CHANGE: Turkey Comes Undone.

Rather than democracy returning to Turkey as many hope, the country is likely entering a period of political paralysis, instability, and uncertainty. This does not mean instability akin to Syria, Iraq, or Yemen, but rather similar to the years before the AKP came to power, when unstable coalition governments often at war with each other marked Turkish politics in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Erdogan and the AKP have been in power for such a long time that it is easy to lose sight of that unhappy decade. During that era, as politicians tried to outmaneuver each other and pursue their own interests, Turkey’s economy performed poorly; the military had its way, engineering the ouster of the country’s first experiment with an Islamist-led government in 1997; and Turkey lagged well behind the places its elites fancifully considered to be peers—Greece, Portugal, and Spain. It was not a pretty picture. In March 2001, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit helped precipitate a wrenching financial crisis after a rather nasty and very public spat about the slow pace of anti-corruption investigations and reforms. The implication was that Ecevit was dragging his feet because close associates were implicated. The ensuing panic, especially in the banking sector, resulted in a steep devaluation of the lira and a sharp spike in interest rates that brought economic activity to a virtual halt. The problem was made worse given the general lack of confidence that Ecevit, who led a three-party coalition, could take appropriate action to fix the economy. It was because of the economic pain inflicted on Turks as a result of this episode, along with the endless allegations of corruption in high places and military meddling in what seemed like every sphere of public life, that many Turks rejoiced in November 2002 when the upstart AKP, which had only been founded 15 months earlier, won 34.3 percent of the vote and 363 seats in parliament. The hope that the stability of single-party rule would bring a respite from the cruel antics of venal politicians and arrogant military officers was vindicated in a decade of economic growth and development—though the political environment hardly improved under the AKP, especially in the past five years.

On the other hand, Turkey probably won’t become a corrupt Islamist dictatorship now, so they’ve got that going for them.