Turkey’s ruling party, known as the AKP, has pushed a set of constitutional measures through parliament that would grant the party’s leader, President Erdogan, virtually autocratic powers. The measures are set to be submitted to a national referendum in April. Michael Daventry writes:

By abolishing Turkey’s long-established system of collective cabinet government, the AKP says it will stabilize the country and streamline decision-making. But the proposed law will pool power in the hands of the president and dramatically reduce the top job’s accountability to parliament. In effect, it codifies a system of one-man rule for Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

It wipes out the century-old role of prime minister and transfers its functions to the president. It strips Turkish MPs of their duty to scrutinize the executive and abolishes the vote of confidence needed for governments to take office. It grants the presidency new powers to appoint directly a vast range of public officials—cabinet ministers, provincial governors, and judges to the highest courts in the land.

Simply put, the government’s plans . . . are designed to strengthen the individual over the collective. Powers and duties that are presently distributed among the prime minister, the cabinet, and senior judges are being rerouted to one man.

The AKP says the proposed law will equip a strong leader to generate the stability that people in Turkey crave. . . . That message has a powerful appeal for a country like Turkey, which has been rocked by political turmoil, the need to care for millions of Syrian refugees, and repeated terror attacks that have killed one person on average for each day of the last eighteen months. But it is difficult to argue the system is not being tailored specifically for Erdogan himself, not least because it eliminates the few remaining checks on his power.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.