Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

Politicized diploma annulment & erosion of rights

• Many see the annulment of İmamoğlu’s degree as a nakedly political move to block a leading opposition figure from the presidency, not a genuine administrative correction.
• Commenters frame it as part of a long-running slide from flawed democracy to “electoral autocracy,” with prior patterns: post‑2016 purges, censorship, arbitrary arrests, and now his detention on corruption/terrorism charges plus social media shutdowns and protest bans.
• Several note the deeper precedent: any right or status (education, eligibility, even freedom) can be retroactively revoked, making nothing securely “earned.”

Degree requirement as a vulnerability

• The core structural problem identified is requiring a university degree to run for president: this hands veto power over candidates to academia and, by extension, the ruling regime.
• Discussion of whether degree requirements are inherently undemocratic:
  • Critics say they exclude poorer and nontraditional candidates and are trivially weaponized.
  • Supporters argue complex jobs should have minimal formal-education thresholds, especially in poorly educated societies.
• Honorary or foreign degrees are seen as useless in an autocratic context; authorities can simply refuse to recognize them.

Revocable credentials & comparison to other systems

• Several draw parallels to revoking digital purchases or property rights in the US: what you “own” or “earned” often exists at the sufferance of institutions.
• The Columbia case (degrees “temporarily revoked” over campus occupation and vandalism) is debated:
  • Some see a narrow, misconduct-based sanction;
  • Others see political pressure from the US government corrupting university discipline and normalizing credential revocation for non‑academic reasons.

Global democratic backsliding & double standards

• Commenters connect Turkey’s trajectory to broader democratic decline: US Trumpism, potential norm-breaking on term limits, and EU/Romanian cases where courts or rules are used to shape who can run.
• Some argue reactions are inconsistently harsh or lenient depending on which country is involved, suggesting tribal or geopolitical bias rather than purely principled concern.
• Underneath, many place the root cause in lack of truly independent judiciaries and the ease of weaponizing formal rules against opponents.