The European story of democratic backsliding follows a familiar pattern. Charismatic leaders such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey use their electoral mandates to weaken judicial institutions, a phenomenon described by academics asautocratic legalism. When courts fall under executive control, leaders can neutralise political opponents through legal means. Albania shows a variant: an independent but unchecked prosecutorial body wielding similar power. By contrast, South Korea demonstrates that structural reforms limiting prosecutorial authority can protect democracy even when courts remain independent.
Turkey's treatment of elected opposition officials illustrates how legal systems can serve authoritarian ends. The government has imprisoned İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan's most credible challenger, andsubjected CHP-elected Esenyurt Mayor Ahmet Özerto over a year of pretrial detention while appointing trustees to replace them.
This strategy extends beyond high-profile figures: since March, Turkish authorities havearrested hundredsof CHP mayors, party administrators, and municipal officials on terrorism and corruption charges that the opposition rejects as politically motivated. The lawfare operates on multiple fronts simultaneously, with each legal maneuver designed to achieve different ends–from removing officials from office to disqualifying them from future elections. This pattern repeats across Turkey: since October 2024, nebulous charges have led tomore than ten CHP mayorsbeing placed in pretrial detention, removing them from office before any judicial determination of guilt.
This culture of 'detention first, verdict later' has migrated beyond Turkey's borders. Albania now hasone of the highest pretrial detention rates in Europe, with more than half of its prison population held without trial – a clear departure from the European standard that detention be a measure of last resort. High-profile cases demonstrate how pre-trial incarceration has become a substitute for adjudication.
The detention of former President Ilir Meta marked an early warning. His arrest provoked accusations of politicised prosecution,driven by opaque investigations, minimal judicial oversight, and reliance on detention rather than charges tested in court. The case reinforced concerns that incarceration sidelines political actors through process rather than conviction.
This pattern culminated in the February 2025 arrest of Tirana Mayor Erion Veliaj, who hasnow languished over a year in detention without ever being convicted. In February 2025, the Special Anti-Corruption Structure (SPAK) detained Veliajthree months before national parliamentary elections, effectively neutralising a sitting mayor and nationally prominent figure at the height of the electoral cycle.Albanian authorities have since denied Veliaj multiple due process and political rights, including:
Collectively, these measuresraise serious concernsabout the compatibility of Albania's prosecutorial practices with basic rule-of-law and due process standards.
Together, the cases of Meta and Veliaj reveal a systemic practice: prolonged pre-trial detention functioning as the primary prosecutorial outcome. Arrests generate headlines, but they do not constitute convictions, and pre-detention does not amount to due process.
In Albania, the tables are turned: the judiciary itself, rather than the executive, has become the instrument of political control. In Turkey, President Erdoğan's executive power enables the arrest of multiple mayors. In Albania, the dynamic is inverted: Prime Minister Edi Rama, a pro-Western centrist leader who championed judicial reform, now finds himselfalarmedby the prosecutorial institution he helped create. SPAK has evolved into a 'Republic of Prosecutors', a sovereign power unmoored from judicial oversight or democratic accountability. Albania's structurally weak judiciary routinely defers to prosecutorial requests, treating detention demands as presumptively valid while ignoring procedural violations. This has normalised prolonged incarceration without trial, effectively allowing prosecutors to neutralise elected officials – including members of the prime minister's own coalition.
South Korea offers an instructive counterexample for how democracies can confront judicial overreach–not through executive domination, but through structural reform. After decades of 'revenge politics', in which nearly every outgoing president faced investigation by a hyper-empowered Prosecutors' Office, South Korea identified the same pathology now visible in Albania: a prosecutorial body that had become a quasi-sovereign authority, combining investigative, charging, and political power.
Source: International Business Times UK
