When Turkey jailed Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s biggest rival at the weekend, thousands of protesters took to the streets. Notably less vocal were the country’s Western allies.The Turkish president and commander of NATO’s second-biggest army is banking on the world needing him more than it needs to join a fight over the country’s democracy.

Only last week, its government was still what political scientists call a competitive authoritarian regime: although President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wields unchecked executive powers and de facto control over the courts and most of the media,