Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already established his place in history books, but the nature and the meaning of his legacy will be determined by researchers, intellectuals, scholars, and activists, people who observe, record, and study his leadership. In this special issue of Mediterranean Quarterly, noteworthy scholars document and analyze the decline of a twenty-first century, democratically elected government into a domestically punitive and regionally aggressive authoritarian regime.