Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a presidential election runoff last Sunday, extending his rule into a third decade.

Erdogan, 69, secured more than 52 per cent of the vote, despite formidable political crises including soaring inflation that passed 80 per cent in 2022, and scathing criticism over his handling of earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people.

An interesting element of his victory was its defiance of almost all polling, which had his opponent, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leading, and possibly set to win in the first round.

The enduring political strength of Erdogan reinforces a wider dynamic: the remarkable resilience of the populist ‘strongman.’

Around 2017 and 2018, commentators were discussing a concerning rise of populist ‘strongman’ politics. Time Magazine reflected on this new archetype of leader: ‘…changing times have boosted public demand for more muscular, assertive leadership. These tough-talking populists promise to protect “us” from “them”.’

‘Them’ could allude to the corrupt elite, racial, ethnic, or religious minorities, gangs, and cartels, or Western cultural decadence.

There was an undoubted pattern. Late 2016 saw the shock victory of the populist, outsider, and disruptor, Donald Trump.

The support within Russia for Putin hardened further after the state media dubbed ‘miracle’ of the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

Jair Bolsonaro, a politician and retired military officer, and a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage, abortion, drug liberalisation, and secularism, was elected President of Brazil in 2019. During his term, he rolled back protections for Indigenous groups in the Amazon rainforest and enabled its deforestation.

In Israel, the right-shifting trend toward Israeli nationalism, and divided opposition, provided an enduring power base for the divisive and ubiquitous Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the Philippines, the hard-edged, unsparing populist Rodrigo Duterte was elected President in 2016. His political success was aided by his vocal support for the extrajudicial killing of drug users and other criminals, with him having repeatedly affirmed to have personally killed criminal suspects during his term as mayor of Davao. He initiated a controversial war on drugs, crime, and corruption. His tenure sparked numerous protests and attracted controversy, particularly over human rights issues. Despite the criticisms, Duterte maintained high approval ratings.

During these years, there was a clear ascension of populist, nationalist ‘strongmen’, each with a sufficiently strong support base to resist criticism from the secular intelligentsia and the media.

However, things seemed to abruptly change. Within the span of a year or so, it seemed as if the era of the ‘strongman’ was receding.

Donald Trump’s presidency ended after just one term; the first time an incumbent had failed of re-election since Jimmy Carter in 1980. The system held when strained by allegations of voter fraud, and through the visceral spasm of violence on January 6th.

Jair Bolsonaro was defeated by a left-wing populist, the first-ever Brazilian President to fail to be re-elected. Bolsonaro disappeared off to Florida to lick his wounds.

Benjamin ubiquitous, under a cloud of various investigations, was finally ousted by a wide-ranging coalition of his opponents, who shared little in common other than an intense desire to remove him.

In 2021, President of The Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, opted not to run for a second term.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a ‘special military operation’ envisaged to last a matter of weeks, met unexpected resistance, became bogged down, engendered surprising solidarity and unity of purpose in the West, brought major sanctions, and prompted the expansion of Nato.

Around this time, Turkey’s President Erdogan seemed to falter, with an embarrassing loss in an Istanbul election.

And yet, just when the counter-narrative seemed to be firming, and the era of the populist ‘strongman’ seemed to be yielding to a more emphatically secular democratic one, populist strongman politics has proven remarkably resilient.

Even with the entry of Ron DeSantis into the Republican primaries, and all the legal clouds, Donald Trump remains miles ahead in most Republican primary polls, and even leads President Biden in many hypothetical match-ups; driven by an extraordinarily resilient personal appeal among his base. The proliferation of alternative candidates may create the same conditions that allowed Trump to secure the nomination in 2016.

Bolsonaro is returning from Florida, and seems to be laying the ground for a political comeback in Brazil, where he retains a solid support base.

In barely any time at all, the anti-Netanyahu coalition in Israel collapsed amid its untenable differences, and Netanyahu was back in power; and although his present coalition is brittle, it was a remarkable feat of resilience for him to chart a path back to office. The new Israeli government, which formed in late 2022, saw his conservative Likud party propped up by an upstart generation of ultranationalist politicians.

Despite all the setbacks, and looming Ukrainian spring counter-offensive, Vladimir Putin’s domestic support remains high, and the Russian economy fairly resilient in the face of ongoing sanctions and isolation.

And in just the last few days, Turkey’s Erdogan, written off by almost every presidential poll, with most analysts expecting he wouldn’t even last the first round of voting, has retained power, with a clear majority.

The highwater mark of the populist ‘strongman’ may have been a few years ago, but we have seen a counternarrative against the assumption that secular liberal democracy would fulsomely re-emerge into the ascendancy.

In a year and a half we will finally have a clearer, even definitive picture of the true resilience of strongman politics. By then, Donald Trump will either be back in the oval office, or, by then 78, and unable to run again until he is 82, and having lost two elections in a row, he will be a spent force. Netanyahu’s coalition, under the pressure of massive public demonstrations against judicial reforms, may have collapsed, and Netanyahu has breathed his last politically. Bolsonaro’s flirtation with a comeback may have faded. And a stalemate in The Donbas region of Ukraine, and mounting casualties, may finally have stoked the first flickers of domestic unrest in Russia.

It is also possible that, by then, there will be the emergence of a few more tough-talking populist firebrands, promising to protect ‘us’ from ‘them’.