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So so sad when a country devolves into quasi-dictatorship



Quasi?


At least it could be said that it could get worse.


But that's always true, even in North Korea.


They still have elections.


'elections'


It's a gray area. So far, at least, they still count the votes, and the votes do add up to the majority. You could argue that in the absence of truly free media, those voters are deceived, and are voting against their interest. But then we have free media in US, and yet...

Turkey is not the only country like this, by the way. In Russia, the government similarly enjoys majority popular support, even though elections aren't even free at this point (numerous fraud issues). Many would say that Hungary and Poland are on their way to this same place.

I would argue that such a system is still democratic, insofar the government does reflect the desires of the majority of the electorate. It is no longer a liberal democracy, however, with checks and balances to prevent abuses and to allow the electorate to (in theory) make informed decisions. Perhaps "authoritarian democracy" would be an appropriate term.


However, one has to see that many countries that are considered "real" democracies have quasi cartels as well. The most famous example being the US, however it's certainly not limited to that. Other candidates do get rejected by other than grassroots style media. Even opposition within certain movements is sometimes suppressed.

However, I don't think that any of this does make a country a non democracy, as long as you are not having a hard time making the cross on the opposition.

You can maybe call the level of democracy lower, the less information you have, which includes things like history, or public education of how the democratic systems work, or low level of transparency or scary things like secret laws, interpretations of laws, etc.

I don't think authoritarian democracy makes sense. It's a democracy that has an authoritarian party ruling, but the system behind it currently isn't exactly authoritarian itself.

That difference is important I think, because without well defined words and phrases everyone will use that phrase against critics as well making these terms very hard to use.

I am sorry for using the US as an example here. It isn't meant to be a "what about", but I chose it as a country that most readers here likely know enough about when it comes to politics. So I chose it to have a hopefully good example. Similar problematic areas for democracies exist around the globe, probably in every democratic country. I think one can always work on developing democracies through increasing transparency, education and information.

EDIT: Oh and it's certainly also not meant to defend what is going on in Turkey. Authoritarian parties are likely to reduce the transparency, education and information and also likely to transform it into an authoritarian system.




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