Erdogan Arrests Top Opposition Politician

On CNN Int at 2:30pmET to talk about Turkey; My WIRED Video on Dictators

Democratic Emergency in Turkey

I am deeply saddened by the arrest of the popular Mayor of Istanbul, Ekram Imamoglu, by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This is a cowardly dictator move: Erdogan cannot afford free and fair elections and so he is detaining Imamoglu to prevent the leader of the democratic opposition in Turkey from running for president.

There has been an outpouring of international solidarity for Imamoglu, and I am waiting until tomorrow to publish an essay on the situation in Turkey as we see how things unfold. What’s clear is that autocrats everywhere are becoming more emboldened because they know that they will encounter no real consequences from the Trump-Musk administration for their aggressions. They know that the United States government is trying to destroy democracy at home and around the world.

I will be talking about Turkey on the Isa Soares Tonight Show at 2:30pmET today. The show broadcasts on CNN International in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

WIRED Tech Support Video

Please share my WIRED Tech Support: Dictators video with anyone you feel can benefit from it. This is part of a superbly produced series made to inform the public on all kinds of topics, and this subject is one of the most important. In each video, they take “questions from the Internet” and ask an expert to answer them. There is a lot of disinformation about dictatorship, by design, and I try and address that as well.

Making this video was also my way of supporting WIRED, which has been doing such important journalism on the coup tactics, authoritarian visions, and corruption strategies of unelected co-President Elon Musk.