Aposto World

In recent years, right-wing populist governments, which also feed on religious elements to consolidate their supporters, have preferred to antagonize and oppress LGBTI+ persons. Russia is one of these countries. If the legal amendment proposal whose details have been leaked in fact is being prepared, it means that the AK Party has decided to board the train of Russia and join LGBTI+'s further marginalization and antagonization.

The anti-LGBTI+ tactic of populist regimes

Political scientist Prof. Dr. Francis Fukuyama from Stanford University connected online to the Second Economic Congress of the Century in Izmir and gave a speech on the crisis of liberal democracies in the world and the opportunities that the 2023 elections could provide for Turkey. We interviewed Fukuyama, whose thesis 'The End of History and the Last Man' marked an era, immediately after his speech.Abdullah EsinHello Prof. Fukuyama, thanks so much for talking to us, Aposto. I have just listened to your speech at Congress for Future’s Economy. You are one of the prominent figures of liberal democracy and mostly known by your historical book “The End of History”. As you have mentioned in your speech, liberal democracy is in crisis throughout the World. The number of autocracies is on the rise while liberal democracies are falling. How do you analyze the current struggle of liberal democracy? What are the main dynamics behind the crisis of democracy? What the democrats should do to restore the liberal democracy in the world?<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2023/2/0/1679201816412.png" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" ratio="3.59" width="550" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable"> <blockquote fr-original-style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9);" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); margin: 0px 0px 1em; border-left: 2px solid rgb(94, 53, 177); padding-left: 5px; box-sizing: border-box;">Well, there are several different threats to liberal democracy. There is a geopolitical threat right now that is exemplified by Russia and China. That has turned into a military threat with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So, I think that is important at a geopolitical level to show these countries that they can’t get away with attacking democracy using military force, to deter future attempts to use force in a similar way. I think the one people are worrying most is China attacking Taiwan in the same way Russia attacked Ukraine.But for other countries, in particular for Turkey, the struggle is internal, domestic one. The main issue is winning elections. I think there is an opportunity for Turkish democracy to make a comeback if the opposition can actually organize well enough to win the upcoming election.This is the same issue for us in the United States. The only way that we are going to defeat our form of populism is by winning elections. I think the election last November was good for the democracy in America, because a lot of the pro-Trump populist candidates lost their election bids. I think something like that needs to happen in every country where elections are still possible.Unfortunately, there are a lot of countries where authoritarianism has consolidated to the point that there really are not meaningful elections. In those cases, there are much longer-term struggle going on. I don’t think Turkey is there yet, so you got an opportunity to use the ballot box to reverse the kind of trends we have seen in the last decade.</blockquote><img src="https://images.aposto.com/2023/2/0/1679201845574.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" ratio="1.58" width="550" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable"> If the pro-democracy opposition in Turkey would win the election, what do you think about the challenges they might face? Will it be easy to restore democracy?<blockquote fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; border-left: 2px solid rgb(94, 53, 177); padding-left: 5px; box-sizing: border-box;">It is going to be a huge challenge. The first challenge is going to be economic. Turkey has an incredibly high rate of inflation that brought on deliberately by Erdoğan’s crazy monetary policy. I think there is a budget deficit and it need to rein in the money supply.Those are all going to be very painful measures, because interest rates are going to have to go up. It is likely to trigger a recession. That is going to be very bad for the incoming government to have to deal with this legacy.Unfortunately to some extent, it can’t be avoided. Because, Turkey’s economy is heading in the wrong direction. Unless there is a big shift in the policy, it is going to continue to deteriorate.But there are other aspects of democratic governance that are important. What I said in my talk is that, what people want out of democracy is in a way very local and oriented towards service which governments are expected to provide. The failure to respond adequately to the earthquake was damaging to the current government. So a new government needs to make sure that it has the authority to actually build roads, make sure the electricity stays on and all of these relatively day to day activities that may not seem very dramatic but are really what in the end people want a democratically accountable government to provide for them. I would say that focus needs to be there.</blockquote>I want to ask a question about the election strategy of the opposition. In Turkey,, the pro-democracy opposition from very different ideologies is trying to defeat the authoritarian populist government by forming a wide alliance. Same election strategy failed in Hungary against Orban, but the same strategy worked in Israel against Netanyahu. However, in that case, we have seen the comeback of Netanyahu as a result of the internal disagreements in the coalition. Do you think forming a wide democratic alliance is a sustainable and successful option to defeat authoritarianism?<blockquote fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; border-left: 2px solid rgb(94, 53, 177); padding-left: 5px; box-sizing: border-box;">There is no alternative. You are not going to restore democracy unless you gain political power. Right now, the only way of gaining political power is through winning an election. You are not going to win an election unless you got this kind of broad coalition. Just because it did not work in Hungary and in few other places does not mean it’s a failing strategy.Democratically inclined people in Turkey really have to concentrate on coalition building and coming up with the program that is actually going to be popular if they do succeed in coming to power.</blockquote>In your speech, you mentioned the importance of a common national identity to restore democracy. Nationalism and national identity have always been a conflict area in Turkey because of secularism debate and also because of the Kurdish issue. How do you think we can build a common national identity without falling to the trap of an ethnic or religious conflict?<blockquote fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; border-left: 2px solid rgb(94, 53, 177); padding-left: 5px; box-sizing: border-box;">As I said, I don’t think that national identity in Turkey should be built around religion. That was one of Atatürk’s great contribution to redefine a Turkish nationalism that was not based in religion.You know the reasons for that, the religion is a very divisive issue. That is what divides many of the countries in the Middle East. Even if they are majority Muslim, there are huge splits within the world of Islam. In Turkey, you have a major split between religious people and secular people. So, if you base national identity on religion, you are going to inevitably have a huge internal social conflict. That’s really the reason that liberalism is created in the first place.Liberalism aroused in Europe in the middle of the 17th century, after Europe’s wars of religion. Europeans spent 150 years killing each other over whether they are Protestant or Catholic. They were all Christians but they had this sectarian division. Liberalism was created in order to allow people to live in religiously diverse societies. I believe that is what Turkey needs to have.</blockquote>How do you see the current relations between Turkey and the European Union? Turkey’s EU membership ideal was a part of the democratization process. Do you think there will be another rounds of negotiations after the election if opposition wins? Or is it too late already after the years of destruction?<blockquote fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; border-left: 2px solid rgb(94, 53, 177); padding-left: 5px; box-sizing: border-box;">Well I think that it is going to take a while before Europe is ready to consider Turkey again. First of all, assuming that the democratic forces win the election, there is still going to be a lot of uncertainty about how stable the coalition will be, whether there will be a return of Erdoğan and anti-democratic forces.Until it is clear that Turkey has returned to a stable democratic path, I think Europe is probably going to be reluctant. The other problem right now is that there is a lot of competition to get in to the EU, there are a lot Eastern European countries which have been waiting for years such as Ukraine and Moldova. A lot of existing member countries are reluctant to accept new members until they are more sure of what are the politics of the new members.Hungary is an important one, it was seen as a stable democracy and entered the EU. Since then it became an autocratic government and the EU hasn’t really got a mechanism to deal with that kind of backsliding. EU is going to be very careful about taking in any new members, not just Turkey.</blockquote>My last question is about the globe. I don’t know if you agree but in Global North, the rise of the right-wing populism is seen as the result of negative consequences of globalization. In the Global South, the reason is seen as the the rise of a neo-middle class. But the result is the same in both hemispheres of the globe. Why and how different consequences of globalization have produced the same result, as the rise of the right-wing populism?<blockquote fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; border-left: 2px solid rgb(94, 53, 177); padding-left: 5px; box-sizing: border-box;">Actually, I think it is not just the difference between the Global South and North. There are many different varieties of populism. The classic form of populism was a left wing populism. You still see that in many places. In Latin America for instance, you have a number of populist presidents who have been elected, in Chile, Colombia, Peru. They are not like European populists. They are traditional people, worry about economic inequality. That is also true in many parts of the Global South.The other think is that there is resentment to western domination of the global economy. That is not necessarily ideological but it is the experience of colonialism and the past several decades of western policies. It made people unhappy that the west continues to dominate global institutions.All of those are separate reasons and I don’t think you are going to cure them with a single solution.</blockquote>

Spektrum

"Democratically inclined people in Turkey really have to concentrate on coalition building and coming up with the program that is actually going to be popular if they do succeed in coming to power."

On liberal democracy, elections, and Turkey with Francis Fukuyama

By <a fr-original-style="" href="https://link.apos.to/c/oYP1BiglItrj?c=5ecRMLmqzT551T-qBW0-w&sub=62b033905d379200061d8935&s=web" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; outline: none; cursor: pointer; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: auto; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank">Ekin Tümer</a>In her book explaining how populism transformed democracy, Me the People, political theorist Nadia Urbinati defines “people” as such: “In its modern configuration, the category of the people has three key meanings: (1) persona ficta, or the collective sovereign that acts as one, and in whose name laws are made and enforced; (2) the sociohistorical body that lives in a specific territory and is sometimes identified with the nation; and (3) the political collective or constituency that claims and achieves political agency through movements of opinions, parties, and representatives.”Populism can be defined as a set of political positions that emphasize a particular idea of "the people" and pits this group against "the elite" or, more simply, as "popular self-interest". Moreover, it is most pronounced in the third case when the people become a political subject which constitutes a field of competition for the rulers. Mario Tronti, a former member of the Senate of the Italian Republic from the Democratic Party, explains this by saying: "We have populism because there is no people."More than an idea, the people is always there, in all its tangibility. However, the populist leader doesn’t perceive the people as a polyphonic whole, but chooses the “part” of the public that reflects his ideology. The only people with whom the populist leader has a dialogue is the "right people" who support him under all circumstances, whom he makes dependent on him through unrealizable promises and intense, primitive emotions. Those who don’t conform to the “right people” are marginalized, and dispensable. Because they are the “wrong people”, who betrayed the leader in some way by stepping out of line. The leader tries to replace the people he finds wrong with the right people; he pits the two against each other with divisive words and actions when necessary. This is like dividing the people into teams for a kind of ethical/moral match. While the leader watches what is going on in his box seat, the people stop focusing on the root of the problems and compete to win, to be the "right people".The people, who should be treated as an inseparable whole, is divided into obedient "real" parts and questioning "unreal" parts. This is precisely what the populist leader wants, to find the ground on which he can fictionalize his own narrative of reality. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explains this in a striking way: “Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” When the people is polarized, there is no longer a people, there are those who tell the truth and those who fabricate lies.A populist leader doesn’t like people “that acts as one” as established in the first definition of Urbinati. If there are no separated, decomposed parts, reality becomes unbendable. The leader's voice is drowned out by a powerful crowd that speaks a single truth, and cannot be silenced. In this case, the leader loses the power to soothe the people with excuses such as "it was such a disaster that no one could have overcome it" or simply, "it was fate". The people include everyone and they are empowered, so they have the right to demand accountability when those they empower fail to take responsibility. The people need to remember their right to do that.The state is not, and cannot be, by any definition, a shouty father figure at the top. Because this is against its nature. The purpose of the state's existence arises from the people’s demand to live freely, with equal rights in secure territories and to remain safe from harm. The state is not a person who can be hurt by the people’s dissatisfaction, nor is it a person to fear. The state is accountable to the people and doesn’t possess the luxury of not apologizing.The power of a people united in their demand for accountability exceeds the power of the populist leader, it frightens him. Today, there is a healthy anger that lies within the people's demand for accountability. Because what we are seeing now, we are seeing it completely bare: those who are failing to understand the extent of our anger, those who are failing to understand that this anger will not blow over in a year or two as it is demanded of us, those who are offended by our mourning, the hastily cleaned areas so the governing powers don’t have to see the damage, the men who lined children up for a press statement, the men who yanked down the hood of a freezing child’s coat so his face would show on the TV screen, the men pushing and shoving each other in a race to get in the frame, those who silenced the ones who were saying “No help came here”, those who cast a shadow over support efforts, those who displaced students at the first opportunity, those who tried to demolish the single-storey construction inspection building while the rubble has not yet been removed, those who detained earthquake victims, those who are occupied with cleaning criminal records…Unity of the real people who are forced to appease the frail and shameless hearts that are triggered by every reality, every insurgence, every life, who are threatened and pitted against each other if they don’t comply, who have very little left to lose, surpasses this system. This is exactly why we need to remember, there is no “right people” or “wrong people”, we are all the real and the only people, and we can stand as a grand, polyphonic voice.

Aposto Politics

How can we successfully become a “real” people?

Claiming anger

<a fr-original-style="" href="https://apos.to/a/6253e337aad632000655db61" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; outline: none; cursor: pointer; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: auto; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank">Abdullah Esin</a>After the 2001 economic crisis, the AK Party came to power with 34% of the vote in the general elections and became the sole implementer of the stand-by agreement with the IMF to exit the crisis. The structural reforms stipulated by the IMF can be summarized as the reduction of state subsidies, the privatization of State Economic Enterprises (SOEs), the strengthening of the economy's supervisory and regulatory institutions, and the suppression of workers' wages.These policies would partially reduce the welfare level of the citizens. But they were seen as reforms that had to be implemented at the time as a prescription for a way out of the economic crisis. So in a conjuncture, when union activities were suppressed, wage labor was systematically prepared, and income levels of the working class were reduced, how was the AK Party able to consistently increase its vote share in a period? It's a question frequently discussed and answered from various angles in political science literature. One of the most satisfactory answers to this question is "neoliberal populism."Neoliberal populism consists of two pillars. One pillar is neoliberal policies suppress trade union activities, systematically reduce the purchasing power of the lower and middle classes, reduce the state's role in the economy through privatization, and leave the lower and middle classes at the mercy of private market dynamics.The other pillar of the system, populism, allows the government to provide a certain level of welfare to its citizens through social benefits and non-direct subsidies. According to TurkStat data, social expenditures (considering the impact of social assistance during the pandemic) reached 600 billion liras in 2020.Classes negatively affected by neoliberal policies can be satisfied in the short term with populist policies. In other words, populism facilitates the implementation of neoliberal policies by reducing social resistance against the government. Neoliberal populism has given the AK Party government both a mechanism to create rent for capital owners close to it and a chance to make a voter dependent on it through social assistance.In a 2018 survey conducted by KONDA, the segments that the AK Party received the most votes are housewives with 37%, shopkeepers with 27%, retired people, farmers, and workers with 14%. We can see that the social segments that have suffered the most economically from neoliberal policies also constitute the AK Party's strongest voter group.

The AK Party, the implementer of neoliberal policies, is using populism to get the votes of those who have suffered the most from these policies.

A story of 20 years of power and authoritarianism: Neoliberal populism

populism

populism ile ilgili hikayeler