Actually, whereas I don't think Turkey is that far "gone" on the antidemocratic spectrum, but it has one thing in common with more severe cases of "border-line" democracy, like Russia: It's not the money that rigs the government, it's the government that rigs the money.
In some sense, the US with their absurdly high campaign spending, avoid this kind of corruption either way just by competition.
Even if a single interest group/company would try to outright "buy" a presidential campaign (which hardly works anyway), all the other interest groups combined have an incentive to "buy" it back. Which is why politicians can't be controlled through donations as often as TV Shows might want you to believe.
Erdogan however just rigs the regulation in a way that benefits his reelection and accumulation of wealth. No competition, no problem...
The US elections are equally rigged - you vote for which faction of the mil-ind complex you like, and whether planned parenthood is funded - but not anything like wars, which simple continue as scheduled.
Rigged? I don't think so. But if you accept that you can't vote for every single decision because of practical reasons (and because multiple single-issue-votes tend to contradict each other), you can only vote for the general direction, and in the US this means you have a choice of about two directions. In other democracies you might have three or four directions but those countries tend to have more issues with incompetency and corruption.
However the "axis" of these two directions is aligned by the general public. If people care about wars, the parties would align towards "war" and "no war" for an election. But they don't, because beginning and ending a war isn't something that works well with elections or any arbitrarily timed decision process for that matter.
Governments have to be able to start a war or not end it at the wrong time, otherwise you might as well let non-democratic countries take you to the cleaners...
> In other democracies you might have three or four directions but those countries tend to have more issues with incompetency and corruption.
That's a joke, right? Germany is more corrupt and less competent than the US? Sweden is? The UK is? On almost every metric of government efficiency, the US is behind most european countries.
> If people care about wars, the parties would align towards "war" and "no war" for an election. But they don't,
This is a stupid assertion. Why would they align towards "war" and "no war" when they don't have to? They have enough divisive things like Row vs. Wade, Planned Parenthood, Food Stamps, ACA, etc to make sure that every single-issue voter is accounted for in one camp or the other.
Do you remember that Obama campaigned on the "Close Gitmo" promise?
> But they don't, because beginning and ending a war isn't something that works well with elections or any arbitrarily timed decision process for that matter. Governments have to be able to start a war or not end it at the wrong time, otherwise you might as well let non-democratic countries take you to the cleaners...
I will assume you are naive, because otherwise I would have to assign malice to your argument. The US has been, for years, opening a new front every couple of years. Regardless of timing, "more military action around the world" and "less military action around the world" are things you can base policy on. In fact, Ron Paul campaigned for the latter. But in a two party system, anything except the big two parties is meaningless, and the big parties like it that way - it means they don't have to align with anything the public at large might actually want.
In some sense, the US with their absurdly high campaign spending, avoid this kind of corruption either way just by competition.
Even if a single interest group/company would try to outright "buy" a presidential campaign (which hardly works anyway), all the other interest groups combined have an incentive to "buy" it back. Which is why politicians can't be controlled through donations as often as TV Shows might want you to believe.
Erdogan however just rigs the regulation in a way that benefits his reelection and accumulation of wealth. No competition, no problem...