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http://dx.doi.org/10.17176/20230602-111131-0 https://verfassungsblog.de/boiling-the-frog/ Boiling the Frog - Why Turkish Elections Have Not Been Competitive for Decades Kurban, Dilek eng 2023-06-02 electronic resource text/html ddc:342 Democratic Backsliding election Electoral threshold Erdogan Verfassungsblog Verfassungsblog--2366-7044 CC BY-SA 4.0 In the wake of Turkey's recent presidential elections, previous blogposts objected to characterizing authoritarian regimes such as Turkey, Hungary and India as ‘competitive’ solely by virtue of regular elections, which are formally free but fundamentally unfair. However, this blogpost argues that the prior ones missed the main problem in Turkey: The playing field in Turkey is not only “massively tilted in favor of Erdogan” now; it has always been tilted in favor of the majority – long before Erdoğan. This blogpost discusses the slow death of Turkish electoral competitiveness. First, I describe the politico-legal context that enabled Erdogan’s rise. Second, I contrast the developments in Turkey regarding election competitiveness to European legal standards and strikingly late political demands.