Turkish author Ece Temelkuran: "Citizens are being deliberately infantalised"

The bestselling author speaks about Erdoğan, Turkey's "tour" through right-wing populism, the end of "gurus," and how change must come from the ground

As we return from August break, we want to share the fourth in a series of interviews with members of the DemocracyNext organisation: see previous entries with James MacDonald-Nelson, board member Robbie Stamp, and former Advisory Council member Art O’Leary.

Today we speak about the rise of right-wing populism, Turkey, and crises of democracy with Ece Temelkuran, the award-winning Turkish author and journalist who now lives in Germany and is a member of DemNext’s Advisory Council. Temelkuran is the author of the best-selling book, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. A reminder that disagreement is okay—welcome, even!—within DemocracyNext and that the perspectives in this interview don’t represent the organisation as a whole.

Could you introduce yourself and share what connected you with DemocracyNext?

I'm from Turkey, so it is no wonder that I am very much interested in the loss of democracy — not only for ideological, political reasons, but also personal reasons. Loss of a country is not only a political matter, it's an emotional thing. I know what it does to people, to friendships, to marriages, to very intimate relationships.

I have been doing journalism since I was 19, writing about political stuff in Turkey: the Armenian issue, the Kurdish issue, women's rights, prisoners’ rights, and so on. I was always telling the tragic stories of democracy.

But I didn't know that one day, I was going to write a book called, How to Lose a Country—and in another country, in another language.

But these things don’t happen overnight. It happens gradually, but it happens. It still happens in a surprising way, so to speak. In 2016, I left Turkey and I started writing How to Lose a Country, The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship. That put me in a position to be part of the fledgling global debate on that subject.

This debate became quite heated, thanks to Trump and Brexit. Me and a few other people were talking about how Western democracies could face the same destiny as some of our democracies in the Global South. That book was a call, to be honest, for the global debate on the question of, What are we going to do about it?

Some, like DemocracyNext, have come up with concrete solutions. However, to be honest, compared to the immensity of the problem and the fact that it is a polycrisis, I don't know if Citizens’ Assemblies will be enough of a solution.

But trying—the action itself—will create the theory and a deeper understanding. The answer will come from collective action, and I think DemocracyNext can be part of that collective action.

You’ve just described some very serious and complex problems. Are you skeptical, perhaps, that Citizens’ Assemblies are being overhyped or being presented as a false panacea to these issues?

It's not skepticism. It is more like, we have to think critically about this, as we do about all other things. Citizens are being deliberately infantilised, to be part of the audience of the current form of democracy—which doesn't give you the right to change the main predicament, which is social injustice.

If Citizens’ Assemblies are not part of that struggle toward more justice and equality, then of course, they can easily become a distraction. This is one part of it.

The second part of it is not a criticism, but more like a general observation. We have come to the end of the “age of gurus.” There are no gurus any more and nobody knows the ultimate answer. If somebody says he does, he's probably lying. We had these intellectual gurus, telling people what to do, or how to think.

That part of history is over. I have been a political columnist in my country and I was one of the so-called opinion leaders in Turkey. I personally witnessed how that came to an end—not only because of social media and new commiunication technologies, but also because people lost interest and trust in those voices.

This includes me as well. There's one microphone and then the others listen. But this doesn't make sense anymore, especially in this age.

Of course, Citizens’ Assemblies provide us with that political sphere where eye-to-eye, face-to-face communication is possible. There is a good level of back and forth.

But imagining assemblies as sterile political environments would be a dangerous mistake. Of course, there'll be bigotry there. Even though I wrote another book about faith in humankind, one cannot be naive to think that citizens all have good intentions.

In terms of urgency, let me confess this to you. I don't know whether we are doing these things to save the current form of democracy, or to invent a new form of democracy which is more genuine—one that is more than a theatrics of itself.

I am not sure whether we're trying to protect a system, or if we're trying to invent new ways of organising, for the time when we have to pick the pieces after everything is broken.

History is a long game. Politics is a very long game. But the urgency doesn’t comply with that fact, unfortunately.

Let’s delve into to the example of Turkey. Erdoğan has changed the environment, quite a bit, to say the least. But at the same time, there's also still 80 percent turnout in the elections and the opposition recently made some significant gains. Could you reflect on the resilience of Turkish democracy or the citizenry themselves, however you might characterise it, and where Citizens’ Assemblies fit in this picture?

The first time I experienced Citizens’ Assemblies was in 2001 in Buenos Aires. They were an essential part of the political process there and they were quite functional.

But in terms of Turkey, we are talking about a two-decades long storm, starting in 2002 with Erdoğan coming to power. It happened in a very complicated way. But one or two aspects were quite evident. There were compromises from the leftists, progressives, centre and social democrats. These things happen in Western countries as well. What was specific to Turkey was the use of Islam, conservative Islam, to justify neoliberal policies.

Anyway, Turkey was been one of the pioneers in the field of right-wing populism. Now we are completing the tour—at least, this is what we sensed during the last local elections, because the turnout was amazing and the result was quite incredible. Nobody was expecting that. Even the opinion polls didn't predict it. It was quite surprising to see people in the local elections gave a very clear signal to Erdoğan, saying this is the end of the road.

How we got there is very important. Social democrats have been losing the elections for quite a long time. It became a national joke. But there was a generational change in social democratic party, the CHP, before the elections. That generational transformation in the party was reflected in their policies and narrative. The new narrative was, at the very heart of it, about radical love in politics. It was saying to a polarized country, “We are not enemies.” If they come to power, there will be no revenge-seeking. The leaders of that political transformation made their peace with the fact that Turkey is a different country now.

Erdoğan had created his own culture: conservative, a little bit thuggish. The left-of-centre made its peace with the fact that they are now talking to a different public. So in Turkey there some very specific aspects to what happened, but of course there are things that we went through in Turkey which are the same in Western countries.

In How to Lose a Country, there's an anecdote about a British woman who says, What can we do for you? You turned it around on her and said, What happened in Turkey could very well happen in your country, so actually, what can I do for you? What do you think people like her may have missed?

Well, the first thing is they have to get rid of the exceptionalism. Among the Western intellectuals, there's this exceptionalism and there's this assumption that these things only happen in the crazy countries such as Turkey.

However, this was my main argument in the book: The phenomenon that we called right-wing populism is inherent when liberal democracy is coupled with neoliberalism. This naturally creates the crisis and this outcome.

The UK has been subjected to this political phenomena of right-wing populism for only five or six years, since 2016. In the United States, also, only for five year or six years. And the entire country went kind of crazy. We have been suffering from a far better developed version of that political phenomena in Turkey for more than two decades now.

In Turkey we didn’t have the stamina to resist, whereas in the Western countries, people often have more stamina to resist these changes.

But the problem with these questions is: It doesn’t matter what I say. Everybody should be more humble. There's some humility needed, especially in the intellectual world. There are many brilliant ideas how we about how we solve these crises of democracy. The problem is we don't have the political will. So we can talk, however we like, forever, but there is no political will.

I'm talking about all the meetings and debates in the ivory towers as well, either your towers of intellect or of political establishment. Gaza is happening, everybody in UN has been screaming about it. The International Court of Justice is screaming about it. But nothing is changing.

So the kind of political will that we need is far larger. It cannot be created through these debates in ivory towers. It is created on the ground. I can give you all the intelligent answers, nice sounding answers, even soothing answers, because everybody wants to be soothed and consoled. Doesn't really matter. I think this is the kind of humility we need—we don't matter that much anymore. Is that too self-destructive?

Not at all. You gave an interview recently where you said, if Europe does not figure out a better solution to questions around immigration, the situation can be driven toward fascism. To connect that with our work, we use this phrase “Citizens’ Assemblies.” But sometimes people say, what about non-citizens?

It is funny and ironic to answer this question, because I'm an immigrant as well. And I've been living outside my country for eight years. I'm a political voice, as they call it, but I cannot be part of the politics in the same way as a citizen. To me, it seems like nation-states are transforming into something else and citizenship is not following that transformation. Individuals are suffering from this transformation on several levels, and one of them having no political say in the country of residence.

But what I really meant in that interview is that you cannot tell people not to fear the foreigners. This is is not the way to go about it. “All Refugees Welcome” is not a policy. It's just a good intention and I respect it. But if Europe cannot address that fear of loss of a home among its citizens, then there is a risk of fascism. It's not a joke. In Germany right now, there are election slogans on billboards saying, “Yes, deportation!” This fear is only organised politically by the far right.

How do we answer to that? It is very important, probably the most important thing at the moment, together with Gaza and Ukraine. We have to be really creative about this. I don't know the answer. You cannot just tell people not to fear the foreigners. It’s become customary to call these people xenophobic idiots, but no, it's a real fear. Address it, otherwise it will bring fascism.

I imagine this theme may be a part of your next book, Nation of Strangers.

We pushed the publication date to 2026, so I don't want to talk about it too much yet. But How to Lose A Country is going to be re-launched in October with a new preface. It's important that the book is being re-published now, before the American elections and right after the European elections. I think it’s very timely.

To be honest, going through this in Europe is even harder. Because Turkey—okay, this happened, I lost everything. And then I came here, and it takes a lot of work to rebuild everything from scratch, and now I'm about to lose it again. So it is personally hitting me very hard.

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