Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made a mistake in having his main opposition arrested, and the result is protests pouring out into the streets, Prof. Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told Sarah Ben-Nun on The Jerusalem Post Podcast.
"Erdogan has been the dominant figure in Turkish politics since the beginning of the century," Inbar said. "He's extremely successful politician. He's very articulate. He is charismatic. He has control over the crowds. It's incredible to see him speak to the crowds during the election campaign or on other occasions, and he gradually turned Turkey into a more authoritarian state. Turkey was never full democracy because the army had certain roles there, and it engaged in coups, but Erdogan was successful in making his party, the AKP, into a hegemonic party in Turkey."
Politically, however, the AKP has seen a decline.
This has helped lead to the country's current state of political tension.
"In Turkey, there is a multi-party system, a lot of parties who are fighting among themselves," Inbar said. "And in the last elections, there was some kind of coalition between the opposition parties, but they lost." He elaborated how the regime has heavily cracked down on opposition, jailing journalists, politicians, and generals.
In doing so, they arrested Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul who was selected by the opposition CHP party to be their presidential candidate who will oppose Erdogan.
This, Inbar said, was a mistake.
"I think Erdogan made a mistake," he said. "This is something that obviously creates opposition, and much of the anti-Erdogan sentiments came out into the streets."
How Erdogan used religious and traditionalist sentiments in Turkish politics
Since its establishment, Turkey has had very widespread secularization policies, including preventing women from wearing hair coverings while entering universities and government buildings.
This is where Erdogan, an Islamist, was able to swoop in and take advantage of this type of "secularist excess," Inbar said.
"Erdogan, I think, was very successful in capitalizing on these feelings that the secularists went too far. In imposing their values, they were not tolerant enough. So he became the paragon of tolerance and democracy, in contrast to the secularist Kemalist elite."
However, while this led Erdogan to great political success and helped him spread his views in Turkey, a growing secular population also spread to many of the major cities.
Turkey "encourages increasing the birthrate in the country. They want a greater population [and] believe it will give the country more strength, which it does," Inbar said. This leads to more young people who move to the cities, and these younger Turks are, Inbar explained, less conservative and less traditional, which puts them outside of Erdogan's main base of support.
"There is a growing reluctance within the Turkish public, particularly the more secular-oriented public, which lives in the cities," Inbar said. "They are, of course, more Western. They are more sensitive to the human rights violations of the regime."