Erdogan's re-election victory tests Turkey's illiberal democracy.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been reelected in a runoff that experts say is the latest trend in the rise of illiberal democracies. The Kurdish heartland of Diyarbakir has been there before, but now it has spread from the periphery to the centre, and probably beyond Turkey’s borders. Turkey’s Kurds, who constitute an estimated 18% of the country’s population, went to the polls in the 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections with their most electable leader, Selahattin Demirtas, in prison. Despite a judgment by the European Court of Human Rights ordering his release, Demirtas has remained in jail for the past seven years.