All things are not necessarily equal when it comes to tyrants and liberals. Turkey has just elected a new president, or more accurately, they had their first popular election for that office, and moved their prime minister into that position. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been acting a little power hungry lately, and decided that he wanted to be president, and expand the powers of that office to meet his desires. For better or worse, the people of Turkey have obliged him. Because he’s backed by mostly conservative Sunni Muslims, it won’t be surprising if in the coming months we’ll see liberal foreign policy wonks talking about how bad this is. They’ll be right, but probably for the wrong reasons.

Cenk Sidar offered a very interesting pre-election analysis of the situation in Turkey at ForeignPolicy.com, particularly through a thumbnail sketch of the Erdogan administration. The first statement of interest had to do with Erdogan’s attitude about the system of checks and balances in the Turkish government.

Lately, Erdogan has shown little interest in preserving a system based on checks and balances and the separation of powers. The prime minister’s harsh crackdown on his political opponents and his combative rhetoric strongly suggest that he would like to see Turkey become a decidedly illiberal democracy, one in which he and his party can use the mandate of the ballot box to rule as they please, with little or no consideration of dissenting views.