Trump Is Erdoğan on Steroids
I underestimated the threat to democracy in Turkey back in the 2000s. I won’t do the same for the United States today.
As a scholar of Turkey, I spent years watching President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rise—and, I’ll admit, I once believed in the promise. I had reservations about his Islamist roots, but his vows to fight corruption, reduce poverty, and expand freedoms seemed like the antidote to Turkey’s democratic fragility. For a moment, it felt like real progress.
But in hindsight, those so-called reforms were not designed to strengthen democracy—they were designed to dismantle it from within. I ignored the early warning signs. Two decades later, Erdoğan has delivered the opposite of what he pledged: Turkey now ranks among the most corrupt countries in the world, with widespread institutional capture and the erosion of basic liberties. What’s alarming is how quickly I now see that same authoritarian playbook unfolding in my adopted home, the United States, only with more speed and aggression.
Optimists often argue that Trump won’t have time to do what Erdoğan did—that it took Erdoğan two decades to turn Turkey’s flawed democracy into an autocracy. But that comparison misses the mark. Erdoğan came to power weak. His rivals dominated the bureaucracy, the business elite, and the media, while Erdoğan struggled to assert control over his own newly-formed party.
Trump, by contrast, returned to office with the Republican Party in lockstep, Congress increasingly submissive, and with powerful allies across business and right-wing media. Just four months into Trump’s presidency, American democracy is already under siege. Those who once believed “it can’t happen here” are waking up to a hard truth: even the world’s oldest democracy isn’t immune to the authoritarian spiral that captured countries like Turkey—especially with a strongman in the White House who’s following the well-worn playbook of autocrats like Erdoğan.
Erdoğan rose by casting himself as the voice of the marginalized, shut out for decades by Turkey’s secular elite. He styled himself as a man of the people battling a sinister “deep state”: a shadowy network of military brass and bureaucratic insiders accused of silencing dissent through intimidation and even assassination.
Once in power, Erdoğan’s first target was Turkey’s most untouchable institution: the military. Unlike in liberal democracies, where the military serves elected governments, Turkey’s armed forces long operated as a power above politics—ousting leaders at will, including a democratically-elected government in 1997, without firing a shot. Each intervention only deepened its grip, embedding its authority and rendering coups almost unnecessary. No civilian leader before Erdoğan succeeded in dismantling the military’s privileged role. Erdoğan did it through a mix of democratic reform and backroom maneuvering. He championed EU membership, leveraging Brussels’ demands to curb military power as a tool to justify sweeping changes.
But behind the scenes, he used loyalists in the judiciary to orchestrate politically charged trials against top generals. For many Turks, seeing coup-plotting military leaders finally investigated felt like long-overdue justice and a step toward true democracy. But it was merely the opening act in Erdoğan’s campaign to dismantle checks on his power. The military was defanged, hundreds were purged—and a critical pillar of the old order was brought to its knees.
Erdoğan’s next target was the judiciary. While he had some allies on the bench, the courts were still largely dominated by his opponents. To flip the balance, he launched a campaign disguised as a push for judicial independence, but which was really a power grab. His government introduced constitutional amendments packaged as democratic reforms, and put them to a national referendum. Many Turks, eager to move beyond the military-era constitution, voted for the reforms. But the result was the opposite of what they were promised: instead of freeing the courts, the reforms handed Erdoğan sweeping control over them.
Erdoğan then set his sights on Turkey’s media, long dominated by his secularist rivals. Chief among them was Aydın Doğan, owner of the country’s largest media conglomerate and a key supporter of the military’s 1997 intervention against an Islamist-led government. In 2008, when Doğan’s outlets began reporting on a corruption scandal tied to Erdoğan’s inner circle, the response was swift and punishing: a record $2.5 billion tax fine, a plunge in stock value, a ban from state tenders, and the arrest of a top executive on dubious terrorism charges. Erdoğan didn’t stop there. Using the state’s banking authority as a political bludgeon, he seized other major outlets and handed them to loyalists. With near-total control over the media, Erdoğan silenced dissenting voices and cleared the path to unchecked power.
Finally, Erdoğan captured the Turkish state. He repeatedly rewrote the public procurement law to personally control who got state contracts—funneling billions to five handpicked conglomerates that now rank among the world’s top recipients of public funds. In return, these companies provided glowing media coverage, bankrolled pro-government charities, and pressured employees to vote the “right” way in elections. It was a full-blown system of political patronage disguised as governance.
In the United States, Donald Trump is moving with breathtaking speed, and far more aggressively than Erdoğan did early in his tenure. In just four months, in a barrage of executive actions, he has openly attacked the core principles of U.S. constitutional governance, undermining checks and balances and dismantling the separation of powers. The foundations of American democracy—the peaceful transfer of power, the rule of law, and anti-corruption safeguards—have taken some of the hardest hits. Trump has already begun reshaping the military’s top brass to fit his agenda, firing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, and top military lawyers across the services. At the same time, he’s rapidly turning the Department of Justice into a political weapon. On Day One, he pardoned nearly 1,600 January 6 defendants, including Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. He then gutted the DOJ, ousting or reassigning officials in national security, ethics, and corruption units, and firing prosecutors who had handled his own cases.
It took Erdoğan over a decade to capture Turkey’s economy. Trump is doing it in months. He handed Elon Musk sweeping influence over his administration. Together, they’ve purged key agencies, replaced public servants with loyalists, and scrapped existing federal contracts. Crucial regulators like the FCC and FTC are now in the hands of Trump allies. The IRS hasn’t been gutted yet, but it’s squarely in their sights. It’s not just the bureaucracy in Trump’s crosshairs—universities, NGOs, and law firms that don’t align with his agenda are being targeted too. As Trump consolidates power, Congress—the very body meant to check presidential overreach—stands paralyzed. Republicans are actively surrendering their constitutional authority, while fractured Democrats flounder, unable to mount a serious defense against Trump’s authoritarian push.
People like me—ideologically worlds apart from an Islamist-rooted leader like Erdoğan—put faith in his democratic promises and overlooked the red flags. Early electoral wins, earned fairly and buoyed by strong economic growth, gave him the legitimacy to push his autocratic agenda. His opponents only sped up the process. Fragmented and out of touch, they failed to present a compelling alternative. Rather than addressing bread-and-butter concerns they clung to a narrow cultural agenda that alienated the very people they needed to win over. The cost has been paid by all of Turkish society. Today, people from every walk of life are in the streets protesting the authoritarianism they now live under.
But the fight to reclaim Turkish democracy is proving far harder than Erdoğan’s assault on it. As the United States under Trump veers down the same path, the lesson is clear: waiting is dangerous. Only early, sustained, and collective resistance can prevent the United States from following the same dark path Turkish democracy has taken. Resisting authoritarianism isn’t just the job of politicians—it’s a responsibility shared by every citizen, business leader, institution, and private entity.
Americans must take to the streets to peacefully push back against Trump’s assault on rights and freedoms. The recent “Hands Off” protests were a promising start, but to have real impact, the movement must widen its base—amplifying the everyday economic struggles caused by Trump’s policies, not just the cultural concerns of a narrow slice of society. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, must treat the 2026 midterms like the last line of defense. A stinging electoral defeat could jolt the GOP into reconsidering its blind allegiance to Trump and empower pro-democracy lawmakers to act with urgency. Business leaders and media owners must keep sounding the alarm on the economic fallout of authoritarian rule. Universities and civil society must stop retreating—and start resisting.
The fight for democracy is the most vital fight of our time. It demands every one of us to stand up, speak out, and refuse to look away.
Gonul Tol is Director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey Program and author of Erdogan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria.
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I don't really see particularly strong parallels between Erdogan and Trump policy-wise -- Erdogan is far more ruthless -- but the political parallel is apt. Erdogan and co. were only able to rise to power because westward-facing Istanbul-sequestered Kemalists had become so corrupt and indifferent to the views and interests of ordinary citizens, much as there was only an opening for Trump because the Democratic Party had become so indifferent to (or actively hostile to) the views and interests of voters in the American hinterlands.
There is nothing persuasive about this piece. It is a study in false comparisons and cognitive dissonance. The only valid comparison between what has happened in Turkey and the US is that the wealthy elite of both countries could not stop their perpetual greed from causing a continuous decline in socioeconomic circumstances for everyone else. However, the response and result is nothing similar. There have been no constitutional amendments attempted by Republicans. The Trump Administration is following the same letter of the law that Democrats leveraged to stay in power.
The cry of the Trump-related "fascism", "dictator", "threat to democracy", frankly is the stuff of hysteria and mania perpetrated by the radicals as directed by their Wall Street-backed Professional Managment Class masters. It completely ignores that the election of Trump, as demonstrated clearly during the COVID episode, was a correction to the REAL threat to democracy that is a globalist authoritarian collectivist cabal.