Description
The presidential and parliamentary elections held in Turkey in May 2023 marked a dramatic moment in the country’s political trajectory. In an unprecedented move, six opposition parties from liberal to social-democratic to nationalist strands co-alesced behind a single presidential candidate in a bid to unseat the Justice and Development Party (AKP), and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This coalition billed as a resilience strategy against authoritarian consolidation was widely regarded as a high-stakes experiment in alliance-making under conditions of democratic backsliding.
Yet, despite the coalition’s rhetorical strength and structural cooperation, the outcome failed to deliver regime change. Erdoğan secured re-election and the AKP maintained its parliamentary presence, revealing the limitations and paradoxes of electoral alliances in semi-authoritarian contexts. This presentation argues that the 2023 Turkish opposition alliance illustrates three key lessons about the (im)possibility of alliances under authoritarianisms. First, it emphasises the structural disadvantage faced by opposition coalitions operating under a hybrid regime: escalating media constraints, electoral rule-manipulation, and the permeation of state-resources into campaigning. These factors significantly hampered the coalition’s capacity to translate unity into an effective counter-hegemonic force. Second, the presentation explores internal tensions within the alliance: divergent identities, ideological fault-lines, and competing strategic logics (instrumental vs. transformative) which inhibited the forging of a coherent and compelling alternative narrative. Third, the discussion highlights how the alliance’s framing as purely defensive ‘blocking authoritarianism’ rather than positive programme-building, undermined its resonance among key electorates weary of routine politics, thus limiting mobilising capacity.
The Turkish case thus offers a cautionary tale: alliances are neither panacea nor simple strategic fix, under adverse conditions may even reinforce the dominance they seek to dislodge. The experience of the 2023 vote invites us to rethink how resistance is organised, how counter-hegemonic coalitions are built, and when the promise of alliance meets the reality of power.
