With elections coming up in Turkey next year it looks like Turkey’s President Erdogan is in an increasingly difficult spot as the country’s economy has been in a freefall and voters are angry and many demand change. Erdogan also faces a united coalition of opposition parties whose stated goal is to restore Turkey as an institutional democracy which they blame Erdogan for undermining. Beyond defeating Erdogan, however, it is unclear what the opposition stands for. Expert Sinan Ciddi joins Thanos Davelis to make the case that while Erdogan is down, he is definitely not out of this race, and the inability of Turkey’s opposition to offer voters an alternative vision for the country and candidate may be Erdogan’s greatest advantage for remaining in power.

Sinan Ciddi is a non-resident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Turkey Program and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). He is also an Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Command and Staff College-Marine Corps University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. 

Read Sinan Ciddi’s piece in The National Interest: Turkey’s Erdogan Is Down But Not Out

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