The April 4 issue of the British weekly The Guardian with the headline “Is the end of Turkish democracy coming?” caused the greatest irritation in Turkey's intellectual circles, which openly criticize the current government but do not need lessons in democracy from Western mentors.

Ukrainian analytics, often following at the tail end of European thought, abound in theoretical strains and speculate on whether Turkey will see a revolution as a sign of success or, on the contrary, whether the “dictator” will finally suppress the “Turkish liberty.”

The Turkish opposition has drawn conclusions from the mass protests in Gezi Park in 2013 and does not seek revolutionary changes, if by them we mean blocking state institutions or overthrowing the legally elected government. Turkish society has generally agreed that military coups, which in the past were supposedly meant to preserve the republic, have in fact undermined its stability and alienated the country from the free world.

The Turkish opposition believes that democracy is not just about elections every 5 years, but everything that happens in between, and the main criteria for these events are two: freedom of speech and a judiciary free of political influence.

During the 23 years of Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule, the Turkish political system has not only retained all the hallmarks of democracy, but, in an environment far harsher than the Trumpist United States or Orban's Hungary, has an influential opposition in parliament. From 2019, the opposition started winning important local elections, and in 2024 this turned into a nationwide trend - opposition victories in municipalities.

The opposition's current calmness for domestic democracy is due to the fact that the Republican People's Party (CHP), founded by Ataturk in 1919, is ranked first nationally in all opinion polls - something that did not happen until 2023. Pressure from the government is only widening the gap between the country's two main parties in favor of Erdogan's opponents, and the CHP no longer needs the support of the right-wing opposition to defeat the ruling party.

Today's opposition activity is linked to the desire to force Erdogan into early elections because in Turkey, as in Britain by the way, the legitimacy argument (which no laws can describe) is stronger than the legality argument.

Psychological victory in society is much more important - which is hard for us to understand with our soviet experience of bolshevism, of which Russia and Belarus are tragic examples.

The Turkish opposition believes that for the last 5 years Turkish democracy has been reborn from the ashes, and that the hardest years were 2009-2013, when a backlash had already begun internally, while the entire Western world continued to marvel at Turkey's economic success. These narratives were propagated by the world's intellectuals in between yacht cruises in Fethiye and breakfasts with the new Turkish elite in Usküdar.

Turkish intellectuals like Orhan Deliormanli, Yilmaz Özdil, Saygi  Özturk, Ipek  Özbey,  Özgü Gürses and dozens of others openly say, “Dear Western friends, Turkey does not need your mentorship. It is better to watch your democracy collapse a month after the election of a 'non-system candidate'.” It is possible that the west will soon have to take Turkish lessons on how to preserve democracy in the face of victorious populism.

Some of these intellectuals, such as economic observer Özgü Gürses or political analyst and publicist Ismail Saimaz, are under house arrest. The others have been repeatedly prosecuted by the authorities for public statements. But always - always received acquittals.

Moreover, the current composition of Turkey's Constitutional Court does not include a single judge appointed by the last secular president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer. They have all been approved by Erdogan, who has been president for 11 years now, and who transformed  a ceremonial post to the sole center of decision-making in 2018.

And yet, on matters of principle, Turkey's Constitutional Court often rules in favor of the opposition, while the government only irritably threatens to abolish this “unnecessary body” - though not through Erdogan's mouth, but through his junior nationalist partner Devlet Bahçeli.

The current political environment hits the incumbent president first and foremost, because a unique situation has developed since March 19, 2025. The most influential presidential candidate of the main opposition force, Ekrem Imamoglu, is in prison. The most popular Kurdish politician, Selahattin Demirtaş, is in prison. The most popular Turkish nationalist, academician Ümit Özdag, is also in prison. None of them will lose the right to run for president until 2027, and you don't need to be a fortune teller to understand where this game is leading and around whom both nationalists (not all of them) and Kurds (certainly not all of them) can now unite, which was unimaginable before.

The Turkish army has been the guarantor of the state's existence since 1919, but until Erdogan's victory, only the secular part of the country thought so. Between 2002 and 2016, the AKP took control of the armed forces, ousting Fethullah Gülen's supporters while reconciling with the secular generals who did not support the putsch.

Thus, after the 2016 coup attempt, there was a reconciliation between the living Erdogan and the dead Ataturk. And it was a reconciliation that the living one needed more than the dead one. The country's political conflicts have long ceased to be a primitive dichotomy between secular progress and religious twilight. Things are much more complex and interesting.