Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dropped the final fig leaf of democracy, announcing this week that the state of emergency will continue until Turkey achieves "welfare and peace." The state of emergency, introduced with some justification after the failed coup in July 2016, allows Erdogan to rule by decree, sidelining both the legislature and the constitutional court. By extending it indefinitely, Erdogan is making explicit what had been implicit for months: He's now officially a dictator.
States of emergency are funny things. Many countries keep them on the books, because they are useful in genuine emergencies, and because their presence might, in theory, urge rulers back to democracy when the emergency passes.
Even the U.S. Constitution has a version of a state of emergency in the suspension clause, which allows the temporary waiver of the basic right against arbitrary arrest and detention "when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." President Abraham Lincoln invoked the clause unilaterally during the Civil War, even though most constitutional experts then and now think only Congress has that right. That made him, by some lights, a constitutional dictator.
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