Hungary and Türkiye were once seen as parallel cases of democratic backsliding, yet their paths have now diverged with Viktor Orbán’s defeat in the 2026 Hungarian election. Alper H. Yağcı argues that in contrast to Orbán, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been able to leverage Türkiye’s hyper-presidential system to maintain his grip on power.
For years, political scientists juxtaposed Hungary and Türkiye as cautionary tales of democratic backsliding, tracing how both nations succumbed to electoral autocracies helmed by leaders who dismantled checks and balances. Yet, their trajectories have diverged. While Viktor Orbán has been defeated by a unified opposition, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues to govern.
Doubts linger over whether Erdoğan will ever permit an electoral environment capable of unseating him – a scepticism validated by the ongoing incarceration of his primary rival, Ekrem İmamoğlu. While geopolitical context plays a role, the constitutional architecture of the state serves as a primary cause of this divergence: namely, the parliamentary framework in Hungary contrasted with the hyper-presidential system in Türkiye.
Türkiye’s winner-takes-all presidentialism
Erdoğan’s ascent to political dominance occurred within a parliamentary regime, with Erdoğan serving as prime minister from 2003 to 2014. However, to consolidate his leadership, he orchestrated a constitutional pivot toward a presidential system, eliminating the assembly-dependent prime minister and making the presidency all-powerful.
Taking effect in 2018, this shift altered the political competition calculus. It transformed executive elections into referendums on Erdoğan’s survival, and shifted focus away from parliamentary elections, where his party, the AKP, has been losing support amidst economic mismanagement and corruption scandals. Diverging from the party’s declining fortunes, Erdoğan won the 2018 and 2023 elections against opposition candidates portrayed as representing the other side of a cultural divide.
Because presidential elections are winner-takes-all, they elevate the existential stakes of relinquishing power. Executive presidential offices generate a concentrated locus of power. For an entrenched incumbent, surrendering this machinery poses a threat, lest it be weaponised against them. This concerns the leader and the network of elites and bureaucrats orbiting the administration. Voters support executive aggrandisement if they expect the office will be retained by their side, triggering a spiral of autocratisation as incumbents bend rules to stave off defeat.
In Türkiye, the stakes of the presidential election reached such heights that prior to 2023, the opposition alliance suffered an internal split. Some feared fielding their strongest candidate could create a new autocratic leader post-Erdoğan, given the powers available to the office. This contributed to the nomination of a parliamentary veteran who could not match Erdoğan’s appeal, and the election was lost.
The regime’s personalisation was cemented through symbolism. The cultivation of presidential majesty, complete with the construction of a colossal presidential palace, and an autarkic foreign policy identified with the president, forged a political atmosphere of leader-state unison. The Erdoğan administration became barely distinguishable from the Turkish state, conditioning the public to view him as irreplaceable and bringing the legitimacy of the political opposition into question.
The parliamentary buffer in Hungary
In contrast, Orbán manoeuvred entirely as prime minister. He engineered his autocratisation through the legislature – leveraging the 2011 Fundamental Law and distorted electoral rules that guaranteed parliamentary supermajorities. While he personalised his party’s rule, he avoided fusing his identity with a national leadership office.
Orbán installed loyalists in the presidency via parliamentary votes but refrained from assuming the role. The subordinate nature of this office was laid bare during the February 2024 pardon scandal, which forced the resignation of President Katalin Novák and prompted Orbán to install Tamás Sulyok. By keeping the presidency legally distinct, Orbán fell short of constructing a monolithic power structure to the extent witnessed in Türkiye.
Ironically, the opposition frequently championed a popularly elected president. Recognising that parliamentary elections were gerrymandered to favour Orbán’s rural base, the opposition viewed a directly elected presidency as a viable counterweight to his prime ministerial dominance. The institutional duality contained the promise of power-sharing.
The victory of Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party in the April 2026 parliamentary elections inverted this partisan dynamic, yet the reality of that institutional duality remains intact. President Sulyok remains in office and is expected to serve as a constitutional safeguard against a complete reversal of power away from the outgoing Fidesz elites.
The post-election friction – highlighted by Magyar demanding Sulyok’s resignation and the president’s resistance – encapsulates this dynamic. Because Hungary retained its parliamentary architecture, Orbán’s electoral defeat does not precipitate the total institutional annihilation of his party. By lowering the institutional stakes of defeat, the parliamentary design may increase the odds of a peaceful transition of executive power.
This institutional divergence shaped how these regimes handled primary challengers. Prior to the 2026 elections, efforts by the Orbán-aligned judiciary to prosecute Magyar faltered, as he was shielded by legislative immunity as a Member of the European Parliament. This protection was linked to Hungary’s continued membership in the European Union.
Conversely, Erdoğan’s most formidable rival, Ekrem İmamoğlu, ascended as a popular mayor – an executive launchpad characteristic of presidential systems. As a local executive outside the legislature, İmamoğlu lacked parliamentary immunity.
When he emerged as a genuine threat, the judiciary discovered reasons to prosecute him, and he is currently imprisoned. This targeted decapitation of the opposition is the corollary of Türkiye’s isolated status outside the EU and its presidential architecture, which makes parliament a less relevant arena for leadership ambitions.
Government systems revisited
It remains to be seen whether Magyar – a former insider of the Orbán administration – will guide Hungary toward a stable democracy. Nevertheless, a peaceful transfer of power constitutes the first step toward opening that window. While not impossible, a similar transition in Türkiye currently faces longer odds.
Institutions do not dictate actor behaviour, but they structure the arena where actors operate. They are constructs that can be redesigned by those wielding power, but actors invest in redesigning institutions precisely because of their expected effects on political competition.
In Hungary, the parliamentary system helped make a transfer of power possible. In Türkiye, the shift to a presidential system furthered Erdoğan’s goal of entrenching his leadership.
It is no coincidence that modern authoritarian regimes gravitate toward presidential architectures where the president operates as both head of government and head of state. This suggests that if Magyar manoeuvres to make himself a popularly elected president and eliminates the prime ministerial office, there could be a potential backslide toward autocratic leadership.
As democracy retreats worldwide, understanding how government systems facilitate or hinder authoritarian ambitions requires close attention. For decades, the debate over the “perils of presidentialism” focused on how executive-legislative gridlock caused established democracies to collapse. However, focusing solely on established democracies introduces a selection bias that ignores a crucial reality: constitutional systems structure regime dynamics even within hybrid regimes.
When we expand our view globally, the peril of the presidential architecture becomes less about legislative gridlock and more about the personal stakes, authority and security of the executive leader. Why autocrats tend to be presidents rather than prime ministers is a question that still demands theoretical attention.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of LSE European Politics or the London School of Economics.
Image credit: miron82 provided by Shutterstock.
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