The first thing to be said about the results of the March 30 local elections in Turkey is that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the clear winner. No one can dispute this. This does not mean, however, that the subject is closed for debate.

For one thing, it is hard to argue that Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the elections “fair and square.” The existence of a democratic environment in Turkey would have had to be indisputable for that to happen. This, however, was clearly not the case.

Turkey today is under international scrutiny for having an elected leader whose authoritarian tendencies have begun to seriously erode the country’s democratic institutions. Erdogan constantly refers to the “sanctity of the ballot box,” but history tells us that elected leaders can do serious damage to democracy by manipulating public concerns and using parliamentary majorities to tamper with the basic principles underlying true democracy.

One is therefore justified in wondering whether Erdogan would have obtained the same result if he had not used his parliamentary majority to undermine Turkey’s legal system to protect himself and his government against charges of corruption. One is also justified in asking whether he would have gotten the same result if he had not curbed the free press, which in any genuine democracy acts as a watchdog against corruption in high places.