Angry Planet - Talking Turkey Ahead of the Vote

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

There are authoritarians and there are tyrants, and sometimes they’re the same person. But would a true tyrant put himself up to face the people in an election that could be free and maybe even fair?With Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, we’re going to find out the exact flavor of authoritarian he is on Sunday, May 14, and in the days immediately following. Erdogan has been in power in his nation of more than 80 million people for nearly two decades, and in some ways, he’s brought it to near ruin, with economic policies based more on his gut than sound economic theory.He’s also not much on newspapers, freedom of information, or freedom of speech.On the other hand, no one is going to doubt the importance of his country on the world stage. Erdogan has become something like the Bosporus itself, a gateway or meeting point between NATO and Moscow, and even Iran occasionally. That sounds good, but it hasn’t made the West particularly happy. In one of the most recent examples, Turkey’s veto is the only thing standing between Sweden and NATO membership. Erdogan says it has to do with Sweden harboring Kurdish terrorists, but, like buying S-400 missile batteries from Russia, it could just be a thumb in the eye of all concerned.Maybe the U.S. should just sell Turkey those F-16s it wants.The main question, however, is what Erdogan will do when all the votes are counted. If he loses, does he go away? If he wins, does he take away more freedoms from Turks and become the tyrant he always had the potential of becoming?To answer these questions, Angry Planet spoke with Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign relations. He had some surprising thoughts—and a wager.Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world and their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I am Jason Fields. Matthew Galt is not here. Turkey would like to Angry Planet. I'm Jason Fields. Matthew Galt is not here. Turkey would like to reprand itself, trying to persuade the world that it should be called Turkey a. I guess they were tired of the jokes. We hear at Angry Planet wish their marketing team good luck. But the truth is, Turkey isn't so fond of change, or at least it's presidentism. Rassup Taya Erdogan has been in power for well over a decade, switching jobs from Prime Minister to a newly powerful presidency,

and then tightening his grip on the media and virtually everything else. especially after a coup attempt. On May 14th, he's facing an election that few expect to be free and fair. We'll get to all of that, and we get to do so with friend of the show, Stephen Cook. He's Enrico Matai Senior Fellow for Middle East and African Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and he also writes a lot for foreign policy. Thank you so much for joining us. It's great to be back with you, Jason. Well, so maybe not everybody knows Erdogan as well as you do. So can you just tell us briefly who he is and I think really why does he want to stay president so badly?

It's a really good question. Regi type Erdogan has been the leader of Turkey since March of 2003. He was first the prime minister from 2003 until he became the president in 2014. and then has enjoyed enhanced power since 2017 when he helped shove through constitutional amendments that made him even more powerful than he was during his previous three years as the president. Prior to his holding national office, he was the mayor of Istanbul, a very successful and effective mayor of Istanbul in the early and mid-1990s. He comes from the Islamist movement in Turkey. He was in 2001, he along with a guy named Abdullah Ghul, who's probably the most well-known among the founders, broke away from the traditional Islamist movement, the kind of old guard,

to establish the Justice and Development Party. And then in the first election in which they ran, they won a majority in Parliament. He was not, Erdogan was initially not the prime minister under the first AKP government. That fell to Abdullah Ghul because Erdogan had served time in prison in the mid-1990s for reciting a poem that was interpreted as his, as a religious call to arms, even if the poem was written, even though I should say the poem was written by a Turkish nationalist. But coming from Erdogan's mouth, it was seen as a. a religious call to arms and then as an effort to undermine the security and stability the country. So he actually spent time in prison. The AKB government had to change the law in late 2002, early 2003, in order for him to assume the position of prime minister, which

it did in March 2000, in February, March 2003, when he became the president and then Gould became the foreign minister. And then a few years later, actually became the president, the republic, the office that Erdogan holds now. So that's in short. short, the political history of Taya Bredewan, we shall see soon whether that political history continues, whether there's another chapter of it. Why does he want to stay in power longer? I think there's a number of compelling reasons. One, for him, compelling reasons, for him, I'm not sure compelling reasons for the Turkish people. But when he sees himself as this transformative figure, who is really the only one who can continue the work that the Justice

and Development Party began in 2003 and continuing to transform Turkey into this country that reflects the values of the party that Erdogan leads. And we don't need to go into great detail about it, but in terms of power, prosperity, and piety, the three P's of the AKPS as it were. And so he still believes that he he has more work to do on that. Second, on October 29, 2023, it will be the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic. And Erdogan, more than anything else, it's like his prime directive is to be the president on the 100th anniversary of the Republic and essentially declare himself more important than the founder of the Republic himself, Mustafa Kamal Noun, commonly and widely as attatur. In a way, what the AKAP and what Erdogan has done has worked within the institutions of the Republic, even though they come from a tradition that actually sees the Republic as a historical accident and have tried to change the institutions of the Republic in a way to kind of reflect that idea that the Republic is sort of this unnatural, unnatural thing.

And then I think the third reason, and perhaps the most compelling for Erdogan at this point, is that if he is, if he loses the law, the election and leaves office, he loses the immunity that he has enjoyed as first the prime minister and then the president. And he is spectacularly corrupt. And he would face perhaps prosecution as a result of the vast corruption in which he has overseen. I mean, you know, he made his name in Istanbul, as Istanbul is being very clean and cleaning up a corrupt municipality. But, you know, power corrupts, I guess. And he's, you know, leave to have Swiss bank accounts. He, you know, allegedly comes from a simple background. His wife carries these, you know, purses that are worth tens of that, you know, the price of

which are tens of thousand dollars. They've hardly kind of kept to the, to their simple, simpler roots that they've sort of created this myth about, about him. Turkey, I think, is a fascinating place for any number of reasons. But one that I think not everybody understands is just how secular a place it was for a very long time. As a matter of fact, wearing headscarves, please correct me, but I believe it actually wasn't allowed in some public circumstances after Atatur created this republic. I mean, it was really adamantly modernist, I guess. So can you talk a little bit about how it's changed over the last 20 years as you see it? Yeah, and it has changed. It's been extraordinary.

And I think the word secular, though, is somewhat problematic. I mean, if we think in terms of secularism in the way in which Americans do, I assume the vast majority of angry planets, listeners are Americans, our kind of the way in which we think about secularism is that the government doesn't really have a role in there's no official religion. There's no role. Your religion is your choice. How you choose to express it is your way of expressing it there. if you want to wear a cross or a yarmul or for women a hijab.

That is within your right and you do it and the government cannot prescribe your religious practice. In Turkey, because there isn't a really good way to translate it, in English we often refer to as a secular system, but it's more modeled after the laicite of France in which actually the government has a role of religion. and that is to control religion. And that is to ensure that religion remains something of in, under the Republic, religion remains in the realm of private faith rather than it bleeding out into politics and society. Well, when the Justice and Development Party came to power, they sought to change that. And although the government continues to play this role in religion, it has played a larger role in actually promoting religious values throughout society. Now, this isn't unprecedented in Turkish history.

What the press often refers to as the kind of staunchly secular Turkish military. When the military came to power in a coup in 1980, it went on a kind of mosque building binge, expanded religious education on the theory that religion would depoliticize a society that was deeply, deeply polarized between the political right. and the political left that had led to actually street violence. That turned out actually not to be the case that some Turks will say, actually, so the seeds of the success of Islamist movements in subsequent years. But be that as the Justice and Development Party has undermined certain aspects of this very kind of rigid laisite that was established after the republic. certainly the idea that women cannot wear hijab at, you know, state universities within the parliament, some official buildings, that has been reversed.

And that's something I think that now people generally accept, except for the most, you know, staunchly secular among the Turkish elite. But there is a sense also that, as I mentioned, and you sort of have to be in, have been in Turkey, pre-AKP, the pre-AKP era and a post-AKP here to see how kind of religion tends to flow throughout society. This isn't to suggest that Turkey's a theocracy, but that religious values have, there's more emphasis on religious values and that there's a, and that there's just a whole host of ways in which the, the Acapé in popular culture and other places, have really emphasized

religious values. And I think that that's meaningful to many, many Turks. You started seeing women who wear hijab show up in places where they had never appeared before. And they see it in a way as the Justice and Development Party and everyone protecting their freedom, their freedom to worship how they see fit. This is probably outside of both of our realms of expertise, but that does sound very familiar to what's been happening with some of the Christian movements here in the United States. Creating this different view of freedom of religion and incorporating it more closely into daily public life, right?

You will not be shocked, Jason, to learn that sometimes I read these stories and I say, that sounds a lot like Turkey. There are some parallels your to it. Although in a striking way, the Turkish Islamists, the AKP, haven't been as strident or militant about it as some of the Christian nationalist movements in the United States. Certainly Turkish Islamists have felt under siege in many ways, in similar ways that Christian nationalists have felt that they're under siege by a secular culture that rejects their values and so on and stuff.

And that has been the story of Turkish Islamists in ways, especially since, the establishment of the Republican, this kind of aggressive secularism or leicite, they have felt under siege, their values attack. But since they have accumulated power in the early part of the 20th century and have continued, they have been somewhat less, I think, militant, or for lack of a better term, radicalized on this issue and have gone about the business, as I just mentioned, of expanding the realm of religion in an officially secular republic. So can you describe how the Republic of Turkey functions as it is now, especially in terms of,

well, I mean, free and fair elections, because that's what we're coming up on in another week or so. Yeah. We, the, Turkey can't fairly, can't ever have been fairly described as a democracy. I think there's always a question of when Turkey would consolidate its democracy. Certainly democratic practices, there have been, you know, the vote has been protected since almost the founding of the Republic. There's multi-party system since the late 19.

1940s, early 1950s, it was in the late 1940s where other parties were authorized, 1950 was the first time that they were able to compete in elections. It had been dizzying arrays of coalition governments. But that has been compromised by a number of things. One, an important one is that the military, up until relatively recently, has given itself the power to undermine governments that it was supposed to, support, Constitution is supposed to report, but that it did not like. And in 1960, it overthrew the government. In 1971, it overthrew the government. In 1980, it overthrew the government. And in each moment, the military saw fit to rewrite, either rewrite the Constitution or rewrite parts of the Constitution, essentially to protect the state from the people. And this was,

And so there continued to be authoritarian practices that came out in Turkey's kind of founding, founding documents. What we've seen during the Erdogan era is that as time has gone on, you know, right out of the gate in 2003, the AKP undertook a number of very impressive political and economic reforms that were aimed towards beginning negotiations to join the European Union. a club of liberal democracies. And the European Union in 2004 decided that Turkey had done enough of those reforms and that it would give it an invitation to begin those negotiations. Hadn't fulfilled all the criteria, but the idea was that this would catalyze the fulfillment of the criteria that would make Turkey a candidate for EU membership. A number of years later, around 2007, 2008, a number of things happened in Turkish politics would convince without going into the great detail of it. But essentially, the traditional elite,

the political class, were trying to prevent Erdogan from ruling and governing a way in which he was elected to do. And he pursued a – there was an – you know, arguably there was another military attempt, power grab, to prevent Gould, Abdullah Gould, the foreign minister, from becoming the president because his wife wears a headscar. And Erdogan outmaneuvered the military called an election, an early election, and won that election, and it sort of forced the military to back off. But since that time, there were also efforts to close the party as a center of anti-secular activity. There were other efforts that Erdogan clearly came to the conclusion that this traditional elite sometimes referred to as the white Turks weren't going to let him rule.

and pursued a political strategy of division and using the authoritarian institutions of the state to suppress the opposition. And so what you see starting around 2007, 2008 is an increase jailing of political opponents, a broad use of the term terrorism to jail political opponents, more academics and journalists going to jail. The use of the state, the use of the state for blatantly political purposes to change to the owners, changes in ownership of media outlets in order to make them more pro-government. And so there has been this steady decline in the quality of Turkey's democratic practices. But Turks clearly value their right to vote.

And it's deeply meaningful to Turks. And you see a number of instances of this where they have defied Erdogan and have defied the kind of deepening authoritarianism in Turkey. The primary example of this is in the 2019 municipal elections in which the AKP candidate lost in Istanbul. Istanbul. I mean, Erdogan once said, if we lose Istanbul, we have lost the country. And Erdogan's candidate, who was a former prime minister, lost. And so by Herka-Bikruk, Erdogan and his advisors figured out a way to challenge the outcome legally. And they had to rerun the elections. And the opposition candidate who won the first round won by an even bigger margin in the second round. And that was Turk saying to Erdogan, our vote counts, regardless of all the things that you. have done in the preceding 10 years, do not mess with the vote. And in fact, that opposition

candidate did become the mayor of Istanbul. But, of course, in the run-up to this presidential election, which is happening on May 14, that candidate has been disqualified by the courts, judges who were picked by the Justice and Development Party for some made-up infraction. And he was disqualified and couldn't run. He's actually part of the opposition coalition and has been named as a vice premier candidate, but he couldn't himself run as president because he had been found guilty of some made-up charge that was clearly intended to prevent him from running for president. So it's truly a mixed bag. There are democratic practices, most, you know, namely the vote, but other democratic practices, rule of law have been human rights, freedom of expression, freedom of

assembly. Those things have been clearly compromised throughout the last 10 or 12 years of the AKP rule. And that leads us to sort of a really interesting moment, I think, in Turkish history, right? We have, despite the fact that American news sites and papers and the radio referred to Erdogan as an authoritarian and it seems like he has many characteristics of authoritarian authoritarianism. Yeah. There you go. There you go with that. He's now facing, is he facing a real vote?

And what kind of opponent is it a straw man or is this is this like a real? This is a real challenge. I mean, I think that Erdogan is uniquely vulnerable. And those analysts who say, look, if Turkey was an authoritarian system, you wouldn't really have this. And I guess my responsibility is it an illiberal democracy? It's certainly a liberal. It's less than a democracy. It's an elected autocracy.

It's hard to categorize it. But this is a very real challenge to Erdogan. Like I said, the vote and these campaigns are meaningful to Turks. This is not Egypt where, you know, there may be a candidate, but it's not a meaningful thing. And so, and what we know about Turkey is that it is deeply polarized and that about half of the, up until this point, we won't know until the, like some, but about half of the population supports Erdogan and the AKP. And the other half does not. And he has governed the half that supports him and tried to intimidate the other half. he is vulnerable in this election for a number of reasons. One, there's been a lot of economic

headwinds in Turkey. There's been a lira crisis. The currency has lost, you know, 50 or more percent, last year alone it lost 50 or more percent of its value against the dollar and has continued its slide. There's been significant economic mismanagement, even if the fundamentals of the Turkish economy remain actually pretty good. There was more recently, the very, very slow response to the February 6th earthquake. I think that speaks to the centralization of power in the presidency, is that everything has to be approved by Erdogan. I have a colleague who's another Turkey Watcher who has jokes that even on university campuses,

Erdogan has to approve the design of dorms. I'm not sure how much of an exaggeration that is. So in this highly centralized system, the state could not. move without Erdogan's permission to flow aid into the earthquake zone, which was enormous, enormous, 50,000 people dead, tens of millions of people affected by it. And of course, there's the deepening authoritarianism of Erdogan's rule that I think Turks have grown weary of younger generation of people who know nobody other than Erdogan are sort of tired of his kind of overbearing paternalism. So there's...

these kind of multiple reasons. But what's super interesting about this is that, you know, with these kinds of very significant problems, the polls demonstrate that it's pretty close. He's down, but he's within five points of his opponent, Kimmel Kilich Dorolu, who is a longtime leader of the main opposition party and a former technocrat and economist, who is a very different kind of personality from Erdogan. Erdogan is very brusk and he's very aggressive and charismatic and really does fill a room. I have seen non-Turkish speakers hang on his words, even though he's speaking in Turkish and they don't because of how charismatic he is, whereas Kielitsurola promises a more quiet, a quieter kind of leadership.

In any event, it's close, but why is everyone even on the field? Why is he even in the game, given all of these problems? And so I think the concern is that it's because he's able to – there's two things. One, there are going to be plenty of Turks who do not vote the pocketbook. They're going to vote culture and they're going to vote identity. And that's why we've seen in recent days, and it's rather disturbing, that Erdogan has picked up on homophobic and ethnic themes to gain it in advantage to ensure that those people are going to vote on culture and identity issues stick with Erdogan. So, you know, in part, his closing argument is his opponent is gay, which is he's not gay, but he's, you know, accused of being supportive LGBTQ rights and that, you know, doing the bidding of the West, which is pro-LGBQ, we've heard similar things from people like Victor Orban and Vladimir Putin.

And this is really this play towards identity and culture. And he's able to mobilize the state, the apparatus of the state. Most of the press is in the hands of pro-government people. They're able to penalize opponents like they did with the Istanbul mayor. And that's what makes this close. And I think that it would be absurd at this point to be able to say one way or another that Erdogan is going to win or Erdogan is going to lose. It's very, very close.

And that speaks to that there are still things that matter that on the democratics. If you look at kind of a spectrum of political systems, Turkey is not, you know, so far. My point is that there are still aspects, there are still practices, democratic practices, that do mean something and are meaningful. And it's not only important to the opposition, but it's also important to Erdogan for his own legitimacy to say, Hey, I won. I won. You're listening to Angry Planet.

We'll be right back. And we're back with more of your favorite podcast, Angry Planet. So that leaves two wonderful questions, right? There's what if he wins and what if he loses? Well, the easier question is what if he wins? If he wins, he will take it as a vindication. of what he has done for the last 20 years and to continue along the path both domestically

and on foreign policy issues and economic issues that he has pursued. If it's close and he wins, though, I think that there is the possibility that his opponents could come out to the streets and protest. There could be a period of instability. I think that it's more likely

that we'll see, instability and potentially violence if his opponent, Kamal Kuletsarolu, wins and wins by a very small margin. Because you can imagine that Erdogan, after all this time, has every incentive to want to remain in office for the reasons that I pointed out. He doesn't want to go to jail. He wants to be the president on the 100th anniversary. He doesn't believe that the job has been finished. to use the words of President Biden, actually, in his re-election campaign, not to say that the two are they're same. It's hard to picture two people who seem that different.

And there is some evidence to suggest that they really don't like each other, unlike either President Trump and President Erdogan or their early part of President Obama's tenure. He and Erdogan had a good working relationship. Anyway, that's off the topic. I think of Kilich Dorola wins and wins by a small margin, I think Erdogan is not going to accept it. I think that he will try to do what Trump did or what Jaireo Bolsonaro tried to do in Brazil. I think the difference between Erdogan and those two leaders is that Erdogan actually has the resources available to him to actually stay in power. And a far larger group of people in Turkey whose wealth, prestige, and influence are dependent upon Erdogan remaining in power.

So, and he has remade the security services. And so he can count on the loyalty of some. The question will be, under those circumstances, will people peel away from Erdogan? Maybe, but maybe not. I think he, I do think it's a better chance of pulling it off than either Bolsonaro or Trump, which then could lead to, as I said, quite significant instability in Turkey and even potentially violence, which is not unprecedented in Turkey. Turkish politics. So if Kailets Dirola were actually, though, through all of that, to become

the president, I think you would see more emphasis in Turkey on EU membership. He has promised to return Turkey to a parliamentary system. I think it's easier said than done. I think in confronting a opposition that will be potent and vengeful. He may find that some of the institutional changes that Erdogan has made that have empowered the presidency useful to him in facing down the opposition. Although I do think that Kilcherow's head and heart are in the right place. I just think it's going to be hard to, you know, kind of snap your fingers and return to a parliamentary system. So I think the big issues for Kilich Sterello are a return to the parliamentary system, which people see as a return to democracy, fixing the economy. And there'll be different emphases in foreign policy. By no means are those things going to make, you know, Turkey an easier partner of the United States and NATO.

I think the opposition in Turkey is eager to normalize relations with the outside regime in Syria. Erdogan got that idea from the opposition because it proved to be popular. I think they're going to take a very tough line on Cyprus, which is occupied by Turkish troops. And Turkey has created an independent state in northern Cyprus that only Turkey recognizes. They're going to take a tough line on this. Cyprus is a member of the EU, yet at the same time they're talking about renewing negotiations with the EU. They haven't said how they're going to deal with Turkey's purchase of a Russian air defense system, which led to a falling out with the United States and NATO and led to actually

the United States to apply sanctions on Turkey. So there's a whole host of issues that will remain foreign policy-wise and then domestic policy issues that are going to be very, very difficult for Kilich-Durillo to resolve quickly as he has promised should he become president. So the love affair with Vladimir Putin doesn't necessarily go out the window. It's not nothing automatic about that. I don't think so. I think at this point Turkey's economic interest dictate a good relationship with Russia. Perhaps that kind of mono to mono thing that we've seen between Erdogan and Putin, which I think, you know, the bromance thing, I think it's been over. But I think that they have found ways to work together that have benefited Turkey and have

benefited Russia and that signal that Turkey very much wants to pursue a foreign policy that's independent of its NATO allies, in particular the United States. So I think that that may not be the same, but I do think that the Turks will continue to want to have the economic relationship that is essentially blossomed between Turkey and Russia over the course of the last 20 years. another question around this is does anybody running for office like the Kurds are the Kurds on anybody's side or you know what's the relationship there because Erdogan has actually gone into Syria specifically to attack Kurds right you know and of course the Kurds who live in Turkey's territory have not necessarily had a great time it really depends on which Kurds you're talking about, Jason. There are, you know, conservative religious Kurds who have voted consistently for the Justice and Development Party on that cultural identity. Well, the cultural issue, not the identity issue because, but I have, you know, I describe, I have a Turkish friend who is, you know, hardcore hemelist. And he used to describe the Justice and Development Party, which is Turkish acronym AKP. He would say, oh, it's the Arab and Kurd Party. I mean, it gives you a lot. I mean, it gives you a, sense that there are Kurds who have traditionally voted for the AKP because they're religiously conservative and the party is religiously conservative. Then you have the kind of left of center

Kurds, which are led by a guy named Celotin Damir Tash, who's been in jail for five or six years now, and he has proven to be a very successful and effective politician. And those Kurds have essentially thrown their support to Killich Storullo and what's called the Nation Alliance without actually joining it. And that's because that alliance is made up of also people who are nationalists, religious nationalists, other nationalists who are part of the National Alliance, or what's called the Table of Six, only because they dislike Erdogan. Otherwise, there's not a lot that these groups have in common. In fact, there's an offshoot of the hardcore, you know, kind of right-wing nationalist

party that is a part of this nation alliance, something called the Good Party, the EE party. And they are very problematic from the perspective of courage, but they all can agree that Erdogan has been bad for everyone. So they are opposed to it. It's a real question. Although Kilot Storolo showed up in the Kurdish heartland in the southeast not long ago and received an extraordinary welcome from the Kurdish, predominantly Kurdish population there. So that was an indication that he may very well get a bump up from the Kurdish population who's been somewhat reluctant. Kilatsteroa comes from the Republican People's Party, which is the party of Ataturk, and they have been previously hostile to Kurdish rights.

But Kilotrerole, one of his great successes, has been trying to sort of change the party within that to be a more inclusive party. The CHP, as it's known by its acronym, is problematic. It's a social democratic party. It's not as social nor as democratic as it would like people to believe it. But this is something that Kilotsteroa has done that makes it, I think, relatively easier for the Kurdish population to throw their support behind him for the presidency. and perhaps this will make a difference in the in in in in in in the contest between him and Erdogan will be Kurds that'll be quite something are there something there are many millions of Kurds living in Turkey 20% of the population 20% so the population is 82 million

do the math and you're talking about 16 15.5 million people very very big and there are many many Kurds who are well integrated into the political social economic life of the country but there is this kind of systemic discrimination for many, many years. Herds weren't even referred to as Kurds. They were referred to as Mountain Turks. Their language, their culture, their history was completely denied. That's because Turkey is an ethno-national state. It's based on Turkishness.

And so, but if you're not Turkish, you don't, even if official documents grant you the same rights, you don't have those rights. There is systematic discrimination against Kurdish areas are less developed than other areas of the country. So there aren't the same kind of economic opportunities in the big cities, those kinds of things that are pathologies and places all over the world, but are in particular based on the fact that Turkey is an ethno-national state. And one of the big dramas in Turkish politics over the course of 100 years is the clash between Turkish nationalism and Kurdish nationalism. Well, I want to ask you just a couple more questions that before you go, if that's all right. It's all right. I cleared my afternoon for you, Jason. That's fantastic. Well, this conversation is going a long time.

No, I was wondering just a couple of things. One is, could you talk a little bit about Istanbul? I mean, when you said, you know, Erdogan said, if I've lost or Istanbul, I've lost the country. Could you talk a little bit about its importance? And I've been there and I just remember, I mean, I was hugely impressed. I mean, blown away, right? Right. Yes, absolutely.

Gorgeous, beautiful. I mean, this annoys, you know, Parisian friends, but it's the most beautiful in Europe. Even though half of it's an agent. Yeah, I mean, it's stunning. And, I mean, the blue mosque is something that I think everybody in the world should see if they ever get the chance. I mean, the mosques in Turkey are unbelievable. It's hard to describe. Hard to describe how beautiful some of these.

And it's not just the big main mosque. You go into, you know, kind of random. Beautiful, stunning places. But I'm sorry, I interrupted. No, I was just thinking, you know, about was it 12 million people or more live in Istanbul? Oh, no, many more than that. Okay, because I haven't went in there for years. 20 million.

Yeah, north of 20 million. It's a huge, huge megalopolis at this point, is grown enormously. And, you know, for an American audience, and this isn't a great analogy, but Istanbul and Ankara is like Washington, D.C. and New York. York City. Ankara being the capital, a little more stayed, a little more provincial, company town, whereas Istanbul is cosmopolitan in every way. And it is kind of, you know, you have conservatives and liberals and people who believe themselves

to be Europeans and not and everybody from all walks in Turkey and religions, you know, there are, you know, Muslims, but there's also a small Christian and Jewish community and even a remnant of the Armenian community that perished in the Armenian genocide. So it's extraordinarily, extraordinarily cosmopolitan, but Istanbul has also been for, you know, many years, a stronghold of the justice and development party. And that's why Erdogan, it's, it's the imperial city. And, you know, if you think like Turkish Islamists do that the Republic was not, is not natural, it was sort of an accident of history, a sort of veering off from what Turkey's kind of natural development should have been, you feel more comfortable in Istanbul. And in fact, that's often been the case, is that Erdogan, you know, he has, I mean, previous Turkish leaders have had offices in Istanbul.

because of its importance to the country. But he's actually kind of empowered it and made it this another place that from which to actually rule the country. And when he was mayor, he did, as I said before, he did a very good job. And through this 20 years of sort of remaking Turkey in the image of the Justice and Development Party, Istanbul has become more and more an AKP. Stronghold, which is why I think it was so shocking when they lost in 2019 to this guy, Ekram Imammolu, who was a member of the Republican People's Party, the main opposition. But I think it spoke to the depth of corruption and authoritarianism that people were willing, I mean, people came out to the polls to vote against the AKP in 2019, which spoke a lot about

how far the party had come from when it first came to power in 2002. That it had almost worn out its welcome among what had been a broader constituency. It's not just religious people that were voting for the Justice and Development Party, but as with the deepening authoritarianism, there were liberals who had voted for the Akept. All those people were gone. They were gone. If you were going to bet, what do you think is, well, I mean, you know.

I do. I actually, I have a bet. I have a public bet on this. You do. Okay. I do. I'll tell you what the bet is. And it's with my colleague from the Brookings Institution name Ashla Adintoshba. She also writes a monthly column at the Washington Post. Anyway, we bet we were on a podcast together, not yours, unfortunately. We're on a podcast together in early January in which we were talking about these issues. We were kind of previewing the Turkish elections. And she was articulating her belief that she thinks that there can be this return. to democracy, which is a valid position. I agree with it, of course. And one of the things I said was, I don't believe, as it maybe I'm being, I'm not being creative enough, but it's very hard for me to imagine that everyone's going to lose cleanly and say, I lost, give a speech at the presidential palace, bid farewell, and then go off into retirement.

And so I bet her publicly, and I don't bet. I've been to Las Vegas once and I went to the gym, not the casino. And I said, I will take her to any restaurant in the United States of America that she wants. If Erdogan accepts defeat, gives a speech, and then rides off into retirement and lives out his days as a retired statement. And successful politician, I just can't see it. So that's my only bet on this. But you were going to ask me if I was a betting person. Yeah, no, that was it.

That was the bet. And I actually am going to send her a list of restaurants that I personally recommend. Danielle and New York is quite nice. I can definitely. I mean, I said any restaurant. Well, but you do restrict it to the United States. So that can help. I did.

I do. But 11 Madison Park is, you know, but it's vegan now. So I don't know how you feel about that. It's up to her. I mean, it could be anything, right? Well, thank you so much, Stephen Cook, for coming on and taking us through what's happening in Turkey. And it should be interesting. It should be interesting.

It definitely will be interesting. Thanks for listening to another episode of AngryPont. The show is produced with love by Matthew Galt and Jason Fields with the assistance of Kevin Medell. This is the place where we ask you for money. If you subscribe to us on substack.angriplanet.com, it means the world to us. The show, which we've been doing for more than seven years now, means the world to us, and we hope it means a lot to you. We're incredibly grateful to our subscribers. Please feel free to ask us questions, suggest show ideas, or just say hi.

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