Following the 2023 general and 2024 local elections, the election frenzy in Turkey has subsided, with the next national decision point slated for 2028, when President Erdoğan’s current term will expire. Over more than two decades, Erdoğan’s rule has further weakened Turkey’s already fragile and largely undemocratic institutions. Through strategic institutional gerrymandering, Erdoğan has consolidated his power, reshaping political and legal systems to ensure his dominance. While Turkey’s political landscape may seem distant from that of the United States, there are uncanny similarities between Erdogan’s methods and the ongoing election campaign of Donald Trump. A second Trump administration could mirror Turkey’s recent history in alarming ways, particularly in the erosion of democratic norms and the consolidation of executive power.
The parallels are numerous, and a brief assessment of three areas of politics should suffice to highlight the extent of the similarities.
The first is the rise of a cult of personality around Trump. With the support of over half of its voters, the Republican Party has transformed into an apparatus for Trump’s personal political agenda. This shift mirrors Turkey’s experience in the early 2000s, when the longstanding Islamist movement coalesced around the figure of Tayyip Erdoğan, with veteran political figures gradually exiting the stage. Voices like Dick Cheney’s and Mike Pence’s are not only silenced, but their indirect support for the Democrats also bolsters Trump’s image as an anti-establishment politician. If the Turkish example is any indication, the Republican Party is now restructuring itself into a more centralized organization, which not only accommodates Trump’s whims but will likely seek its next strongman after Trump’s political career ends. Should Trump win this election, many of his critics within the party will likely pledge their allegiance to his presidency.
The second area of similarity lies in the transformation of the judiciary and bureaucracy that Trump has pledged. Trump considers his conservative appointments to the Supreme Court and district courts among his biggest accomplishments and now promises to install tens of thousands of loyalists across the government. Much like Erdoğan in the 2010s, Trump not only plans to take these steps but also to craft a grand narrative around them. His rhetoric on combating “the political establishment” within and beyond the Republican Party is a relatively benign part of this narrative, though it is just one element of a larger story. Central to this story is the concept of the “deep state.”
Erdoğan popularized the term “deep state” on the global stage. This concept is both sinister and effective, as it frames the non-loyalist bureaucracy and judiciary as internal enemies—a privileged elite misguiding the nation for their own and often foreign interests.
Erdoğan cast Turkey’s liberal and conservative political establishment as adversaries, portraying the bureaucracy and judiciary as the deep state that kept the political establishment alive and oppressed Turkey’s “silent majority” of patriots.
In parallel with ‘establishment’ politicians in Turkey, many bureaucrats and judges in the 2000s believed Erdoğan’s career would be short-lived and voiced their opposition to the appointment of Erdoğan loyalists. However, they were purged in the 2010s through a series of political trials against high-ranking civilian and military bureaucrats, accused of plotting a coup against Erdoğan. These trials dominated the political scene for years and ultimately justified the appointment of loyalists to key positions under the guise of creating a more democratic regime, particularly with the support of Fethullah Gülen’s followers, who are widely believed to have orchestrated these trials with their influence in the judiciary and law enforcement. Ironically, after these political trials purged the non-loyalist top cadres, a coup attempt did occur—not by the non-loyalists, but by the newer Gülenist cadres whom Erdoğan had appointed to help purge the older cadres. It’s likely that Trump and his strategists have studied such examples. It wouldn’t be surprising if they frame the MAGA movement as a judicial and bureaucratic campaign to dismantle the deep state. In any case, we will hear much less voices such as Mark A. Milley’s if Trump wins this election
The third area of similarity concerns what people in Turkey refer to as “lifestyle issues” (yaşam biçimi). Similar to Erdoğan, Trump employs strategies to reinforce symbolic boundaries within the American public. In the U.S., the prominent issues are abortion, immigration, and non-cisgender individuals. In Turkey, the corresponding themes are the headscarf controversy, the Kurdish movement, and alcohol consumption.
In Turkey, the headscarf issue arose when the secularist government in the 1990s banned students from wearing hijabs on university campuses. This apparently unjust practice gave a good visibility to the Islamists in this decade as the representative of the subaltern in Turkey. Similarly, the conservative agenda around abortion in the United States aims to define two mutually exclusive forms of womanhood, reinforcing a cultural divide.
The heated rhetoric surrounding undocumented migrants in the U.S. serves to create an external enemy, akin to Erdoğan’s strategy of politically dividing and ruling the Kurds, Turkey’s largest ethnic minority, along ideological lines.
The campaign against non-cisgender, particularly transgender individuals, by Trump’s supporters, seeks to associate liberals and non-Trumpists with ideas that purportedly defy “common sense.” In a recent critique of Tim Walz, Trump stated that Walz is “very heavy into transgender. Anything transgender he thinks is great, and he’s not where the country is on anything.” Trump promises to “ban men from participating in women’s sports” because it is “so ridiculous.” Erdoğan has expressed similar, though often stronger, sentiments regarding alcohol consumption. For instance, in 2023, he declared that “[his] nation would not let the drunkard govern this country.”
As a result of these actions, both leaders have successfully divided women, created a dehumanized enemy of the nation, and portrayed their opposition as a group of despicable individuals who desecrate the essence of the nation. If Trump wins, people will be compelled to take a strong stance on these three issues, further consolidating the electoral base of Trump and his successors.
Like Erdoğan, Trump has little incentive to “resolve” these divisive issues, both leaders prefer these issues to linger as long as they fuel polarization. In Turkey, the headscarf ban in public institutions was lifted about six years after Erdoğan assumed power, yet no law was passed mandating that women wear headscarves. Trump is similarly content with the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion, which leaves regulation to individual states where he and his supporters hold sway. In Turkey, the Kurds were denied political status to self-govern, effectively keeping them marginalized. In the U.S., Trump is unlikely to deport most undocumented immigrants, as their labor is essential to the local business owners who support him. In Turkey, while alcohol was never banned, its consumption remains a significant marker distinguishing Erdoğan’s supporters from others. Likewise, views on transgender and non-cisgender individuals will likely continue to function as a social and political boundary in the United States, defining the divide between Trump’s base and others.
“Political polarization” benefits Trump and his supporters. Polarization thrives when enemies, who conceal themselves in shadows, and boundaries, which reproduce those enemies, are established as the main pillars of political discourse, much like what has been experienced in Turkey since the 1990s. If there were a way out of the spiral that Turkey has been caught in since at least the early 2000s, it would involve developing an alternative narrative that redefines points of political disagreement. Such a narrative has yet to emerge in Turkey, not only due to the gradual closing of public space and Erdoğan’s capacity to establish omnipresent domination, but also because the oppositional forces failed to frame their narratives effectively. This failure stemmed from a misreading of the political, sociological, and economic landscape of the country. Unfortunately, I do not see such a narrative emerging in the United States, allowing Trump and his supporters to continue defining and framing the terms of political conversation.
Nazan Bedirhanoglu is an assistant professor of sociology at Xavier University. She is the 2024-2025 moderator for the New University in Exile Consortium’s Weekly Scholars’ Forum.
Uncanny Parallels between Erdoğan and Trump