Trump Is Erdoğan on Steroids

Trump Is Erdoğan on Steroids

(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.)As a scholar of Turkey, I spent years watching President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rise—and, I’ll admit, I once believed in the promise. I had reservations about his Islamist roots, but his vows to fight corruption, reduce poverty, and expand freedoms seemed like the antidote to Turkey’s democratic fragility. For a moment, it felt like real progress.But in hindsight, those so-called reforms were not designed to s…