The second campaign began in 2016, in the aftermath of a failed coup in which dozens of Turks were killed. Much remains unknown about the attempt, but it was staged by disgruntled military officers and members of the Gulenist religious group, whose leader, Fethullah G\u00fclen<\/a>, lives in exile in Pennsylvania. (G\u00fclen has denied involvement<\/a>.)<\/p>\n In the nearly two years since, Erdo\u011fan has jailed as many as forty thousand people\u2014most of them without trial\u2014including judges, journalists, academics, and members of parliament. The free press has been decimated, as has the independent judiciary.<\/p>\n Under such conditions, is it any wonder that Erdo\u011fan won? That\u2019s the real lesson of Sunday\u2019s election\u2014that, in Turkey<\/a>, as in Russia<\/a>and Hungary<\/a> and Poland<\/a>, there\u2019s more to democracy than just elections.<\/p>\n The only question left is how long Erdo\u011fan will stay. He is only sixty-four; although many believed that he had undergone cancer treatment, in 2012, he has said that he did not have the disease, and he is, by all accounts, tireless and enthusiastic. But he is showing the telltale signs of a late-stage autocrat. His love of grandiose construction projects\u2014a canal stretching from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara<\/a>; his eleven-hundred-room, six-hundred-million-dollar palace\u2014bespeak a monarch<\/a> whose sense of importance has begun to border on the absolute.<\/p>\n Leaders who no can longer tolerate being questioned usually end up making terrible errors. Erdo\u011fan may yet do so. The Turkish economy is heading toward a recession, and, during the campaign, he promised that if he won he would take control of the country\u2019s Central Bank. Throughout history, when a country\u2019s populist autocrat gets control of that institution, chaos is usually not far away.<\/p>\n For Turkey\u2019s sake, let\u2019s hope that something slows him down. In any case, when Erdo\u011fan finally leaves office, the Turkish people will find that much of what had once held their country together has been dismantled or severely degraded. That\u2019s when the real work of rebuilding Turkey\u2019s democracy will begin.<\/p>\n