A Model – In the Negative Sense
Ece Temelkuran, How to Lose a Country: the 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
Fourth Estate, 272pp, £16.99, ISBN 9780008294014
reviewed by William Eichler
In 2004, at the height of the War on Terror, President George W. Bush gave a speech at a NATO conference in Istanbul praising the Turkish government. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), he insisted, demonstrated that Islam and liberal democracy were compatible and provided an example for a benighted Muslim world to emulate. ‘Your country, with 150 years of democratic and social reform, stands as a model to others,’ he told the gathered dignitaries.
Today, the ‘Turkish model’ is tarnished by the authoritarian rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. It was always going to be thus, says the Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran in her new book How to Lose a Country: The Seven Warning Signs of Rising Populism. Erdoğan was, she argues, the electable face of a right-wing populist movement that worked for decades to transform Turkish civil society, preparing the ground for a takeover of the state. Despite what some might have hoped, Erdoğan never had any interest in creating a model liberal democracy.
Turkey can still be a ‘model’ for the rest of the world – in the negative sense at least. The right-wing populism currently engulfing the globe resembles that which enabled Erdoğan’s rise, Temelkuran argues, and so other countries can learn from the Turkish experience. ‘The aim of this book,’ she writes, ‘is to convince the reader to spare themselves the time and the torture by fast-forwarding the horror movie they have recently found themselves in, and showing them how to spot the recurring patterns of populism, so that maybe they can be better prepared for it than we were in Turkey.’
The populist wave we are witnessing is presented by many as a small town rebellion against the metropolitan elites – or, as Temelkuran puts it, a ‘mobilised provincial grudge’. In Turkey it is often characterised as a protest by the pious masses against the secular followers of the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Chaffing under the imperious rule of the Kemalist elite – so the story goes – the downtrodden Anatolian found a saviour in Erdoğan, and together they took back control of their homeland from their Eurocentric overlords. ‘We are the people of Turkey. And when I say people, I mean real people,’ one AKP activist tells Temelkuran.
This picture of the grounded little guy versus a cosmopolitan elite should be familiar to those living in Brexit Britain or Trump’s America. Brexiteers push the idea that the 2016 referendum was a victory for the left behind against an overbearing Brussels-oriented establishment. Hardworking, decent types from the provinces – Nixon’s ‘silent majority’ – were going to take back control from metropolitan liberals. ‘This will be a victory for real people,’ Nigel Farage declared in 2016, echoing Temelkuran’s AKP supporter. Across the Atlantic, the MAGA-crowd make the same claim. The victory of Donald Trump, a multimillionaire businessman, is presented, somehow, as a triumph for Rust Belt America.
This populist story can be heard, with local variations, around the globe. ‘Real people,’ Temelkuran writes sardonically, ‘are moving from small towns towards the big cities to finally have the chance to be the captains of their souls,’ (her italics). Temelkuran, despite her scathing tone, is not insensitive to the frustrations of those lashing out at what they perceive to be a remote and uncaring establishment. Four decades of neoliberal class warfare – as she characterises it – has created a reservoir of resentment in many countries. The populist tale may be a simplification but it remains true that the age of globalisation has produced winners and losers. In this context, Temelkuran acknowledges, any anti-establishment narrative that pits ‘real people’ against the ‘elite’ is going to gain some traction.
But while the foot soldiers of the populist uprising are drawn from the left behind, Temelkuran emphasises that the leading component of these movements is made up of a section of the elite that wishes to upend the political order for their own purposes. Populist movements, from Erdoğan’s AKP to Trump’s Republican Party and Brexit, are, Temelkuran tells us, ‘newly-built, fast-moving vehicles for the rich’. They are, she continues, a means for the ruling class ‘to get rid of the regulations that restrain the free-market economy by throwing the entire field of politics into disarray.’ In essence, these right-wing populist movements are delivery systems for disaster capitalism, dressed up in nativist clothing.
There is little here for anyone on the Left to disagree with. In Turkey it is clear that the triumph of Erdoğan and his neoliberal brand of religious nationalism (what Temelkuran, elsewhere, calls ‘Dubaization’) has spelt disaster for the republic. Most also recognise that while there was an element of subaltern rage in the Brexit and Trump votes, the driving force behind both of these polls was a reactionary, elitist politics. Jacob Rees-Mogg may claim to be ‘taking back control’ on behalf of the Grimsby fisherman; but he is more concerned with getting Brussels out of the way so that his chums can better exploit said fisherman.
There are, however, some on the Left who appear reluctant to grasp the full force of this fact. During the US election campaign in 2016, the Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek warned that Hillary Clinton was the ‘true danger’ and opined that while he was ‘horrified’ by Trump’s candidacy, his election would at least upset the status quo. ‘It will be a kind of big awakening’, he said. ‘New political processes will be set in motion, will be triggered.’ In the UK, Lexiters make the same argument. Brexit will be such an upset for the liberal establishment that it might, they hope, create a space for a socialist utopia.
Many sophisticated intellectuals – ‘petit Machiavellians’, in Temelkuran’s phrase – made the same argument about Erdoğan during the early years of his rule. His reactionary ideology was irrelevant, they said at the time. He will take on the establishment, on behalf of the ‘silent majority’, and force the military out of Turkish politics, creating an opening for democracy to flourish. This did not happen. Today, many of those who made this argument are in exile or prison, and are viewed, Temelkuran tells us, as ‘collaborators with the authoritarian regime the country has ended up with.’ It turns out that if you aid a right-wing project you get a right-wing victory. If the European and American Left take one lesson away from How to Lose a Country, this should be it: be careful about the alliances you make, tacit or otherwise.
Today, the ‘Turkish model’ is tarnished by the authoritarian rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. It was always going to be thus, says the Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran in her new book How to Lose a Country: The Seven Warning Signs of Rising Populism. Erdoğan was, she argues, the electable face of a right-wing populist movement that worked for decades to transform Turkish civil society, preparing the ground for a takeover of the state. Despite what some might have hoped, Erdoğan never had any interest in creating a model liberal democracy.
Turkey can still be a ‘model’ for the rest of the world – in the negative sense at least. The right-wing populism currently engulfing the globe resembles that which enabled Erdoğan’s rise, Temelkuran argues, and so other countries can learn from the Turkish experience. ‘The aim of this book,’ she writes, ‘is to convince the reader to spare themselves the time and the torture by fast-forwarding the horror movie they have recently found themselves in, and showing them how to spot the recurring patterns of populism, so that maybe they can be better prepared for it than we were in Turkey.’
The populist wave we are witnessing is presented by many as a small town rebellion against the metropolitan elites – or, as Temelkuran puts it, a ‘mobilised provincial grudge’. In Turkey it is often characterised as a protest by the pious masses against the secular followers of the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Chaffing under the imperious rule of the Kemalist elite – so the story goes – the downtrodden Anatolian found a saviour in Erdoğan, and together they took back control of their homeland from their Eurocentric overlords. ‘We are the people of Turkey. And when I say people, I mean real people,’ one AKP activist tells Temelkuran.
This picture of the grounded little guy versus a cosmopolitan elite should be familiar to those living in Brexit Britain or Trump’s America. Brexiteers push the idea that the 2016 referendum was a victory for the left behind against an overbearing Brussels-oriented establishment. Hardworking, decent types from the provinces – Nixon’s ‘silent majority’ – were going to take back control from metropolitan liberals. ‘This will be a victory for real people,’ Nigel Farage declared in 2016, echoing Temelkuran’s AKP supporter. Across the Atlantic, the MAGA-crowd make the same claim. The victory of Donald Trump, a multimillionaire businessman, is presented, somehow, as a triumph for Rust Belt America.
This populist story can be heard, with local variations, around the globe. ‘Real people,’ Temelkuran writes sardonically, ‘are moving from small towns towards the big cities to finally have the chance to be the captains of their souls,’ (her italics). Temelkuran, despite her scathing tone, is not insensitive to the frustrations of those lashing out at what they perceive to be a remote and uncaring establishment. Four decades of neoliberal class warfare – as she characterises it – has created a reservoir of resentment in many countries. The populist tale may be a simplification but it remains true that the age of globalisation has produced winners and losers. In this context, Temelkuran acknowledges, any anti-establishment narrative that pits ‘real people’ against the ‘elite’ is going to gain some traction.
But while the foot soldiers of the populist uprising are drawn from the left behind, Temelkuran emphasises that the leading component of these movements is made up of a section of the elite that wishes to upend the political order for their own purposes. Populist movements, from Erdoğan’s AKP to Trump’s Republican Party and Brexit, are, Temelkuran tells us, ‘newly-built, fast-moving vehicles for the rich’. They are, she continues, a means for the ruling class ‘to get rid of the regulations that restrain the free-market economy by throwing the entire field of politics into disarray.’ In essence, these right-wing populist movements are delivery systems for disaster capitalism, dressed up in nativist clothing.
There is little here for anyone on the Left to disagree with. In Turkey it is clear that the triumph of Erdoğan and his neoliberal brand of religious nationalism (what Temelkuran, elsewhere, calls ‘Dubaization’) has spelt disaster for the republic. Most also recognise that while there was an element of subaltern rage in the Brexit and Trump votes, the driving force behind both of these polls was a reactionary, elitist politics. Jacob Rees-Mogg may claim to be ‘taking back control’ on behalf of the Grimsby fisherman; but he is more concerned with getting Brussels out of the way so that his chums can better exploit said fisherman.
There are, however, some on the Left who appear reluctant to grasp the full force of this fact. During the US election campaign in 2016, the Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek warned that Hillary Clinton was the ‘true danger’ and opined that while he was ‘horrified’ by Trump’s candidacy, his election would at least upset the status quo. ‘It will be a kind of big awakening’, he said. ‘New political processes will be set in motion, will be triggered.’ In the UK, Lexiters make the same argument. Brexit will be such an upset for the liberal establishment that it might, they hope, create a space for a socialist utopia.
Many sophisticated intellectuals – ‘petit Machiavellians’, in Temelkuran’s phrase – made the same argument about Erdoğan during the early years of his rule. His reactionary ideology was irrelevant, they said at the time. He will take on the establishment, on behalf of the ‘silent majority’, and force the military out of Turkish politics, creating an opening for democracy to flourish. This did not happen. Today, many of those who made this argument are in exile or prison, and are viewed, Temelkuran tells us, as ‘collaborators with the authoritarian regime the country has ended up with.’ It turns out that if you aid a right-wing project you get a right-wing victory. If the European and American Left take one lesson away from How to Lose a Country, this should be it: be careful about the alliances you make, tacit or otherwise.