Hello, my name is David Ronsonan and this is Talking Politics. Today's Talking Politics

Guide is with Aisha Zarakal, an expert on Turkish politics and also on international

political history and she is going to be talking about Turkey and specifically about Erdoğan.

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So maybe we could start not at the beginning but at the end and then work our way back.

What if any other limits to Erdoğan's power today?

There are almost no limits to his power today. In theory the parliament could exercise

some control over him but parliamentary elections happen at the same time as presidential elections.

So as it happened in the last election it's very unlikely even if there were new elections that he

would lose control of the parliament and in theory the judicial branch could exercise some power

over him but he appoints some of the high judges along with the parliament which he controls. So

it's essentially a system with no checks and balances. And he has in recent years but particularly

maybe in the last year been more repressive. There has been a clampdown on dissent and large

numbers of people have been arrested. Just give us a sense of how repressive this regime is.

So Erdoğan started turning authoritarian openly in 2013 and this is a process that has gained

up steam since 2015 after the elections that he came close to losing. And since the attempted

good attempt in 2016 it's been openly repressive. There are tons of thousands of people in prison,

hundreds of thousands of people have been purged from their jobs, many had their passports

reworked, private businesses companies have been confiscated. So yeah it's not a good time to be

...