How Erdogan broke Turkey's democracy
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Ronan Ba will no longer lead the Shin Bet. There will be no civil war, and Israel will remain a democratic state.

We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end. Right now, all eyes are on Washington. But who's actually watching Europe at the moment?

To the Middle East now, and more than 50,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war began. That's according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry. I'm Venetia Rainey, and this is Battle Lines. It's Monday, 24th of March, 2025.

On today's episode, two Middle Eastern democracies in crisis. I'll be speaking to a journalist in Istanbul about why President Recep Erdogan's arrest of the city's mayor has sparked rare protests and what might happen next. We'll also be checking in with our correspondent in Israel, where the sacking of the head of the Internal Security Agency has sparked fears that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is consolidating unprecedented power.

That's the sound of protests last night in Istanbul, where Turks took to the streets for a fifth night in a row as part of the biggest unrest in over a decade after the city's popular mayor was jailed. Ekrem İmamoğlu was imprisoned last week over corruption charges. He denies any wrongdoing and says the charges are politically motivated. His arrest came shortly before he was set to be nominated as a presidential candidate to run against President Erdoğan in elections set to take place in 2028.

Imamoglu's party, CHP, has since nominated him anyway following a symbolic vote. Imamoglu was one of more than 100 people, including other politicians, journalists and businessmen, detained as part of a sweeping investigation last week. The arrests and the following crackdown on demonstrations that have spread across more than two-thirds of the country have raised fresh fears about the state of Turkey's democracy under long-time leader Erdogan.

To find out more, I spoke to journalist Rafael Geiger, Istanbul correspondent for the German national daily, SEDOYCHA ZEYTUNG. I started by asking him what the mood was like in the city at the moment. I've been covering Turkey on and off for the last couple of years and what I've seen in front of the municipality building over the weekend was something I've really never seen before. It was huge crowds. People came from different layers of the society. They were nationalists, they were Kurdish people.

You had students, a lot of students. I think there was something that came really surprising for the government. So there's a lot of excitement. On the other hand, of course, there's also uncertainty because nobody knows

how long people can hold the ground and how far protests can really change anything. So there's a lot of question marks as well, of course. We've seen massive protest movements before in Turkey. I mean, in the last 10, 15 years, there were some in 2017 and obviously the Gezi Park ones in 2013, but nothing really changed. But does it feel like there's a sense of slightly more hope this time? That's what people say. You know, the young people I spoke to on the streets yesterday

are 17, 18, 19 years old. So when the protests happened in 2013, they were kids. They have never seen anybody else in charge other than Erdogan. So right now, they really feel that this is their moment. But also, other than that, I think there's a sense that Erdogan's time is going to end at some point, whether it's going to end right now because of those protests or whether they end in two or three years when elections are coming up.

I don't know. But I think there's a sense that he's not going to hold out as long as in the past. Just because the democracy and the rule of law is the one thing, but people here really don't have any hope for economical change. Whenever you talk to young people here, what they have in mind is leaving the country. I think it's going to be maybe the beginning of the end, but really hard to tell when the end is going to come.

What do young people say about Erdogan? How do they feel about him? Does he still have widespread popular support? Well, you know, he still has support, definitely. What he was really doing in the last years, and he was very good in doing so, is building up a support base, took many people on public payroll. He made sure that people depend on him, on public money. So he's really in charge of the whole public sector. I mean, he's really controlling all the institutions around

The police force, which is massive and really well equipped. I think that's an important point. So he does have a lot of power. But I think people are feeling that if there were elections today, he would not get the 50%. And that's something that they hadn't in the past when protests were mainly happening in the big cities among the secular youth.

Now it feels that Erdogan is still in charge, but he's ruling a country without democratic legitimacy anymore. And how widespread have these protests been geographically? Has it been very focused in Istanbul and Ankara, the big cities? Or have we seen it in other areas, more rural areas, where Erdogan traditionally draws support from? Well, there were small scale, of course, smaller protests, even in his hometown where his family is from, in Rize, at the Black Sea coast. Even in very nationalist provinces.

What we have not seen so far is a Kurdish movement because just a few weeks ago, the Turkish government initiated a new peace process with the Kurdish militia PKK. So there's a bit of uncertainty around the Kurdish minority in the country. But in all major cities, even in smaller cities, we have seen demonstrations, we have seen protests, also clashes with the police. And I think what we're going to see in the next couple of days is more violence on the streets.

That began yesterday night after Imamullah was officially arrested. There were some more clashes. Yeah, and you sort of lead into my next question that I saw that more than a thousand people have now been arrested over the last five days. Has the government response overwhelmingly been one of crackdown or has there been any bid for dialogue? Until now, I can hardly see any bid for dialogue. We had four days, 96 hours before Imamullah was arrested after his detention on Wednesday morning.

Clearly, since Erdogan decided on putting him in jail, that's not a bit for dialogue. I think he believes that his police can go a long way and that the protests will die down. That's the only way he can think because if he releases Imamoglu right now, there's a contestant right there. There's somebody who really has so much popular support. He created really his successor.

So there's not much he can do. He does not have many options right now. Can you tell us a bit more about Imamoglu? Why is he popular and why has this turned into such a spark for dissent? Well, Imamoglu came up or entered Turkish politics in 2019 quite surprisingly. He was an Istanbul district mayor that nobody knew before until he was picked by his party, the CHP, to become the candidate for the municipality of Istanbul.

which is extremely important because Erdogan himself was a mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s. And, you know, Istanbul is not only the biggest city, but it's also the center of the Turkish economy. And the Istanbul municipality controls a lot of financial power. So Erdogan really didn't want to lose that, his party. And when Imamoglu won the first time, the electoral council canceled his victory and he had to win a second time.

with much more support in 2019. Not just last year, he was re-elected again with much more support than in 2019. And that is because Momolo attracts different layers of the society, not only the traditional secular supporters of the CHP party, but he can also talk to religious people. And he comes from a very traditional family, just like Erdogan from the Black Sea.

Just this weekend when I went to the protest, I saw in the Istanbul subway a video interview with Imamul's parents. And of course, his mother is varying the veil. So it's not that classic secular family that you would expect from CHP politicians normally. So he's very flexible and his rhetoric is very powerful. And in many ways, he actually reminds people of the early Erdogan.

and how he connects to people in a very warm way, not really lecturing people. He really is clever in talking to, you know, the men on the streets. And I think that's why Erdogan finds him dangerous. That's why he wants to put him in jail. And, you know, just 26 years ago in 1999, Erdogan himself was imprisoned back then. And that was only four years before he became prime minister.

So there's a lot of historic meaning to that. And yeah, I think that's why Erdogan really wanted to make sure that Imamoglu is not a rival anymore, but he might achieve just the opposite. Can you tell us much more about why Imamoglu was jailed? He obviously says it was a politically charged arrest, whereas Erdogan says it was about corruption. What do we know? The Turkish justice system came up with different allegations against Imamoglu. Imamoglu was actually sentenced in 2022,

because supposedly he said something about public servants and that's why he was sentenced to jail and that was never implemented but it was the first attack prosecutors now in the last couple of weeks they started several new lawsuits against him and the recent one because of which he was detained and now arrested is because of corruption charges they also accused him of terrorism because he had contacts to the kurdish party

Now that is not the case anymore. The reason he's in jail right now is because of alleged corruption within the municipality. Be certain that this is politically motivated. Of course, no one knows whether there's any truth in that.

But the timing that he was detained just four days before he would be announced a presidential candidate gives a good indication to believe that all what's happening right now is politically motivated and does not have any legal ground. And he's also had his degree revoked, right, which makes him ineligible to run as a presidential candidate? Exactly. He studied at the Istanbul University and got his degree from there over 30 years ago.

Just now, as he started his bid to become the presidential candidate of the opposition, the university revoked his diploma, which is also, I think, a pretty clear sign that this is directed by Erdogan himself. Some people are describing this as the death knell for democracy in Turkey. Is that a fair assessment or is democracy already dead? No, that's a good question. There were many things happening in the past that

You know, it would tell that Turkish democracy was dead a long time ago. Everything would happen after the coup attempt in 2016, for instance. But what Turkey always had was elections. After all, what happened against the rule of law in this country, people believed that every five years you could elect a new president if you wanted to. And that is over. I mean, people feel that their basic right, the right to choose who's ruling them, has been taken away from them.

And that's a big step because it means that Turkey's moving from a competitive democracy or autocracy into full scale authoritarianism. If the current president wants to choose who's running against him and can take away the right for people to run against him, that means that democracy...

Why is this happening?

now. To what extent do you think Erdogan has been emboldened by the new geopolitical reality that we're living in, Trump turning America inwards? We've had very little reaction from Europe on all of this. I know Erdogan recently had a meeting with Trump. Is there a broader context that we should be looking at? I think there definitely is. I think Erdogan feels that he does not have to fear any pressure from abroad.

Because, as you say, he's geopolitically in a very powerful position. He's having a lot of influence in the new Syria, as well as in Ukraine. And he feels that there's nobody from Europe or from the US or Russia could tell him to back down. He believes that he can do whatever he wants right now. He feels needed by Europe. He just recently said that the European Union should accept Turkey and Europe needs Turkey.

That's what he believes. This geopolitical confidence also led him to the wrong conclusion that he could get away also domestically with what he's trying to do. I think that made him overly confident. Can you explain that in the Ukraine link? Definitely. Turkey is the second biggest army within NATO. Erdogan has very intelligently invested in the Turkish arms industry. Even other NATO countries are relying on Turkey now.

When it comes to ammunition production, even the Pentagon is buying ammunition from Turkey. And the Turkish army is not only powerful in numbers, but is also experienced because it was involved in fighting in northern Iraq and Syria. So Erdogan is feeling that he's militarily important. On the other hand, he's also diplomatically important because he's the only NATO leader, apart from Viktor Orban, that can talk to Putin. He's in touch with Putin.

And he's talking to both sides. So he thinks that he can play a major role in any future peace negotiations between the West and Russia. And you mentioned the economy earlier when you were talking to young people that it's a big concern for them. How has this whole episode of unrest affected the economy? It has affected the Turkish lira, which has already lost a lot of its value in the last couple of years. And also you saw the effect of the stock exchange in Istanbul.

So whatever the Turkish government was doing in the last two years, trying to attract investors, trying to repair the damage and to reduce the hyperinflation that this country is experiencing, is at risk, of course. How can you convince investors to come to this country when there's no rule of law, essentially, and when nobody knows whether this country is going to see major unrest in the next month?

So, yeah, I think it will worsen the economic crisis. As we can tell from now, any trial to repair the damage will become much more difficult. Thank you so much, Rafael Geiger for Sadoit Shazaytung in Istanbul. Thank you, Vinita. Coming up after the break, we find out why Netanyahu has taken the controversial step of sacking his head of internal security and why he's now gunning for Israel's attorney general.

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Welcome back. Now, Turkey is not the only country in the Middle East that saw major protests over the weekend.

Well over 100,000 Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and dozens of other cities on Saturday night in anger over Netanyahu's attempt to remove two of his most powerful critics, as well as the unpopular decision to resume the war in Gaza without releasing the remaining hostages. We covered a lot of that in last week's Emergency Battle Lines episode, so today we're going to be focusing on the domestic situation in Israel.

Ronan Barr, the head of internal security agency Shin Bet, was officially sacked late last week after weeks of speculation and rumours of tensions between him and Netanyahu over an investigation known as Qatargate. In an unusual video statement on Saturday night, Netanyahu told Israelis, Ronan Barr will not remain head of the Shin Bet, there will not be a civil war and Israel will remain a democratic state.

A day later, on Sunday, the Israeli cabinet passed a vote of no confidence in Attorney General Ghalibaharav Miara, one of the few people who could challenge the sacking of Barr and a frequent critic of Netanyahu. The moves have prompted concerns that the prime minister is getting rid of any checks on his power, with opposition leader Yair Lapid calling for mass civil disobedience, saying, "...we will not be collaborators in the destruction of democracy."

Our Jerusalem correspondent Henry Bodkin has been speaking to Israelis in the defence and security world about how significant this all is. Welcome to Battlelands, Henry. There have been massive protests over the weekend over the firing of Shin Bet leader Ronan Barr. Can you tell us a bit more about how that happened and why it's been so controversial in Israel?

It's been unbelievably controversial in Israel, and there's a few reasons for that. The main one, I think, is that people are concerned that by getting rid of Ronan Barr, he's the director of what's known as Shin Bet, the internal security service.

Netanyahu is trying to blunt an investigation that Shin Bet has recently launched into potential Qatari influence, potential Qatari spies in his office, which is incredibly embarrassing for a prime minister anyway. Two people have been arrested. Two of his former aides have been arrested and are being questioned by police.

But it potentially goes further than that, which is that everybody knows that Israel had what is now agreed as a disastrous policy before October the 7th of allowing money to be funneled

to Hamas in Gaza from Qatar, basically as part of a policy to keep a lid on Gaza. They were duped, as everyone was in Israel. The government was duped into thinking that Hamas really just wanted to build its own power inside Gaza and was focusing more on civil governance and governance

Netanyahu is widely believed to have been like, right, well, Qasr, you know, why don't you shove some money over to Hamas and they can carry on doing their thing and we'll just be OK behind our wall. Now, there is a suggestion in Israel, there's no evidence for it yet, but that's why people say that Shin Bet needs to do the inquiry, that that policy emanated from the prime minister's office.

and I've spoken to various officials who say it wasn't first proposed by soldiers or by spooks, it came from the Prime Minister's office, then what if that policy was itself generated in Qatar and that would be hugely controversial and people say that that needs to be looked into. So Netanyahu first talked about firing Ronan Barr within a month of it first becoming known that Shin Bet were doing this Qatar investigation. So

That's generally considered to be the main trigger. We know that there was a relationship breakdown over their differing approaches to releasing the hostages or to conducting the hostage negotiations. Ronan Barr was on the team, the official Israel negotiating team, until Netanyahu kicked him off it. Barr was considered to be much keener on offering Hamas concessions, give them things in order to get hostages back, and then we'll deal with the consequences later. Netanyahu, as we know, has been...

much more hesitant to grant Hamas anything. And indeed, in the fallout, Ronan Barr has accused him of not really wanting a deal in the first place. So there's that. And then there's the blame for October the 7th. Shin Bet has released its own report into failings on October the 7th, and it admitted failings. Ronan Barr said, look, because obviously,

we screwed up so badly, along with the army, along with a huge range of institutions. He's not going to complete his term as Shinbeck director anyway. But unlike the army, which released a report very, very strictly looking at its own actions and its own failures, Shinbeck's report also pointed the finger of blame at the government, at Netanyahu, for this wider policy of sitting on Gaza rather than attacking Hamas and various other things such as

provoking Palestinians with disrespectful actions around Muslim holy sites and that kind of thing. So all of this contributed to a pretty terrible relationship, but most people seem to think that it's the Qatar investigation that triggered this and that's why it's so anti-democratic.

And what about this no-confidence vote against Israel's Attorney General, Ghalibaharav Miara? It is linked to this, but it's also linked to a wider constitutional crisis, as some people see it, as the Ronan Barr issue is. The Attorney General was the only person at the top of government fighting for Ronan Barr, or at least saying, look, it's not really proper for you just to go and sack him. Netanyahu didn't like that, and his cabinet didn't like that, and having unanimously voted to sack Ronan Barr last week...

at the weekend they unanimously voted that they had no confidence in her. She is regarded by many as the kind of the last bastion of the rule of law in this government and so to Netanyahu's critics, hundreds of thousands of whom were out on the streets across Israel this weekend, it's a further blow to democracy, to the rule of law because you've got to remember that Israel doesn't have a constitution, it's quite unusual, it's a bit like the UK in that respect and so

the norms, the way things are done are very important to Israelis because they know there isn't that constitutional legal backstop. And on top of that, the Shin Bet in particular, to go back to the Ronan Barr issue, is just held in such high esteem here. It's like a priesthood. You know, if you're over the age of 10,

You can remember the horrors of the second Intifada, this wave of terrorism, buses blowing up every day, all sorts of horrible terrorist atrocities. And Shin Bet is considered...

Leaving aside the terrible error of October the 7th, which is shared among many organisations, as I said, Shin Bet is held in very, very high regard. The idea of tampering with it for political reasons is here considered incredibly anti-democratic, whereas I think in other countries you'd think, well, it's actually up to the democratically elected politician to decide.

be in charge, hire and fire as they see fit in order to preserve democracy. Here it's considered the other way around. And that's why people are so worried. You wrote a piece over the weekend looking at the relationship between Netanyahu and Israel's various security agencies. And you spoke to Efraim Sneer, the former deputy defence minister. Let's hear a clip of that. You have to understand in Israel, the Shabak, the internal security service, has a very special status. It's

Totally, totally non-political. People have a great esteem to the professionalism and to the ethics of this organization. They are dealing with the most sensitive and crucial issues of our security, and most of the Israelis trust them wholeheartedly. That's why what he's doing, Netanyahu, is so outrageous.

Who's going to be appointed as the new chief of Shembet? It's unknown. It is in the cabinet's gift. The convention is that

There are, I believe, a couple of deputies or at least a kind of a rank below the director and that the successor should come from those ranks. It's a professional organization. We don't know their names because actually it's only the director who is named and photographed in Israel. We just have the initials for the other potential candidates. So it should, if you are a

traditionalist Israeli be one of those. I don't think there's anything stopping the cabinet from appointing someone outside that group. But of course, there is the potential that Netanyahu will

look within that group and want a declaration of personal loyalty from one of the candidates. And he's known to have done that before. And I covered that in my piece with a former potential head of Mossad. He actually announced, right, we found a new head of Mossad, called him up and said, congratulations. Oh, by the way, are you going to be personally loyal to me? And the chap said, well, Mr. Prime Minister, I'm going to be personally loyal to the country. And

Ten minutes later, he was no longer the new head of Mossad. You know, so anything's possible, really. How have Israelis reacted to all of this? You mentioned protests. Has there been any opposition from MPs? The opposition parties have fallen over themselves to say,

that this is really a path to dictatorship and this threatens Israeli democracy. So, yeah, I mean, a former general was actually knocked down in the protests by police. And there's another interesting dynamic there. The generals, spies are a kind of priesthood in Israel, as I said. But actually the police, particularly the Jerusalem police, are sort of drawn from a slightly different perspective.

and they are seen as being increasingly under the control of more right-wing way of thinking, more right-wing ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition partners, in particular far-right settler politicians

And so, in answer to your question, the opposition parties are appalled and they've filed a motion in the High Court, a petition in the High Court, which has granted us a two-week injunction, I think, on this sacking. I don't think anyone really believes that the court is going to be able to save Reynald Barr's job long term. So those are the dynamics of what's happened. How much truth is there in that claim that Israel's on a march to dictatorship? I mean, it is a genuine debate and it's...

You can't get too carried away in the sense that every time there's polling, which is Benjamin Netanyahu's party, comes out on top, it's well short of a majority and he needs a coalition to keep it together. And that involves some of these far-right parties and so on, and the more religious aspects of Israeli society. It's probably hard to remember now because October the 7th is such a massive event in the rearview mirror and you can't kind of see back before it. But

Actually, there were protests roiling Israel for over a year over the judicial reforms, which were seen as an attempt by Netanyahu to essentially blunt the teeth of the rule of law to give his government more untrammeled ability to do whatever it wanted. And of course, this is a man who is personally on trial for corruption. Now, he always said, look, the power of unelected judges has gone too far.

They're all liberal, biased, left-wing anyway, and this is just... We're actually striking a blow for democracy here. As ever, you have to be careful because if you look on the streets, you think the country's falling apart. But the polls show that whilst he is not liked by a majority of Israelis, that his party would be the biggest. It's hard to overstate the level of concern here. I think the point is that because Israel has always been in such a vulnerable position...

The state apparatus is something that normal Israelis have an enormous amount of respect for and that makes them feel safe. The impartiality of those services is very much connected with their feeling of living in a safe, democratic country.

How does the restarting of the war in Gaza tie into all of this? Is it something that Israelis support? I haven't seen any polling on it yet. I imagine there'll be some coming through quite shortly. But I think Israelis are much more critical or at least ambivalent of

the resumption of fighting this time, because they have to ask, well, what is it for? Among the people out on the streets, they're saying that Netanyahu started the war again because he had his budget coming up, which has now been passed. So essentially his government is intact for a few more months. I mean, within months,

of the first bombs being dropped. It's Mar Ben-Gavir, who leads one of the far-right factions who walked out of the government with his seven MPs. Seven MPs are quite crucial. In January, because of the ceasefire, he came back in and was given his post of policing minister again. So if you're a sort of Netanyahu's a total bogeyman type person, as a lot of people are here now, you regard it as a totally cynical attempt to keep his government together and actually to move the narrative on from this

this Shin Bet issue. But as I say, I haven't seen the polling on it. It seems pretty unpopular. People are asking, well, what are we going to achieve now that we didn't achieve last time? There's a lot of language coming from the government, particularly Israel Katz, the defence ministry, saying that this is going to be a much more gloves-off offensive than the previous one, to which people say, well, look at Gaza. It doesn't seem like the gloves were on last time. You hear briefings saying that, well, actually, you know,

It wasn't very helpful having Joe Biden in the White House and we feel a lot more empowered to really do what needs to be done now with Trump in the White House. We can use heavier bombs, that kind of thing. There are different narratives in terms of what the point of it is, whether it's to completely eliminate

overtake Gaza and set up a military administration, whether it's just to hurt Hamas enough to get them back to the negotiating table. This confusion is leading to the acrimony in society in Israel this week. Thank you so much for joining us on Battlelands. Henry Bodkin, our Jerusalem correspondent in Jerusalem.

Before we go, a quick correction. When we recorded last week's episode about why Israel had restarted the war in Gaza, we included a clip of British Foreign Minister David Lammy saying that Israel's aid blockade violated international law, noting that that was a shift in the UK position. He's since rode that back, saying that the UK's position has not changed and that Israel's actions in Gaza are a clear risk of breaching international humanitarian law. That's all for today's episode. We'll be back again on Friday. Goodbye.

Battlelines is an original podcast from The Telegraph created by David Knowles. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Battlelines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave us a review as it helps others find the show.

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