Skyrocketing inflation, a hostile takeover of the central bank, and a once-popular president clinging to power. Whereas Ataturk was the creator and perpetuator of modern, secular Turkey, “an autocrat so there would be no more autocrats”, Erdogan may be the reaper. Oppression and suppression are the name of the game, and a once burgeoning economic force is in freefall. A perversion of Ataturk’s vision for Turkey.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, tyrants revert to tyrants. Ukraine is the beginning and end of Russia’s, no, Putin’s ambitions. Restoring the former glory of the Soviet Union is his goal. A glory for him, but not the people. Political opponents can’t stand in his way. Power is a strong motivator. After the USSR collapsed, Russia made leaps and bounds towards democracy. But years of progress are sent down the drain by a spy and his oligarchs.

Turkey (History; Current Events)

Turkey is an interesting case. In the wake of WW1, the Ottoman empire collapsed completely, and after a messy period of warring governments, in 1923, Turkey declared itself a republic. In 1924, it declared itself secular. The first president, Kemal Ataturk, ruled like a tyrant. He suppressed opposition. The state fully controlled economic policy. They built up nationalism by controlling history textbooks. They fully abolished any form of religious government. Some of these things did lead to positive outcomes in the end. But the means were questionable. When he died, it took a couple of years, but eventually they became a democratic establishment, with opposition parties forming around 1946.

Since then, Turkey’s had a bit of a rocky ride. There was a military coup in 1960, followed by a constitutional rewrite. The Soviet Union attempted to meddle in their territorial claims, which caused the U.S. to back Turkey.

At the beginning of this century, the AKP began to rise to power. In 2002, after they swept parliamentary elections, they introduced a constitutional amendment to remove the eligibility for election of one Recep Erdogan. Erdogan and his AKP began undoing the secular policies which had been upheld since Ataturk. They did have Islamist roots, after all (of course, by which I mean that their party was tied to the religion of Islam). They were locked in a constant duel with secular opposition, but that wouldn’t last long.

In 2007, Turkish authorities uncovered weapons which were allegedly part of a plot to overthrow the government. They conducted incredibly “thorough” investigations, mostly relying on the testimony of military officers with known Islamist affiliations. All in all, nearly 300 people were convicted in 2013. Academics, journalists, military officers, everyone. All of the convictions were overturned in 2016, but the damage was already done. In the political moment produced by the trials, the AKP passed 26 amendments to the constitution, which both strengthened democracy to meet EU standards and also expanded executive power over the judiciary. A large amount of discontent brewed over these policies and extreme reactions to protests, which caused the AKP to fall short of a majority in parliament in 2015. However, because of Turkey’s coalition system, no government was able to form, since no parties which could unify into a majority banded together. This triggered a snap election in which the AKP regained their power and won easily.

At this point, Turkey is pretty bad: questionably cracking down on government officials, undoing societal norms for practically no reason, etc. But this was just the beginning. In 2016, there was a failed military coup, which allowed for Erdogan to seize the moment and strengthen his own political hand. He immediately blamed the opposition and used this public blame as an excuse to arrest tens of thousands and remove over 100,000 people from their job for alleged connections to the coup. Riding this wave, in 2017, voters narrowly approved another referendum yet again increasing the powers of the presidency (which is the position that Erdogan holds). It removed the coalition system and the position of Prime Minister, making the Presidency the main executive (which was convenient for Erdogan, because he was barred from holding the position of Prime Minister). In 2018, early elections were called, and, yet again, the AKP’s alliance won an outright majority and allowed Erdogan to further consolidate his control over the government.

Inconveniently though, political instability spurred an economic crisis. Fueled by populist economic policies, lack of market confidence, and tariffs, the Turkish lira lost a quarter of its value within a year. The central bank, then, to combat inflation, went to the universal inflation handbook and raised interest rates, which did help. Erdogan, however, has decided to do the opposite, meddling in the central bank’s operation to try and get them to lower interest rates so he could stay popular. This has caused Turkey’s economy to go further into crisis. Since 2020, the situation has gotten slightly better, with Erdogan loosening his grip on the economy and allowing macroeconomics to do its thing. But, he has since pivoted to other issues, such as introducing further restrictions on academic freedom.

Technically, Turkey is still a democracy. But, the consolidation of executive power, oppression of opposition, and attempting to produce artificial economic growth to fuel popularity don’t bode well. And in fact, I would argue that Turkey has already fallen past the point of no return.

Russia (Source)

On New Year’s Eve, 1999, an event happened that may have changed the course of modern history. A former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin, rose to the position of acting President from acting Prime Minister. In March of 2000, he removed the word “acting” from that title when he won the presidential election. The Russian people had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

Warning signs came early and often. Just a few months into his presidency, during military exercises, the Kursk submarine was sunk. All of the sailors died, 23 of whom died due to gross negligence from the government. Putin’s government attempted to cover it up by controlling the media and messing with the legal system. In 2002, a Chechen military group took control of the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow, holding 850 hostages. Instead of negotiating, Putin’s government released toxic gas into the theater. They killed all of the militants and 129 of the hostages. In 2006, famous journalist Anna Politkovskaya was found shot in her apartment. She covered the Second Chechen War and the Theater crisis. She was also the victim of a poisoning attempt in 2004, on the way to cover another crisis. It is unclear who ordered the attack, but you can probably guess who. I can go on. We can talk about his unprompted invasion of Crimea, the Belsan school siege, or the Georgian war. They all illustrate the same point.

Over time, Putin has become a lot bolder in his authoritarianism. While early on, he simply controlled the press and befriended oligarchs, he has now moved on to political suppression. In 2017, Boris Nemtsov was found shot dead outside the Kremlin. The government claimed it was a Chechen rebel (a very popular scapegoat), but due to Nemtsov’s opposition to Putin and attempts to expose Russian military machinations in Ukraine, I would suppose that Putin was at least indirectly responsible. In 2013, Alexei Navalny, a popular opposition figure, was jailed on phony embezzlement charges, barring him from running for office. Bolder still, Putin has begun cracking down on protests against his regime. Media is tightly controlled, and protesters are often detained. (Side note: while I was there touring, I was genuinely terrified that if I criticized the Kremlin something bad would happen to me. It’s that bad).

What is this all in service of? Well, in 2005, Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union the “major geopolitical disaster of the century”. And based on his KGB roots, it’s not hard to jump to the next line of logic. Putin has been strengthening his sphere of influence in former bloc companies, directly invading Crimea, ties to Belarus, troops in Georgia, etc. But there has always been one problem: NATO. NATO has been expanding eastward and eastward, even trying to integrate Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance. So why is Putin invading Ukraine? He wants to make the USSR great again (wink wink nod nod that’s a reference).

Conclusion

Sometimes, change comes slowly. These two countries have all the trappings of democracy, but political and economic suppression remove any possibilities of that. They both prove that democratic backsliding need not be immediate nor obvious. And you have to stop the avalanche before you get crushed.

That’s all for this week. Next time, we will be looking at a tale of rise and fall. Tunisia, the country that started the Arab Spring, and the only one to actually become a democracy in the end. The good times don’t always last though.

Thank you all for reading, and until next time, have a good one.

– Will Corvino