
And yet, Erdoğan remains unmoved. On April 4, after Friday prayers, he addressed the nation with the cold fury of a man who has long since stopped pretending to govern for all: “My nation does not forgive those who campaign against this country.”
You might expect, at this point in the article, a pivot to international condemnation. After all, a crisis this serious shouldn’t stop at Turkey’s borders. And yet, Europe seems to think it does.
The European Union — never shy about issuing statements of concern on minor irregularities elsewhere — has responded to Erdoğan's crackdown with a silence so loud it borders on surreal. Not even the usual “concerned” tweets from faceless EU spokespeople. Just one dry comment from Ursula von der Leyen reminding Turkey, in her best headmistress tone, that as a candidate country, it should “uphold democratic values, especially the rights of elected officials.” Plus a flicker from Germany's outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz — not to mention the “urgent” debate by the Council of Europe about Turkey’s descent into autocracy thirteen days after İmamoğlu’s arrest! The rest of Europe? Silence. Complicity by omission
To be clear, this isn’t a failure of public relations. It’s a failure of values. Europe has outsourced its moral compass to its geopolitical anxieties. With Trump flirting with NATO exits and tariffs, and European defense ambitions stuck somewhere between fantasy and farce, Erdoğan has become indispensable. He is the gatekeeper of Fortress Europe, the man who keeps refugees out, the middleman between East and West. His repression buys him leverage.
Europe has long projected itself as a moral superpower. But morality, like muscle memory, fades without use. In this case, all that remains is the rhetoric — elegant, hollow, repeated for effect — with none of the substance to support it. Strategic autonomy becomes meaningless when you’ve subcontracted your borders to a man who arrests mayors for polling too well.
And so, the Turkish people are alone. Again.
Whether Erdoğan is defeated or merely endures through inertia remains to be seen. But it is increasingly clear that any challenge to his rule will come not from external pressure or diplomatic indignation but from within, and especially from below.
The engine of this resistance is the youth. Metropolitan, disillusioned, and radical. According to a recent national survey, only 1.4% of Turkish youth in major cities say they are satisfied with the state of democracy. 51% want to leave the country. 48% no longer want to raise children there. And a staggering 83% view immigration as a threat to social peace — a grim echo of their European peers.
Some have likened this moment to the Gezi Park protests of 2013, Turkey’s own 15M. But that analogy undersells the complexity of the current moment. If anything, this feels closer to the Arab Spring: a volatile mixture of hope, exhaustion, and dread. And as we’ve seen before, in this part of the world, that mixture often ends with despair winning on points.
What path Turkey’s youth will take is anyone’s guess. Whether they will rise, exit, retreat into private lives or digital ones — no one can say. What is certain is that they will do so without illusions. And without help.
Because if there’s one lesson from this latest chapter in Turkey’s long democratic unravelling, it’s this: Europe will not save them.
And perhaps, it never intended to.
* A slightly modified version of this article was originally published in El País on 14 April 2025. See “El momento Primavera Árabe de Turquía”, https://elpais.com/opinion/2025-04-14/el-momento-primavera-arabe-de-turquia.html
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