Burcu flew from Germany to Turkey for 36 hours just to vote. She went to the polls right after her back surgery. And still — she's not sure she fully trusts the outcome.

In this episode of It All Happened Before, Ekin and Burcu explore what elections look like inside a competitive authoritarian system: formally intact, fiercely contested, and deeply uncertain. With Americans worried about whether the 2026 midterms will even be held, Turkey's story offers a sobering reframing — the greater danger isn't that elections stop. It's that they become fragile enough to doubt, confusing enough to suppress participation, and contested enough to be dismissed whenever the results are inconvenient.