Protests and public disorder signal a new era in the fight for democracy in Israel and Turkey

Yes, the two nations are very different, writes Donald Macintyre. But large elements of both their publics are fighting a lonely battle to prevent a slide towards elective autocracy. And if that fails, it will be bad for them, for the Middle East – and for fragile democracies everywhere

The many tens of thousands of demonstrators who have braved tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and mass arrests in nightly protests at the detention and subsequent jailing of Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem Imamoglu are an object lesson in the fight to preserve democracy, increasingly under threat not only in Turkey but beyond.

So, too, is the weekend backing by millions of supporters of the mayor’s party, the mainly secular CHP, for him to be the candidate to oppose the country’s President Tayyip Erdogan in an election which they believe cannot come soon enough.

At stake in the attempted cancellation of his main political rival is not just the future of Erdogan, who has become steadily more authoritarian in the 22 years he has dominated Turkish politics, first as prime minister and then as president. For the outcome of the present crisis may determine whether Turkey remains the real electoral democracy it has long been or starts to emulate other countries (like Russia) where elections continue to take place but are essentially a sham.

The Erdogan regime’s allegations of corruption against his leading opponent – which Imamoglu has described as "unimaginable accusations and slanders" – would be marginally more convincing if his arrest had not followed a protracted crackdown on opposition figures. This included the arrest of six other district mayors since municipal elections a year ago, which inflicted the worst-ever defeat for Erdogan’s AK Party in the face of soaring inflation and interest rates, as well as what many of his opponents saw as the erosion of human rights. Even though Imamoglu had been arrested days before he was still nominated as a presidential candidate.

Indeed, Erdogan’s determination to crush dissent has been underlined by his government’s extension of an official ban on demonstrations, by Turkey’s Interior Ministry announcing that 1,133 protesters had been arrested since Imamoglu’s detention last Wednesday, and a media crackdown which has now culminated in the arrest of 10 journalists for no better reason than they were covering the protests.

As Erdogan struggles to suppress upheaval at home, he may be encouraged by his country’s relative success abroad. The Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which toppled Bashar al-Assad in Syria, drew much of its support from Turkey. And for Europe, Turkey’s importance as a Nato ally could prove all the greater in the face of the draining US support for Ukraine. (Though that did not stop the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz denouncing Imamoglu’s detention as a “very, very bad sign” both for Turkey’s democracy and for its future relations with the EU.)

But above all, he may feel emboldened by Donald Trump’s relaxed attitude to autocratically inclined leaders. In his wide-ranging interview with Fox News on Friday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff not only spoke with astonishing warmth about Putin but reported that the US President had had a “great” and “transformational” conversation with Erdogan the previous Sunday and, without giving details, predicted that a “lot of good positive news” would result from the exchange.

And here there is a striking parallel with what is usually seen as the only other fully functioning democracy in the Middle East: Israel. For the convulsions in Turkey have eclipsed the protests against an Israeli prime minister equally emboldened by Trump. Tens of thousands of demonstrators rallied across the country on Saturday evening. And the chants of “dem-o-kratia” were ringing out in Jerusalem again on Monday in protests against Netanyahu’s weeding out of independent-minded public servants and his refusal to release the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza by ending a 17-month war.

It’s true that Israelis, wearied by war, the increasingly aggressive policing of demonstrations and Netanyahu’s sheer success in tightening his grip on Israel’s political system, are not at present turning out in the formidable numbers they did in 2023 when he first launched his plan to neuter the Supreme Court, the only real check and balance against the executive. But the passion shown by those that are protesting is evidence that their reasons for doing so are even more pressing than they were then.

The cases of Netanyahu and Erdogan are different, of course. Netanyahu has not locked up opposition leaders. But as eager as his Turkish counterpart to remain in power at all costs, he has taken other steps which it is common inside Israel to argue could lead to the erosion – or even “wrecking” – of its democracy.

And this is a momentous week for that process. Having already provoked outrage across the political spectrum by deciding to sack the head of the intelligence agency Shin Bet, his supine cabinet on Sunday voted to fire Gali Baharav-Miara, the attorney general and only brave member of his cabinet, who challenged (among much else) the legality of that sacking.

Having kept his two most extreme and racist coalition partners Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich on board by the simple expedient of resuming, in defiance of a negotiated ceasefire and the wishes of the Israeli majority, a devastating war on Gaza which has already killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, he hopes to pass through his all-important budget through the Knesset on Tuesday. If he succeeds, that will clear the way, possibly as early as Thursday, for legislation to start curbing the powers and independence of the Supreme Court and politicising the legal system.

And since we’re talking about democracy, it’s worth mentioning how successfully Netanyahu resisted the pleas of Joe Biden to agree that the Gaza war should end with a process towards a Palestinian state. Whether Israel can claim to be a true democracy when the five million Palestinians over which it has exercised ultimate rule for 58 years do not enjoy the rights we – and Israelis – take for granted is open to debate. But either way, with Trump in the White House, the pressure for that is off.

Yes, Turkey and Israel are very different. But at present, large elements of both their publics are fighting a lonely battle to prevent a slide towards elective autocracy. And if that fails, it will be bad for them, for the Middle East, and for fragile democracies everywhere.