Shadowing Practice: How Erdogan Is Destroying Turkey’s Future - Learn English Speaking with Video
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July 2016.
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Factions of the Turkish military attempt a coup to remove incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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Tanks and soldiers fill the streets, fighter jets fly overhead, and the city falls into chaos.
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But Erdogan fights back.
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He FaceTimes into a TV station from a holiday resort and exclaims, there is no power higher than the power of the people.
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His rallying cry moves thousands of ordinary
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Turks to the streets in protest of the military takeover.
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Within a day, Erdogan is back in Istanbul and the coup is squashed.
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Fast forward to today and Turks out in the streets, protesting for democracy again.
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But this time, their hero is Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul.
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İmamoğlu, a rising star and political threat to Erdogan, has been handed a 20 -month sentence and faces charges of corruption and aiding a terror group.
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The news led
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Turkish financial markets to plunge, while police responded to demonstrations with tear gas and rubber bullets, detaining almost 1 ,900 protesters.
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When Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded
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Turkey in 1923, his vision was a modern, secular, democratic nation rejecting the Ottoman past.
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But now, Erdogan seems to be charting a new path.
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Charismatic yet polarizing, he's dominated
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Turkish politics since 2003, backed by a loyal base of working -class conservatives.
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His critics believe he is destroying the economy and taking
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Turkey on a path away from secular democracy and towards religious autocracy.
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This is Erdogan, the new sultan.
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In order to make sense of Erdogan's provocative agenda, we need to understand his rise to power.
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Erdogan was born into a working -class conservative family in 1954 and attended a religious high school in Istanbul.
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After graduating, he went almost directly into politics,
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joining several Islamist parties and entering parliament for the first time in 1986 as a representative of a district of Istanbul.
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His big break came in 1994 when he surprised the political establishment by winning the Istanbul mayoral election.
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Over his four -year tenure, he was generally viewed as an effective mayor of the city.
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Then 1999 happened.
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He was jailed for reciting an Islamic poem at a 1997 rally, a violation of Turkey's rules on religion in public life.
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And in 1999, he went to prison and in the process became a living martyr to conservative Turks.
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He even released an album of poetry, which became a bestseller in the country.
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With the wind at his back, he went on to found his political party, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, in 2001.
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The party was not overly Islamist, but instead sought to appeal to a broad, working -class, socially conservative base.
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The strategy paid off, big time.
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The AKP won a landslide victory in 2002.
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They won again comfortably in 2007 and grew their vote shares further in the 2011 general election.
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And in 2014, after 11 years as Prime Minister, Erdogan ran to be Turkey's first directly elected president
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and won his first five -year term with 51 .8 % of the vote.
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Erdogan was riding high on the back of strong economic growth that had significantly benefited his working -class base.
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Turkey's poverty rate fell from 42 % in 2003 to around 14 % in 2013
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while GDP per capita soared and inequality fell.
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But despite his success, he had made enemies.
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The 2016 coup attempt made Erdogan paranoid.
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Mass arrests followed, with the administration claiming that the coup was plotted from overseas by his former ally Fethullah Gulen,
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a charismatic preacher who led an influential
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Islamic movement from exile in the US.
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Gulen's supporters were aggressively purged from the government.
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Since then, Erdogan has progressively centralised power around the presidency, with a referendum in 2017 that shifted the country to a presidential system.
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He went beyond the halls of public office and clamped down on media criticism.
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Turkey now ranks alongside countries like Belarus and Myanmar for the worst mistreatment of journalists.
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It has plunged in global rankings of rule of law, now sitting at 117th worldwide, below even Russia.
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However, Erdogan's dominance of Turkish politics is not absolute, and the country still has a semi -functioning democratic process.
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He was forced into a second round in the 2023 election as public anger over the economy mounted, but nonetheless ultimately won.
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He will now be in power until 2028.
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The arrest of Ekram Imamoglu in March 2025 on dubious grounds
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is seen by many as the latest step in this democratic decline and Erdogan's boldest move yet to snuff out political opposition.
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And the takeaway from Erdogan's story?
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He's a populist survivor, casting himself as the voice of a conservative majority against the liberal elite.
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At the ballot box, he's almost unbeatable.
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But politically, has he really succeeded?
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Now back to the video.
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While Erdogan might be a populist, his recent economic moves have not been popular.
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His erratic policymaking and assault on institutions has led the country into a full -blown crisis
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that is only just starting to recover from.
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If you want to look at one statistic that captures the performance of the Turkish economy under Erdogan, look at the value of the lira.
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In 2015, one year after Erdogan took the presidency, one US dollar was equal to around three Turkish lira.
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Fast forward to today, and one US dollar gives you no less than 41 Turkish lira.
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But how did
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Turkey get here?
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Turkey has long been a high consumption, low savings economy that spends a lot on imports and finances this with overseas borrowing.
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Two points stand out.
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For one, Turkey has a large and persistent current account deficit, it, meaning that it consistently imports more than it exports.
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Though the exact amount fluctuates year on year, if you look closer, you can see what's driving this.
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Turkey is a massive net importer of two types of commodity, gold, which households use as a store of value,
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and energy, much of it in the form of oil and gas from Russia, Azerbaijan, and other countries in the region.
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According to Ministry of Finance data, net energy imports in 2024 stood at $49 billion, while net gold imports were $13 billion.
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This current account deficit doesn't just mean that
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Turkey imports more than it exports.
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It also logically means that
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Turkey consumes more than it produces.
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If it consumes more than it produces, it has to fund this somehow.
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And it does this through overseas borrowing.
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And this has been at the core of Erdogan's economic model.
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Turkey's external debt has climbed steadily over his tenure, rising from 35 % of GDP in 2005 to more than 55 % in 2019,
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just before the pandemic.
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Its current external borrowing levels are broadly similar to Argentina's, long considered a case study in how not to run an economy.
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But here's where it gets a bit more complicated.
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Turkey's government runs a sizable budget deficit, but government borrowing only accounts for around 23 % of the country's total external debt.
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Instead, Turkey's overseas borrowing comes through local banks, who borrow it in dollars or euros and then swap it into lira and lend domestically.
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46 % of the growth in foreign debt since 2005 has come from private sector and state bank borrowing,
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and a further 33 % from private sector non -bank borrowing.
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Together, they now account for nearly 70 % of Turkey's foreign debt.
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Banks lent this money into the economy, which triggered a surge in spending, particularly on real estate and infrastructure.
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And for a while, this worked out nicely for the Erdogan government.
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The debt spurge gave the Turkish economy a big boost.
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Turkish real GDP grew at an average of 5 .8 % from 2003 to 2017,
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outperforming developing Europe and far better than the eurozone's dismal 1 .1%.
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But this kind of foreign debt -fueled growth was unsustainable.
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To keep borrowing at such high levels, a country must ensure foreign investors stay willing to fund the gap.
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And second, it has to hold up the value of its currency so that this foreign currency -denominated debt remains manageable.
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Erdogan lost both of these.
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Things Something started to unravel in 2018 when the foreign investors who had funded his growth model started to get cold feet.
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Higher levels of foreign borrowing and rising inflation from all
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that credit -driven spending led into question whether Turkish borrowers would be able to pay off their debts,
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and whether the central bank would have enough foreign currency reserves to preserve the value of the lira.
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This loss of confidence started a vicious cycle.
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The lira lost 40 % of its value against the US dollar in 2018, while inflation peaked at 25 % and economic growth stalled.
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The central bank was forced to burn down its foreign currency reserves to try
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and stop the lira falling even further Erdogan's economy was coming off the rails
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But instead of hitting the brakes, he pushed the accelerator
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Economics 101 says that when faced with a weakening currency and high inflation
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The central bank should raise interest rates
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But Erdogan disagreed
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In fact, he famously argued the exact opposite
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Claiming that cutting interest rates actually reduces inflation
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As inflation continued to surge after the start of the crisis in 2018 Erdogan would not budge.
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Things got worse and worse.
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Economic growth slowed to a crawl and unemployment jumped to 13 .7%.
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This chart tracks inflation against the Turkish central bank's own policy rate.
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By the start of 2022, annualized inflation had hit 72%,
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but he refused to allow significant increases in interest rates to try and bring the situation under control control.
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His unorthodox views brought him into direct conflict with the Turkish Central Bank, which resulted in him sacking four bank governors between 2019 and 2023.
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Only after the 2023 election did he start to accept reality and allow interest rates to rise.
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Since then, inflation has started to gradually fall, and foreign borrowing has been wound in a bit.
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But the road to recovery has been painful.
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The IMF expects
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Turkey's economy to grow by 2 .7 % this year versus a global average of 4 .1 % for emerging
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and developing economies.
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However, the problem wasn't just Erdogan's crazy monetary policy or his short -term support for debt -fueled growth.
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It was the damage he has done to the independence of key institutions like the central bank
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and rule of law that have led
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Turkish and foreign investors alike to move their capital out of the country.
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And that is why the markets reacted so badly to the arrest of Imamoglu,
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because it demonstrated clearly that Erdogan is dismantling institutions the country needs for long -term economic success.
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Turks may still vote for him, but the truth is simple.
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He's making the country poorer.
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Beyond the economy, Erdogan has also sought to reshape
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Turkish society to make it more religious.
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The modern Turkish Republic was founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 on the principle of secularism, the separation of religion and the state,
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and the exclusion of religious codes from the country's legal system.
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While Turkey remains constitutionally secular, this distinction has become increasingly blurred under Erdogan.
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His party, the AKP, draws its large electoral majorities from a lower -income, socially conservative segment of Turkish society.
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His political strategy has been a populist one, to draw a contrast between a Muslim Turkish population
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and a secular elite that is out of touch with the traditions of the majority.
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You can see this in his rhetoric.
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In 2014, he drew outrage at a summit in Istanbul by saying that
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Islam had defined women's position in society as motherhood.
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And he's also repeatedly criticised LGBT activist groups as undermining the country's national and spiritual values, despite homosexuality actually being legal in the country.
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It's not just speeches.
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It's also evident in his efforts to peel back laws designed to keep religion out of public life in Turkey.
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In 2013, he lifted restrictions on religious clothing, most prominently women's headscarves, in Turkish public institutions such as the military and schools.
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He has tightened the screws on alcohol consumption, outrightly banning the sale of alcohol for a period of time during the pandemic,
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and more recently requiring producers to put up collateral of up to 50 million lira, then around $1 .7 million to produce alcohol.
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And he even tried to justify his unconventional views on interest rates
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that we mentioned earlier by saying that high interest rates were un -Islamic.
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However, perhaps the clearest insight into Erdogan's Islamic vision is in education.
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Erdogan has set out to create what he calls a pious generation.
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To do this, he has sought to dramatically expand a network of government -funded schools called Imam Hatip schools.
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These schools offer a mixed curriculum of both standard subjects like maths and science and religious education,
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which can include Arabic, Islamic jurisprudence and studying the Quran.
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In 2002, when Erdogan's AKP first came to power, there were around 450 such schools in the country.
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By late 2023, this has surged to around 1 ,700, with a six -fold increase in students.
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These schools receive a disproportionately large share of government funding.
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According to a 2018
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Reuters investigation, they accounted for 23 % of the government's high school spending, despite only representing 11 % of the country's students.
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And this is expected to continue.
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According to ABC Gazetesi, a Turkish media outlet, government spending on Imam Hatip schools in 2025 is expected to grow by 51 % on last year,
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with total funding between now and 2027 to total US $3 .6 billion.
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US dollars.
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Now, you could argue this would all make sense if this conservative
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Islamic agenda reflected the wishes of a significant majority of Turks.
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But here's the catch.
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Religiosity in Turkey has actually fallen over his tenure, and according to polling, less than half of the population actually considers itself religious.
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According to a poll by Kondo Research, the share of Turks identifying as religious has fallen from 55 % in 2008 to 46 % in 2025.
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And in another poll by Pew Research, 74 % of Turks said that laws should not strictly follow the Quran.
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So while Erdogan's reinsertion of religion into public life clearly pleases some
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Turks, he has definitely not created a new national consensus on this issue.
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The reason Erdogan is talked about so much abroad is not just because of his controversial domestic agenda, it's also because of his assertive foreign policy.
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Turkey is in a unique position, both geographically and politically.
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It is a member of NATO and wants to be part of the EU,
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but Erdogan continually blames the West for Turkey's problems and has strong relations with Russia.
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Erdogan's defining foreign policy issue has been the conflict across its southern border in Syria, which spiraled into civil war after the 2011 Arab Spring.
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As president, Erdogan strongly supported the Syrian rebels in their fight to remove Bashar al -Assad.
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They provided weapons and financing to Syrian opposition groups and launched several military incursions into north
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East Syria despite outrage from other native members.
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This was critical.
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Because when Assad finally fell in 2024, Turkey emerged as one of the main power brokers in the country.
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Since coming to power in December 2024, Syria's new leader, Ahmed al -Shahra, has made three visits to Turkey, more than any other country.
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Ankara has already signed a defense support pact with the new government, cementing its influence over Damascus.
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But Erdogan wasn't solely interested in getting rid of Assad.
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The Syrian conflict was important for two other key issues.
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First, Syria's collapse into violence triggered an exodus of refugees refugees, most of whom had to pass through Turkey to get to Europe.
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At its peak in 2021, Turkey hosted more than 3 .8 million Syrian refugees.
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And it has generally treated them well.
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It has built well -equipped camps for them and given them access to healthcare and education.
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However, the issue gave Erdogan significant leverage over the EU,
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who were desperate to prevent a large influx of refugees and had to cooperate with Turkey to achieve this.
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Erdogan used this to extract big concessions from the EU,
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including 10 billion euros in funding for the refugees and visa -free access for Turks to Europe.
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Second, the Syrian crisis allowed Erdogan to pursue his domestic objective of stamping out
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Kurdish separatist movements like the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which would wage a long war against the Turkish government from Syria
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and Iraq in the hope of establishing a separate Kurdish state.
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Turkish forces bombed PKK sites in northern Iraq and Syria
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and claimed to have neutralized nearly 40 ,000 PKK fighters over its 10 -year campaign.
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Erdogan now appears to have won this battle.
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In May this year, the PKK announced that they would disband
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and lay down their arms after backroom talks between Ankara and the gelled leadership of the organisation,
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creating hope for an end to the long -running conflict.
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Syria is a microcosm of a broader point.
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Erdogan has been much more willing to throw
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Turkey's weight around internationally and has been successful in doing so.
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Whether leaders in NATO, Brussels or the Middle East like it or not, Turkey now has an important seat at the table.
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Erdogan has had a colourful career, from working -class kid to mayor and from prisoner to president.
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He has led the country into economic crisis, eroded its democracy and secular heritage,
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and at the same time transformed it into a major player on the world stage.
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He has done this as a populist leader who tapped public discontent and an out -of -touch elite.
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But with polls suggesting that 67 % of Turks now want an end to the Erdogan era, the roles may be reversing.
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Erdogan's rise to power was sealed
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when he was sent to prison as the charismatic mayor of Istanbul who stood against an unpopular government.
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And now, in seeking to remove his main rival Ekrem İmamolu, he has jailed another charismatic mayor of Istanbul who stands against another unpopular government.
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As he thinks about the future, Erdogan should look to his own past.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “How Erdogan Is Destroying Turkey’s Future”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Erdogan, Turkish, Turkey, foreign. This video has 182 sentences and 3066 words to shadow. The speech runs for 17:55. The speaker talks at a natural 171 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 76% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| borrowing noun | /ˈbɔrəwɪŋ/ | An instance of something being borrowed. |
| inflation noun | /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/ | An act, instance of, or state of expansion or increase in size, especially by injection of a gas or liquid. |
| currency noun | /ˈkʌɹ.ən.si/ | Money or other items used to facilitate transactions. |
| import noun | /ˈɪm.pɔɹt/ | Something brought in from an exterior source, especially for sale or trade. |
| secular adjective | /ˈsɛkjʊlə/ | Not specifically religious; lay or civil, as opposed to clerical. |
| overseas adverb | /ˌoʊvɚˈsiːz/ | Abroad. |
| coup noun | /ku/ | A quick, brilliant, and highly successful act. |
| elite noun | /ɪˈlit/ | A special group or social class of people who have a superior social or economic status and attendant power, advantages, or privileges in society; a member of… |
| poll noun | /poʊl/ | A survey of people, usually statistically analyzed to gauge wider public opinion. |
| agenda noun | /əˈd͡ʒɛn.də/ | A temporally organized plan for matters to be attended to. |
| deficit noun | /ˈdɛfəsɪt/ | Deficiency in amount or quality; a falling short; lack. |
| investor noun | /ɪnˈvɛs.tə(ɹ)/ | A person who invests money in order to make a profit. |
| tenure noun | /ˈtɛn.jʊə/ | A status of possessing a thing or an office; an incumbency. |
| argue verb | /ˈɑɹ.ɡju/ | To show grounds for concluding (that); to indicate, imply. |
| economics noun | /ˌiːkəˈnɒmɪks/ | The study of resource and wealth allocation, consumption, and distribution, of capital and investment, and of management of the factors of production. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| pay off verb | To bribe, especially to deter oversight. | |
| burn down verb | To cause (a structure) to burn to nothing. | |
| come off verb | To become detached. | |
| come through verb | To come into a room or other space through a door or passageway. | |
| fall over verb | To fall from an upright or standing position to a horizontal or prone position. | |
| fight back verb | /faɪt bæk/ | To defend oneself by fighting. |
| hold up verb | To wait or delay. | |
| lie down verb | To assume a horizontal position. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has been handed · has progressively centralised · has plunged |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is squashed · has been handed · was born |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 3 contractions and reduced forms, such as wasn't, doesn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: clothing /ˈkloʊðɪŋ/, northeast /noːˈθɪjst/, nonetheless /ˌnʌnðəˈlɛs/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: inflation /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/, consumption /kənˈsʌmp.ʃən/, socially /ˈsoʊʃəli/, contrast /kənˈt(ʃ)ɹæst/, establish /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: economics /ˌiːkəˈnɒmɪks/, presidency /ˈpɹɛzɪdənsi/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, infrastructure /ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹʌkt͡ʃə/, establishment /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ.mənt/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like borrowing, inflation, currency.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.