Guerrilla History - Why Turkey Is Authoritarian w/ Halil Karaveli [REMASTERED]

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

This episode is a fully-remastered edition of a previous episode we released, where we brought on Halil Karaveli to talk about Why Turkey Is Authoritarian. This discussion was our second interview ever on the show, and while the format of the show has slightly changed over the last few years, this was really a tremendous discussion about an important work and topic.  If you didn't catch this episode when it first came out, or if it has been a few years since you have listened to it, be sure to check it out! Halil M. Karaveli is a Senior Fellow with the Turkey Center of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center and editor of its publication The Turkey Analyst.  His book Why Turkey Is Authoritarian:  From Atatürk to Erdoğan is available from Pluto Books. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory                               

You remember Den Ben-Brew? The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The prince had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.

I'm your host, Henry Huckimacki, joined by my co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm great. Thanks, Henry. And Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you? Hello, I'm doing good. excited for this episode. I am as well. Today our guest is going to be Halil Karavelli, a senior

fellow at the Turkey Center of the Central Asia Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center and the author of the book that we're going to be discussing today, why Turkey is authoritarian, from Ataturk to Erdogan, which is out from Pluto books. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. Turkey is something that's brought up pretty frequently in the news. It's an absolutely major country. But I think that the understanding of Turkey in the West is pretty lacking. And I think that this book was a pretty good introduction into modern Turkey. What do you guys think of the book? I don't know who wants to go first, but let's get some kind of first level thoughts on the book and things that we want to get out of this conversation. Then we'll wrap up

later. Brett? Yeah, absolutely. So I was coming into this history knowing relatively little, I think more than the average American, but of course, that's a pretty low bar. But, you know, I got into understanding Turkey primarily through the Kurdish struggles of the last several years, rising up on the left and becoming interested in that particular area of the world. And, you know, obviously in investigating the Turkish crackdown on Kurdish people in their borders and without. And so that was always something that brought me into it. But, you know, the way that Turkey is framed for Western audiences, and maybe we'll get into this with the author, is this clash of civilizations, which is a sort of simplistic, hyper oversimplified way to

understand that whole area and that fascinating culture. And so at the very least, I think this will radically broaden people's understanding of Turkish history and allow them to understand the geopolitics of the area much better. Yeah, I couldn't agree more with you. I think I was in the same boat of knowing more than the average American, but what does that actually mean from a material standpoint. I know that I definitely was in the viewpoint that Western media tends to portray of Turkey being purely a secular versus Islamist kind of society in terms of how their political makeup is. But Adnan, I believe that you probably had a little bit more of a background in Turkey and Ottoman history than either of us. So what did you think briefly about

the book? And what are you hoping to get out of this? conversation with Hello. Well, I think it was an excellent overview of modern Turkish politics and the great contribution that it's making is to introduce a kind of class analysis of it, which isn't very common because, as you pointed out, Henry, very often when we know anything about Turkey, it's usually characterized as a secular state that somebody named Ataturk helped found that they're very secular. But that recently, in the recent past, there has been the rise of Islamist religious parties and that this has been a conflict in parts of Turkish society.

And this book, I think, does a lot to make more complex and interesting the picture of Turkish politics. So I'm really looking forward to exploring some of those interesting new analysis when you put class-based analysis back into it. Yeah, and the other thing I wanted to say sort of bouncing off what Adnan said there is I think there are some interesting parallels and the author makes this sort of clear about that the Turkish left struggle to sort of connect with the Turkish working class through the vehicles of culture and how that's a broader problem in the quote unquote Western world. And certainly I think that's relevant for here in the U.S. where, you know, the far right is increasingly like the populist right here in the U.S. is increasingly in touch with at least some element. of the working class that the liberal left seems increasingly disconnected from. A lot of that does filter through cultural grievance because, I mean, certainly the Republican right is not making an economic appeal or putting forth any economic policies for the working

class. And the liberal left here in the U.S. doesn't do it either. And so all politics becomes is this sort of machine of cultural grievance where we can express ourselves culturally, but not solve any of our underlying socioeconomic problems. And while the Turkish situation and the American situation clearly have fundamental differences, I think there are lessons to be pulled out from this history that we can apply immediately to the U.S. and European context as well. I think Brett's right on there with understanding the way in which right-wing populism, if such a thing really exists. You have a case of that operating in Turkey. So it's a really good historical example to analyze how the class dynamics of right-wing populism works and what it's a screen for because we end up having

the secular versus religious divide in Turkey is something that is a redramatizing of what we would call just the culture war, right? Culture wars and it has its historic specificities, but there are analogies, I think, that we could learn from. So I'm looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, I think that you both touch on really great points that I think that there's a lot of analytical work that's done in this book that hasn't been done very many other places in terms of looking at class analysis, cultural analysis of Turkey. But even from a historical perspective, one of the big focuses of this book was the period in the mid to late 70s, which I haven't seen too many other works that are focusing so heavily on that period of time. even though it really was a critical time in Turkish history.

But speaking of history, I think before we bring on halil, let's transition a little bit and talk about the history of the Ottoman Empire because, of course, that was the predecessor of modern day Turkey. And I think that having a little bit of that historical context of the Ottoman Empire might help us with our conversation with Halil. will help the listeners understand the historical context of modern Turkey. And, well, fortunately, we have somebody who's something of an expert in the subject here in Professor Adnan Hussein. So Adnan, why don't you help us understand a little bit of the historical context of the Ottoman Empire up until the Kemalist revolution?

Well, I wouldn't characterize myself as a real expert, but I'm a little familiar and sometimes teach Ottoman history. So I think there are just a few key points that maybe people who aren't familiar with the region and with this period of history could benefit from knowing, which is that the Ottoman Empire, which first emerges in what is modern-day Turkey, in the western part of the Anatolian Peninsula in the late medieval era, grows to become a world empire that dominated the southeastern part of Europe, the entire eastern Mediterranean coast, most of the major areas of what we think of as the modern Middle East stretching to Iraq, basically the borders with Iran, and across much of North Africa, including Egypt, Libya, and holding sway

even in the western part of the Mediterranean, at least in North Africa. So it was a major empire that was parallel in some ways to the Russian Empire under the Tsars or the Austro-Hungarian Empire in eastern and south-eastern Europe. And what makes something an empire is that it is multi-ethnic. In some ways, we might even say multinational, that there are many different nations of people who speak different languages, have different cultural customs, and also many different religions. It was a multi-religious empire that included. for the first few centuries of its existence, most of the population of the Ottoman Empire, which we think of as this very prototypical Muslim,

dynastic state in the Middle East, most of its territory was in the Balkans, and most of the population that it governed or ruled were Christians of different kinds, the Serbian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, some Croatian Catholics, and that it was only in the 16th century when Sultan Selim conquered the Middle East, what we think of as the Middle East, that the population became mostly Muslim

because of Egypt, Syria, these sorts of countries, Iraq. And of course, throughout this period, Christian populations remained a really substantial part. of the empire. And in addition to Christians, there were Jews. And so we have a real diversity. And that's what's the hallmark really of the Ottoman Empire, is that it was a multi-confessional, multi-religious empire that accorded and afforded other religious communities some kind of autonomy in the sphere of cultural and religious policies. They could keep their religion and they could have their own religious elite clerics, bishops, rabbis, and so on, and live under their own religious law while being members of the Ottoman society, paying special taxes, but being accommodated

and tolerated in a multi-ethnic polity. Yeah, Adnan, one of the things that, as I understand it, so as you said early on in the Ottoman Empire, many of the people, even most of the the people and the empire were Christian, and a lot of them were in the Balkans. And over time, it became more and more Muslim by population. But to my understanding, that wasn't really imposed by force. That was by choice. And then the other thing, I just want to throw out there for the listener. So by 1914, the empire, the Ottoman Empire, this is just prior to its fall after World War I, included modern day Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. But adan, so this transition from Christianity to Islam as the primary

religion, am I correct in my understanding that that largely was not coerced by force, but it was more or less just an organic transition within the empire? Yes, that's right. In all pre-modern Muslim polities, there wasn't compulsory or forced conversion. They had a technique of governance that accommodated religious difference as a basic cosmopolitan reality of these mixed and multi-religious societies, there would be a dominant religion. Of course, that's the religion of the governing elite. And we're certainly not talking about a period where you have equality of citizenship in that sense. Firstly, nobody was a citizen for most of this history. They're subjects of the Ottoman dynasty. But there was, of course, a privileged social status for Muslims.

but by the same token, there was tolerance and accommodation of religious difference. So there wasn't a period of forced conversion typically during this. Yeah. I'm wondering, just as somebody who doesn't know a lot about this history, thinking about past empires and how the right-wing nationalist elements of those areas look back sometimes in very mythologized form on the empire, and that sort of helps reinstantiate or perpetuate their cultural identity. So do the right-wing nationalists, and so far as you know, maybe this is a question for the author,

do right-wing nationalists in Turkey today see themselves as the direct descendants of the Ottoman Empire? Do they have this mythologizing effect of looking back at their legacy and sort of bringing that into their cultural identity? Absolutely, Brett. I mean, this is a very important component of the ideology of Erdogan's governing discourse is a neo-automatic. Ottomanism is to revive in some sense the greatness and grandeur of the Ottoman Empire and to project its past in a particular way to favor the Islamist policies and discourses that are important in his politics today. So there is a romanticization of the Ottoman past and there is also a sense of valorizing the Muslim hegemony and he himself in some ways wants to be

like an Ottoman emperor, sort of. This is what he's accused of by some of his critics, that he wants to be like Sultan Abdul Hamid, one of the last Ottoman emperors who really tried to promote a kind of Muslim identity as a tool of legitimacy in the late 19th century. And so that's why I think it's really important to understand more about the Ottoman past to understand the use and abuse of its history. politically today, and it's something we could definitely talk with our author in greater detail. But I think quite apart from religion, which is one important and interesting topic,

the other really main and important theme to discuss here as well is ethnicity and national identity. Because one thing that happened in all of these empires that collapsed around the same time at the end of World War I, sees the end of the Russian Empire, sees the end of Austro-Hungarian empire is the assertion of new nationalisms based on ethno-national identities in the Balkans. It starts with the Greece, you know, with Greek independence in the early mid-19th century, 1830s. And you continue to see the emergence of new nationalist movements that want to have their own nation-state. And as a response, the modern Turkey that is a republic that emerges

out of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, basically has to re-found itself as a Turkish nationalist project out of a multi-ethnic polity. So you had Arabs, you have Kurds, you have Armenians, you have a dizzying array. And we're just talking about the Middle Eastern side. Of course, there are the Balkans. And what ends up happening is the emergence of a very exclusivist Turkish nationalism. that I think is something we also need to talk about a little bit more, about the consequences of forming the state in this manner because it has continued to cause problems.

One is that you had the Armenian genocide that happens, even under the late Ottomans, as a way of recasting the state in this kind of emergency situation during World War I, where you have the British and the French and the Russians attacking Turkey from the outside, and war taking place in Anatolia, the Ottoman state tries to liquidate the Armenians and to take their resources and to fund Muslim capitalism, essentially.

Also, the continuing problems with the Kurds. This is something that can't easily be reconciled with the way in which modern Turkey has been established. So the main important point here is that you start with a multi-religious and multi-ethnic society and the transition to modern Turkey is to attempt to create a Muslim-identified nation-state based on Turkish nationalism, and that has enormous consequences on subsequent history as a real contradiction and tension that's difficult to resolve. Yeah, I've got a follow-up for Brett's question, which was an excellent question when we have these right-wing leaders, they always tend to valorize their history.

But just quickly, when you're talking about the Armenian genocide, for context, at one point, the Ottoman Empire was nearly 20% Armenian by population. Nowadays, it's about less than half a percent by population is Armenian ethnically. So a little bit of a reminder of what happened. But Adnan, just to follow up with what Brett said, is when we have these right-wing groups that valorize the past, they tend to uphold the big successes and then sweep all of the low points under the rug. So I guess very briefly, because I know we want to wrap this up in the next few minutes,

can you bullet point basically some of the high points of the Ottoman Empire that these forces, the right-wing forces may tend to always idolize? And then what were some of the low points, of course, including the Armenian genocide, that would tend to be swept under the rug by these forces. Well, they typically valorize the high point in the 16th century under the so-called Kanuni Soleiman, Soleiman, the lawgiver, and he was known in Europe as Suleiman the magnificent, so this is in the middle of the 16th century,

and it's seen as a high point of the greatest territorial extent of the empire as well as its advancement, culturally, politically, monumental architecture, and so on. the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in 1516 where it becomes a truly Middle Eastern power under Suleiman the Magnificent's father is also seen as a major high point but it's also accompanied by massacres of religious dissidents so what we have is the early Ottoman Empire

its form of Islam was eclectic it was this kind of frontier state it had a very multi-religious society. And what starts to happen over the course of the 16th century, late 15th and 16th centuries, is increasingly Sunni orthodoxy becoming almost what you would say is the sort of official state religion and the persecution or suppression through its rivalry with Iran,

which at this time is becoming Shi'i. So you have this rivalry geopolitically between the Safavid Empire in Iran and Greater Persia, and the Ottoman Empire that is becoming a major Middle East power, that religion and religious ideology and identity becomes a tool of the state to enforce kind of unity and identity vis-a-vis arrival sort of power. And that's the kind of position that isn't really understood,

that really the roots of the Ottoman Empire are of this very diverse. It really inherits the Byzantine Empire in its territories and those populations, and it's only able to govern successfully because it was tolerant of these differences, ethnic and religious. Brett, is there anything else that you want to add before we wrap up this introductory segment and bring on Hulu? Absolutely. No, actually, I think that that history was amazing.

And on, thank you so much for that. That was just a really succinct way of covering a lot of territory. And I'm as grateful as I'm sure our listeners are as well. Yes, I am as well. And yeah, listeners, if you feel like taking Adnan's classes enroll at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. I know I, for one, wish that I had a professor of history like Adnan. You're too kind. I've left out a lot, but hopefully our conversation with Halil Karavelli will fill in some gaps.

Yeah, excellent. So now that we've run through some of our surface level reactions to the book as well as Ottoman history, we're going to take a quick break. then we're going to bring Halil on and we're going to get really into the weeds with him and then we'll wrap up afterwards. So stay tuned to everyone. We'll be right back. Hello, welcome back to Gorilla History. It's my pleasure to now welcome our guest, Hilo, Senior Fellow with the Turkey Center at the Central Asia Caucasus. Institute and Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center and also the editor of its publication, the Turkey Analyst. Now we're going to be talking about a really excellent book that he wrote,

Why Turkey is Authoritarian from Ataturk to Erdogan, which is out from Pluto books. I highly recommend everybody picking that book up. It really does bring a lot of information. So, hello, thanks for joining us on the podcast today. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah. So I know that we've all been, we've read through the book. we thought that it was really great, we learned a lot from it, and we're looking forward to talking to you. But I guess when we get into the conversation, before we really get and drill down deep into the contents of the book, we should probably just clear up a few things for listeners

who might not have read the book yet before this conversation. So one thing I want to raise is the term chemist. So I know that you kind of take um, with the usage of the term chemist to really bring in a wide group of people, would you want to address who Ataturk was, what the Kemalist movement should be seen as, and what kind of this improper view of the Kemalist movement is commonly used as? Yeah, it's a one of the reasons I wrote the book was to correct the, uh, uh, uh, or the challenge, the standard narrative on Turkey, which pits normally Islam against secularists.

You know, most people who know something have heard about Turkey will think that, we'll think that here's a country where you have an ideological struggle between, on the one hand, Kemalists, the secularists, and on the other hand, religious conservatives and Islamists. And this kind of informs the view of most people. And I think that that is, although there is a, of course, there is a truth in here. It is nevertheless misleading. But what I try to point out is that the so-called Kemalists are actually,

and the Islamists are actually two. sides of the same right wing coin. Both groups have actually served the same dominant class interests, both the Kemalists, the secularists, and the Islamists. So in that sense,

the struggle that the posit exists between them is actually non-existent. It is, if you want, an intra-elite struggle. Now, and a Kemalata Turk, as you mentioned, he is also on the cover of my book. was the founder of the Turkish Republic almost 100 years ago.

And he is highly esteemed by progressives in Turkey and also elsewhere. Because he is seen as a man who broke with religious traditionalism and who put Turkey on the past of modernity. And in that sense, and that is also correct. but what we mostly miss, what the standard narrative misses, is the fact that Atatou put Turkey on the path to capitalist modernization and that they acted in the interests or certain class interests and that they promoted the interests of the business elite.

Now, saying this, that there is a... And the Turkish current President Erdogan is seen. as his antithesis, the man who kind of dismantles Ataturk's edifice. What I say is that, in fact, Erdogan is a continuation. He continues along the same path that Ataturk laid out. If you look at how labor is treated in Turkey today, how the rights of workers are trampled upon, you see a clear historical continuity, starting with Ataturk,

who banned the labor unions, who killed the leadership, of the Communist Party had them killed, and on to today. But when I say this, this is usually something that is tremendously provocative in Turkey. I have many progressive friends who have been, you know, furious at me for seeing Ataturk and Erdogan, as also for seeing Erdogan as a continuation of Ataturk. And this is something that I write a lot about in the book, the tragedy of the Turkish left, of the Turkish progressive movement, the fact that it has not been able to emancipate itself from the heritage of Kemadatta Turk, which in turn has crippled it as a truly progressive force, as a truly democratic force. Yeah, so I think that that really is the underlying theme of your book, is that Ataturk to Erdogan, there really is a through line from there.

It's not this distinct break, but there was, at least in my reading of your work, there is what you would consider a break in modern Turkish Republic history. To my understanding, you see there being basically two periods of modern Turkish history. You have the first 15 years or so under Auditurk, which you describe as a radical, secular period. And then you have basically everything after that where the foundations for the modern capitalist society were laid with the goal of creating a national bourgeoisie. Would you like to kind of expand on that division between those two periods and kind of how that transition from those two periods happened before we get back into the discussion. of authoritarianism and the through line from the beginning through now in the Turkish Republic. True. The first 15 years of the Turkish Republic under the rule of Ataturk were a period of bourgeois

radicalism. And the period that has followed since then, since the beginning of the 1940s, had been a period of bourgeois conservatism, I would say. And the main reason for this break was, first of all, Ataturk's own disappearance. He was a truly radical person, who who really wanted to, you know, rid Turkey of religion. And so this was very much one person's, you know, of course he acted in a certain historical context, but still his own personal ideological determination did play an important role. Now, what happened after that was the onset of the Cold War, which basically changed the whole dynamic of Turkish politics.

because suddenly the Turkish ruling class was confronted with the threat of socialism, which had not existed prior to that. So they sought refuge under the umbrella of the United States during the Cold War against the Soviet Union. And they came to perceive socialism and left in all these shapes as a mortal threat to the state. and, of course, their own class interests. And doing so, they very quickly realized the Turkish ruling elite that they had to abandon the radical version of secularism that Ataturk had personified.

And they realized that they had to use religion, that they had to appeal to religion, to do and traditional values, as a source of kind of, in order to a forestall the rise of the left in Turkey. And this was very clearly seen already back in 1946 that they said we have to appeal to religious feelings to make sure that our youth are not tempted by socialism.

And that in turn has led successfully to the abandoning of the radical form of secularism that Ataturk represented. So basically you could say that this radical secularism with which Turkey wrongly is associated with or the Turkish elite have been associated with

in the standard narrative was actually abandoned very early at the onset of the Cold War. So that was when, you know, the bourgeois radicalism gave way to bourgeois conservatism. ask you, I think we'll probably have to come back to this central theme of secularism and Islamic identity as a red herring in your analysis. But there is another disabling dimension,

it seems to me, for the emergence of a progressive left in Turkey, or at least a problem that it hasn't successfully overcome, that also is important that you discuss somewhat in the book, but I'd be very interested to hear more about, which is the problem of nationalism, of Turkish nationalism and Turkish identity. The circumstances in which a multi-ethnic, multinational kind of polity like the Ottoman Empire is transformed into a nation state with Turkishness as its core kind of ethno-national identity has created such huge problems with the Kurdish question, Armenian, you know, ethno-religious difference, the transfer of populations between, you know, Greeks to Greece and Turks have to be repatriated to Turkey. But, you know,

at the turn of the century, as you point out in the book, these people didn't think of themselves as Turks in the way that we think of them now. So people had to become Turks. And then the way in which they became Turks seems to have had big consequences that have not been really resolved in Turkey's politics. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more, but how people became Turks and why this has been so difficult to resolve the Kurdish question and other what we might think of as ethnic questions because of Turkey's nationalism. Yeah, that is really a core question, especially today, actually, which which cripples democracy. Turkey, the ethno-national issue, and has crippled the left, as you say, and as crippled

by extension of democracy. Now, I would like to return to that, but I would like to start with the class issue, and then which leads over to this ethnic issue. There is a very, it's a very interesting fact that, and I think the British Marxist historian, points this out that Turkey, he says, was able to transition to democracy much earlier than, for instance, Spain, which was a much more, in economic and social terms,

much more developed country than Turkey. Because Turkey transitioned to multi-party democracy in 1950. And when Spain remained an right-wing dictatorship until 1975. And Perry Anderson points out that the reason was, he said, that in Turkey in 1950s, unlike in Spain and many other countries, there was no divisive class conflict that needed to be, you know, contained, right? So the elites, you said, they could settle accounts between themselves without fearing that this would unleash popular forces. And they actually used, they could appeal to the people, to the peasants, to, you know,

to settle counsel between themselves, the Turkish elite. Because actually there was no class conflict. You know, labor was non-existent, and the leftist intellectuals had been thrown into jail and fled the country in 1950s. Eventually, in the 1960s, Turkey did get to a class conflict, which I described in detail in my book, in the 1960s and the 1970s,

which is, by the way, a period in Turkish history that is totally overlooked in the standard, historical narrative, the class conflict that raged between 1960 and 1970, when Turkey had a very strong labor movement, a strong socialist left, and a strong social democracy, which were all crushed by the onslaught of the right. Now, from 1980, when Turkey had a right-wing military coup, the left was basically purged, had been purged. Since 1980, Turkey, Turkish politics has been purged of the left, okay? But what has happened since the 1980s is that the class conflict that dominated Turkish politics for two decades.

In the 1960s and 70s, was replaced by an ethnic conflict, which had actually been simmering, but would have been kept in check until then. But after 1980, and with the insurgency of the PKK, which started in 1984, Turkey saw the eruption of the ethnic conflict. And since then, Turkish politics has very much been conducted under the shadow of this Turkish-Kurdish ethnic conflict. So while, in a sense, to paraphrase Perry Anderson, while the absence early on of a class conflict in Turkey in the 1950s, Turkey to transition to multi-party democracy, you could say, and then when there was a

class conflict, it was crushed by a dictatorship. Today, the persistence of an ethnic conflict prevents democratization. And it actually led the Turkish elite statally to conclude that we cannot allow democracy because we have an ethnic conflict. In the 1970s, the eruption of a class conflict led to the dismantlement of democracy. And today, this acute ethnic conflict has led to the basically dismantling the Turkish democracy with incarceration of thousands of elected Kurdish mayors, lawmakers, other politicians. So now, returning to your question of the left and its relationship to the national, which is a crucial issue, which has kind of tormented the left throughout the history of Turkey.

Because you very correctly point out that there were no Turks actually at the turn of the 20th century, but Ataturk succeeded in creating a Turkish nation. It succeeded very well, you could say, and it may be too well, in that sense. Which means that people in Turkey are, you take a social democrat, for instance, They are Turkish nationalists first and then social democrats. And it is a very tragic fact that today the main opposition party in Turkey, the Republican People's Party, which is officially Social Democrat, but it's basically a center-right party, which, by the way, most Social Democrats parties today are. So in that sense, it's not unique. But the official Social Democrat Party in Turkey has actually abetted the authoritarian consolidation in Turkey.

It has assisted the right-wing coalition that rules Turkey in changing the laws which have enabled the state to incarcerate elected Kurdish lawmakers. So it is a very tragic fact that, and Salatin Demirtas, who is the former leader, of the pro-Kurdish and the left-wing People's Democratic Party who has been in jail since 2016. He has consistently called for the formation of what he called the Democratic Front, a front of progressive front, to stand up against what he calls fascism in Turkey.

And so far, the other opposition parties have not heeded his calls. His calls have remained unheeded. And the main reason is that the Turkish left or the Turkish mainstream left, the social democrats, are unable to kind of transcend this ethnic divide and embrace the Kurdish-dominated left, precisely because nationalism for them comes first. and and it is I end my book by saying that because the social democrats party they probably call themselves

the soldiers of Mustafa Kemal Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and they chant that that's a very typical slogan that they use often and I say that as long as they call themselves as soldiers of Mustafa Kemal, the Turkish

mainstream left will not be able to bring peace and democracy to Turkey. So they will have to emancipate from their father figure, Ataturk. On the other hand, I also recognize that Ataturk, as the founder of the Turkish Republic, is an icon. He's also a progressive icon, which is sort of very difficult to disregard. And he is like the founders in the U.S., he is the founding figure of the state, with which a majority of the population, be they secular or conservative, be they left or right, they identify with them.

So asking people to emancipate from Ataturk's legacy of nationalism is really unfortunately asking for too much. Which is why, as I pointed out, many of my progressive friends in Turkey have been very angry with me. and some have actually reacted to the mere fact that Ataturk is on the cover of my book they were disgusted by this seeing that a book called Why Turkey is authoritarian has Ataturk on this front cover because for them, for many progressives in Turkey

Ataturk would not, he may have been an authoritarian and have to concede that of course but they still hold that his goal was to make Turkey an enlightened country that his ultimate goal wants to bring democracy. That may or may not have been true, but the fact is that his followers,

tragically the progressives, by sticking to the nationalist legacy that he left, are unable to fulfill their own progressive potential. I don't know if that answers your question, but you are certain right that nationalism has been an obstacle and hurdle, especially for progressive. Now, there have been, one other aspect has crippled the life,

which I describe also in a book in detail, is the fact that is religion, the fact that progressives in Turkey have held religion to be equal with reaction, that they have held progressives. religious conservatives, a pious people to be reactionaries and people in need to be enlightened. That attitude,

that attitude of progressive have prevented them from reaching out to the broad masses of the people. Because telling people that you are backward is actually not a good way to start the conversation with them. It's not a good way to kind of create a coalition, which is why

in basically every election in Turkey since 1950 except say one in 1977 the broad masses of the population peasants, workers have voted for conservative parties and they have done so because the conservatives have and I think that many of our listeners will recognize this today because the conservatives have said that they are the defenders of the people

against this elite, this cultural elite, which is looking down on the people. So Turkey, this dynamic that we see playing out all across the world in the United States, in France, in Sweden, all across the Western world today, has been acted out in Turkey since the 1950s when the right, the populist or the authoritarian right, has succeeded in transforming what is a class struggle, class conflict, into a cultural conflict, an elite and a religious conservative population majority. And where the right has succeeded in winning election after election by pretending to be on the side of the people against the elite, but of course in power, always looking after the interests of the economic elites.

So this, what, you know, in a sense, Trump was invented long before in Turkey, you know. already in the 1950s, that formula, combining conservatism, religious conservatism, pretending to be on the side of the people, but in fact, in governance, by in governance, actually promoting the interests of the economic elite, that formula has been successfully implemented in Turkey since the 1950s. So just briefly to underscore the two points that you made in your analysis of what the left, the progressive left in Turkey has to do. in order to transcend kind of the barriers that they're pushing up against. Point one is to kind

of distance themselves from Ataturk, no matter how difficult that seems to be, because you have to distance yourself from the nationalist component of Adaturk's legacy. And point two would be to not be exclusionary towards religious individuals within Turkey. So those are based on your analysis, the two points. And I just want to underscore those two points for the listeners. But Brett, you had a question for hello. Yeah, that was a fascinating and concise history, but I kind of wanted to circle back to that class struggle period of the 60s and 70s and drill down a bit. So can you discuss the rise of social democracy and that class struggle in Turkey in that period of time, how and why it was making progress, and then just describe how exactly it was crushed by the

reactionary, right? Thank you for asking that question. That is actually something that I am most of all, that is the part of the book that really met it most for me to write that history of the 1960s, precisely because it is overlooked in almost all standard narratives. You don't find it described anywhere else. That was why it was so important. Now, the rise of social democracy in the 1960s was a result of the fact that with the industrialization in Turkey, by the beginning of the 1960s they saw the Turkey was

beginning to have a working class industrial working class and and in the 19 after a Turkish first military coup in 1960 this may sound a little intriguing but the fact is that after the military coup when a new constitution was drafted workers were given right to strike

the right to strike and form trade unions That was kind of, in a sense, the 1961 constitution included many progressive aspects that opened up for trade union activism. But the state elite in Turkey probably didn't realize what they were actually opening the doors for. Because by the end of the 1960s, the labor movement has grown so strong in Turkey that it perceived as a threat to the established capitalist order. And in that, during that period, the party, the Republican People's Party, which had been founded by Ataturk, which was a centrist party, decided to move to the left, or what they said, center left. And they did that for purely tactical reasons, to prevent the rise of the socialist left. because the socialist left was under rise and it entered parliament with 15

lawmakers in the election 1965, which led the Republican people's part to decide we are the center left. But of course it was saying that they were attacked viciously by the right, by conservative parties. But it's so very interesting that the birth of social

democracy in Turkey was not the result directly of the rise of the working class as it was in other parts of Europe and historical it was actually a reaction, a reaction to the rise of the working class and an attempt to tactically make sure that it didn't go too far to the left. But what happened is that this had its own moment, it gained its own momentum, the movement, the social democratic movement.

And the Republican People's Party increasingly moved more and more to the left. And eventually under the leadership of Belant Ejavid, who became the leader of the party in 19, 72. And he had actually been a social democrat ever since 1950s. So he was a sincere social democrat. And with him, the Republican Party, the Republican People's Party who had made this move to the left initially for purely tactical reasons actually became the voice of a sincere broad and leftist movement

and redefined itself as a democratic left. and became a huge force, of course, and got 42% of the votes in the election on 1977, which really scared the hell out of the Turkish state establishment and the right. Now, starting in 1975, right-wing death squads, abetted by the Turkish military, by the police, started killing leftists, students, labor union activists, politicians. And between 1975 and 1980, around 5,000, if not more,

leftists were killed with impunity by the right-wing deathblocks, which I described in detail in the book. There were large-scale massacres in Turkish cities, one particularly one massacre to place in May 1st of May, 1st of May, 1977, in Istanbul, in the Taksim Square, where the assembling demonstrators were attacked by killers, a massacre ensued, around 40 people were killed. There were also attempts made to kill, but underage with the social democratic leader,

and he narrowly escaped several attempts on his life. Now, this was a huge onslaught. You could see the Turkish state. It's the military, the police, the fascist death squads, a full-scale attack on the left. The same time, the business community did everything in its power to undermine the social democracy which had briefly come to power in 1978 and made sure that his

and made sure that his government could not but basically besieged from all sides. At the same time the United States, which was a very important actor which I describe in some detail

the Carter administration very clearly a signal to the Turkish military that they should get rid of age of it. And so the Turkish left faced during the 1970s

against it were, you know, the United States, the Turkish business community, the military, the police, and the death cause of the fascist party. So all these forces together

succeeded eventually in crushing the left. And And the military took power in 1980, using, you know, the violence perpetrated against the left as an excuse to say, we are coming to power in order to restore order, which was kind of – and you could say what played out in Turkey in the 1970s was, in a sense, similar to what happened in Latin America during the same period, in Salvadoriente, Chile, in Argentina, and especially the Chilean case bears a lot of similar similarities. to the Turkish case. Like in Chile, in Turkey, the military junta took power

implemented a neoliberal economic program, just like Pinochet didn't, that done in Chile in 1970s. Three, so did the Turkish general who took power, Evren, the same in 1980. And in both cases, we see the United States behind playing a sinister role. It's a very tragic fact, actually, that what in this Cold War context, what the United

States could not accept was a social democrat leading Turkey. He was not a socialist. He was not a Marxist in any way. He was not pro-Soviet. He was a moderate leftist. But unfortunately, the United States in that particular geopolitical context could not accept even that. Because a NATO country that borders to Soviet Union could not have a moderate leftist who was somewhat independent toward the UN but

Adjavit was not anti-US but he was independent-minded but that could not be tolerated and it is something that really is a caution or a tale actually what happened in Turkey in 1970 because by crushing the moderate left

okay it Turkey the gates in Turkey were opened for the rise of the Islamists. So when people complain now three decades later or four decades later that about the Turkish regime, they should remember. I think especially from an American perspective, I think it's important to see what happened. The roots of what we see today were actually late 40 years earlier

when the moderate leftist alternative was crushed and Turkey was left with choosing between different versions of the right. So, in that sense, Turkey is yet another example of how Cold War tactics actually had been counterproductive. Just like the U.S., you know, across the Muslim world, supported Islamist movements in order to fight communism and socialism, and then ended up, you know, getting 9-11 eventually. So has, you know, the fact that they undermine and crushed the left in Turkey, even this moderate left. led to the authoritarian right-wing regime in Turkey today, with which the U.S. today is very unhappy. So it's kind of important to see this historical source,

historical root of what we have today. Very interesting analysis. You know, this reminds me a little bit. Maybe I could ask you about, some of the misimpressions of the emergence of the Islamist parties that you're discussing here. You know, when they first came onto the scene under Nijmedin Erbakan and then especially under Erdogan because he was actually able to constitute a government that began, you know, implementing policies, many people hailed it as progressive force for two reasons, I think.

One, because it was pro-Europe and in order to accede into the European Union, there would have to be certain political reforms, getting rid of capital punishment, establishing a judiciary, and all of these kind of governmental type of administrative reforms that were seen as pro-democratic, ultimately, and would roll back. this deep state. And that's something we should talk a little bit more about because you've noted about military, you know, coups and this idea of the deep state that now we hear on, you know, in the U.S. political scene from the far right behind the Trump movement. It, of course, has again, as you're pointing out, it has its, you know, really conceptual roots that's already developed

in a place like Turkey, this kind of discourse against the deep state. So that was one reason why was hailed as being potentially progressive. And then the second one is coming back to the national ethnic question is that in the beginning, Erdogan was willing, unlike many leftists, right? He was willing to open up the situation for Kurdish language rights and other political rights and to kind of resolve the ethnic question by submerging it to this Muslim identity and saying, well, we're all Muslims. and, in fact, actually, Kurdish tend to be, you know, the population tends to be religiously oriented, as you point out in your book. So perhaps you could comment on these two things about why this was a misapprehension and a lot of people were seduced by this, you know, early rise. And what happened and transformed? Because some would draw a distinction between the early period of Erdogan's pro-Europe and, you know, pro-Kurdish kind of,

politics and what has happened, which is an extreme, you know, anti-Kurdish, anti-Europe, you know, within a half a generation politically. You know, Turkey is really a complicated place in a sense, but it's actually, if you look at it from a class perspective, things are actually not as complicated as you might, but the fact that you have things like secularism and Islam and everything makes this much more, of course, obscures a lot of things that actually which I try to, you know, clear out in the book. Now, the Islamist movement, to try to be, you know,

sum it up quickly as I can, the Islamist movement started in the 1970s as a, it was a division within the business elites, right? On the top, you had the big business. established bourgeoisie in Turkey, which enjoyed all the privileges granted by the state. And then you had the rising new businesses in Anatolia, small-scale businessman and the which mostly hailed from religiously conservative, you know, environments.

And these small-scale businessmen felt correctly so at a disadvantage compared to the big, big businesses in Istanbul and other, you know, metropolises of Turkey. And this shift, and they actually wanted, you know, access to the same privileges that the big businesses enjoyed. Now, the fact that the big business was, you know,

had this secular outlook, a westernized outlook, and the small new rising businesses came from this rural, conservative environment. may ensure that this intra-class conflict got the religious and social coloration. It looked like it was Islamists against Westernizers. So it looked like it, but it was actually an intra-class conflict within the business elite, or the business class. And during the 1970s, this started, during the late 1960s, continued in the 70s.

When we arrive at the 1990s, something had changed. Globalization made sure that these small businesses now work, you know, they were globally oriented. They were selling their markets in Europe and the U.S. and elsewhere. That meant that they no longer needed this kind of anti-West, anti-EU. Rhetoric with which, you know, their movement had been associated to start with. because for them that didn't make any sense anymore in terms of their class interests because they wanted to sell their goods to the West as well

and seeing the U.S. as an enemy and also being seen by the West as enemies was actually something that impaired their business interests. So this led to a shift in the Islamist movement during the 1990s when Erdogan and others around them, this young group broke ranks with Najmit and Arabakhan, the old guard Islamists, who wanted to maintain the anti-U.S., anti-Europe, anti-Israel, all this anti-Semitic, the old, you know, luggage from their historical legacy.

So the Erdoganist movement started as an attempt to, you know, make peace with the U.S. and the West, because that was what made sense in the material terms. And they were very early embraced by American, you know, ambassadors and others. And they saw that Erdogan is really someone that which, with whom we can do business correctly so. So and and then we, given this history that Erdogan actually represented a business class that wanted to have enjoyed good relations with the West. the question arises, why has this relation soured? How do we explain that? It doesn't make sense from a class perspective.

It really does not make sense. And the simple explanation for that is that Turkey was ripped apart, starting from 2011, 2012, by a conflict within the ruling Islamist elite. So this was not a class conflict that played. not, but it was an intra-elite conflict between, on the one hand, Erdogan, and on the other hand, the followers of this Muslim cleric, Fetula Ghulam, who's based in Pennsylvania. And Erdogan had relied on the Gulenists because they were well-educated. This is a Muslim sect that promotes education, that is pro-West, pro-U.S., pro-Israel,

anti-Iran, which really suits the American, you know, strategic interests perfectly. And they had, they were well-educated. So they were entrenched in the bureaucracy, in the judiciary, and the police, and also in the military. The Gulenists actually confronted Erdogan. Erdogan relied on this one alliance initially between Erdogan because he didn't have the cedars in the state. Gulenists provided him with the caiters. But after 10 years, Gulenis asked for more.

They demanded that Erdogan, you know, yield all power to them, more or less. And Erdogan resisted this. And it came to a break eventually between Erdogan and the Gulenis. Eventually, it led to the coup at an attempted coup in 2016. So Erdogan had lost by that, his main allies. and he had to turn to someone else in order to remain in power and he had no one else to turn to

other than the traditional right-wing nationalist which have traditionally ruled the Turkish state. Okay, when starting to 2014, Erdogan, abandoned by the Gulenists, allied himself with the right-wing nationalist and with the military, which had been purged by the Gulenists. So what you see,

today is a right-wing regime that Erdogan is actually, he is the president, the spokesperson, but he has more of us being forced to abandon his agenda. Now, as you pointed out, the Islamist movement initially was an internationalist movement that embraced the Kurds and other minorities. Erdogan has been a threat throughout his career. He has always been faithful to this. to promoting the ethnic and culture pluralism in Turkey, ever since the early 1990s, until 2015,

when he was forced to abandon his attempts to make peace with the Kurdish political movement. And that was because he had to give up. That was what the right-wing nationalist in the state and the military demanded away. For you to keep the power, you have to break with the Kurds. So this is actually a fact that what we see today, we can say whatever we want about Aradom, but his attempt to promote the peaceful solution to the Kurdish question,

you know, embrace Turks and Kurds coming together under the umbrella of Islam, was a sincere attempt. And he had to surrender ideologically to the right-wing forces of the Turkish state because that was the only way for him to remain empowered. Now, his relationship with the United States has, now, he has soured because when he hit back, when he was challenged by the Gulenists, he hits back hard in order to save his power. And that tarnished his image as a Muslim Democrat. From an American perspective, Erdogan was very useful as a role model for the Muslim world. Here we have a Muslim democratic leader who is a friend of the West and who is not an authoritarian.

That was why Obama liked Erdog, and he called him one of my most trusted friends. And that was as late as 2012 when Obama said that to get alongside Angela Merkel and the president of South Korea, he listed Erdogan as his most trusted friend among the leaders of the world. And a year later, when Aradona started to hit back at the opposition very much in order to, because he feared for his power, he went from being this promising Democrat to being a typical Middle Eastern authoritarian. And of course, from an American perspective, you know, Obama, this was not a guy with whom Obama could continue to be a friend after that. kind of his image was destroyed. But as I would like to point out, that this was not anything that Erdogan wished.

I know that in the U.S. there is this feeling, a very strong anti-Arduan feeling among, you know, across the political spectrum, Democrats and Republicans, when they are obsessed with kind of hating our Erdogan. But Erdogan was never anti-U.S. And he is not anti-U.S. Everything in his, you know, background and his class interest and his, you know, in material terms, speaks for the fact that he would like to enjoy good relationship, a close relationship with the United States.

He did not wish this break, but it was kind of a road accident, I would say. It happened not because any of the actors involved actors, the U.S. or Turkey are don't want it, but it happened. It was an accident. So in objective terms, objective terms, as I say in my book, Egypt, the social democrats in the 1970s, the person that the United States strongly disliked and they wanted to remove him from power because here was a guy who wanted to stand up against the US

at least pursue a more independent policy. Erdogan is not such a leader. He wants to be as close to the US as possible. but unfortunate circumstances have precipitated this break with the U.S. that he did not wish at all. But in objective terms, Erdogan represents a pro-U.S. stance. So to summarize, to summarize, he has surrendered on the Kurdish issue because he had to embrace right-wing nationalism in order to stay in power, and has come to be seen as an enemy of the U.S. for the wrong reasons, actually.

He is not, in any sense, an enemy of the U.S., but he has become a person that is not as usable as an as an, ideal Muslim Democrat, which he seemed to be in the beginning. Because his image has been tarnished. It's a difficult topic, the Turkish-American relationship of why it has deteriorated is a very complicated issue. And there is a lot of misconceptions going around, which kind of has muddled the picture

and created the impression that Turkey wants to break with you. West. There is no reason for Turkey because capital, Turkish capital, needs to remain integrated into the American-led Western system. It cannot, by definition, leave the West. It cannot turn it back on the U.S. So I know the guys want to ask about the history of coups within Turkey and particularly the 2016 coups. So guys, this is your opportunity to get those questions teed up. But first, very briefly, I was planning on asking about the Gulen movement. And you answered most of what I was going to ask. But I was just wondering if you could very quickly bullet point some of the kind of changes that happened that took place in Turkish politics because of the movement.

In what ways did the Gulen movement influence Turkish politics from a material standpoint, despite never really having the levers of power within their hands? I think it's fair to say that that movement has affected Turkish politics. So could you briefly just bullet point a few of the different ways that that movement may have had some effects on Turkish politics? And then I'll let the guys get with their questions regarding the coups in Turkey. The Ghan movement is an extremely difficult topic, but it just very much, I would like, Fetula Goudan, the clerical leaves the moment,

started his career in the 1950s. His first initiative was to form the local branch to lead the local branch of the so-called association to fight communism in his hometown. That was his start, you know. It is quite telling. He was pro-NATO, pro-US, and the left from the beginning. And in that sense, the Gulen movement,

from an American strategic perspective, is an ideal movement. and combines religious conservatism, capitalism, and a pro-U.S., a pro-Israel, and anti-Iran stance. So it's kind of perfectly made. It came very close to taking over the Turkish state at the Gendarme movement. So if they had succeeded in the coup of 2016, they would have been, they would be ruling Turkey by now. And during the years from 2002, when the AKP first came to power, until the coup, attempted coup, 2016, the Gulenists were extremely influential because they were actually basically running the Turkish state. And during this time, the Turkish military was purged.

you know, hundreds of officers were imprisoned and they were charged as coup conspirators. Now, actually, what did play out there was a fight between, on the one hand, the Gulenists in the judiciary and the police, who purged certain elements in the military that stood in their way.

And these officers who were purged were generally anti-imperialist officers, that is officers that tended to be anti-NATO who wants Turkey to be closer to Russia and China. Now, not coincidentally, the Gulenists are pro-NATO. So by purging the anti-imperialists, and pro-Russian officers in whose place

the Gulenists were promoted that would have, in short, that Turkey would have remained a very reliable NATO ally. Now, instead, with the failure of the 2016 coup, it was

the Gulenists in the military, the pro-NATO officers who were purged, and the anti-imperched. and pro-Russian faction played a decisive role in defeating the Guelanis. And today, we see that Turkey is, of course, still a NATO ally, and will remain so, but it does move much closer to Russia. And this is a result of the fact that the Gulenists,

the pro-NATO faction in the Turkish military, lost this influence. So you could answer your question. Your question was actually, how have the Guilinus, how is the Guelanis impacted Turkish politics, you could say that how we can instead say, how is their absence impacting Turkish politics? And their absence means that Turkey has moved slightly away from NATO, both massac from Russia, you know, it's not a strategic realignment yet,

but the absence of the Gulenists has empowered the anti-imperialists. They describe themselves as anti-imperialist. Self-describe anti-imperialist faction in the military. So that is in a sense. So I know I didn't answer your question, but I answered in an inverted fashion that's same by pointing out that what the absence of the Ginnitus has meant. But you could say that if they had remained entrenched,

they would have ensured that Turkey would have been a very clear, a loyal NATO ally and in that sense it would have it. And what we are seeing today, with Turkey moving closer to Russia, that would not have taken place. It seems like throughout the book, you've charted this conflict,

so-called conflict between the secularists and the Islamists, as you've pointed out, when you have a class analysis, it's really not the key division, but that they have still been captives of the bourgeois ruling interests in Turkey since the beginning. But one interesting conclusion that is very different from other leftist sort of analysis on Turkey is that you seem at several points in the book to talk about the need for a progressive future or for the left to become an effective force in Turkey, to have some way of being able to engage reliably and

effectively with religious sentiments of the people and religious culture in Turkey. And in some ways to take that out of just the exclusive province of the right-wing populism to be able to exploit. And you talked a little bit about how Bulent-Ejavid seemed to have the kind of cultural capital and background because of his connections to the the late Ottoman religious class to appreciate that culture and not to anathematize it so fully, that was, of course, derailed. And it seems that there are many cases where there were derailings, even in late Ottoman period, you talk about Mitat Pasha's kind of parliamentary reforms to create a multi-religious sense of citizenship as Ottomans that included Jews and Christians

as well as fully citizens. All along the line, there seemed to have been opportunities and possibilities for this to go in a more progressive direction, and yet it hasn't happened. You know, even the socialist Islam that you talk about a figure, a very interesting figure like Mir Saeed, Sultan, Ghaliev, and the Turkish communists who were influenced by him, who had a kind of vision of Islam, socialism being able to coexist and in fact actually that maybe you needed an Islamic socialism

for Muslim countries. What do you think are the prospects going forward and why have these always been derailed? Why has the left, you know, quite apart from just the history of its secular orientation from the Kemalist or the Ataturk's legacy, you know, what needs to be done in order to broaden that kind of appeal and awareness on the left to affect some reconciliation that would be effective going forward. And do you think, for example, somebody like the anti-capitalist Muslims, Izzan Eliajik, and others like that,

have any chance of being able to develop an anti-capitalist Islam that would actually have relevance in Turkish politics for the future? Yeah, I would wish so. I would wish for that, obviously. And yes, these anti-capitalist Muslims that you're, that you mentioned, they have unfortunately not found a significant audience among, you know, the pious Muslims, nor have they, you know, gotten any attention among, from the secular progressive left. So they're, they're, they, they're, the, um, if you know, he's a kind of, he's a kind of a long voice in the desert,

so far. But still, I think that if you look at the mainstream so-called left of the Republican People's Party and his leader came out to Lish Starrul. He has actually succeeded. He has very persistently since he became party leader 2010, reached out to the pious Muslims. Actually, I remembered meeting him in 2009, before he became party leader and he told me that you know what secularism is that that is just a notion for sophisticated people we are going to abandon that notion he said we are going to reach out to the mosque congregations and which he has done and and and and there are signs that you know

some of the more you know religious conservatives are actually paying attention to him you know And he has succeeded by repeating this message throughout the years of kind of demonstrating that we cannot keep nagging about sickers the whole time. We have to sort of stop demonizing religion. So I think he has succeeded Kamal Khadushita Rola in a certain respect. But the problem is that in order to fully succeed, you have to do two things at the same time. You have to stop, one, demonize religion, obviously, but two, you have to talk about social justice, all right? You have to talk about that.

And this is what Egypt did in the 1970s. He said, you know, the Prophet Muhammad, he was a revolutionary, he said, you know, and he called for social justice. So are we? And this is what should be done today. But Kemal Khadish-Dahul and the mainstream left, they are, of course, very nervous about sounding leftists. You know, they want to be, you know, they want to win by being a better version of the right. This is the problem with social democracy in general across the world, a social democracy that doesn't believe in social democracy anymore. And so I think that what needs to be done is partly being done, that is stop demonizing religion, but they also have the progress.

need to, you know, speak up for the labor rights, you know. And the fact that just today I saw this news in Turkish media, how yet another demonstration by workers had been, you know, clamped down by the police, and you hear no protest from the Republican People's Party or another opposition force. So there is a labor movement in Turkey. It tries to, you know, fight for the rights of the workers. but it is it is receiving no political traction. And that is, I think, what needs to be done.

And I think that I am cautiously optimistic that this religious secular divide is in the process of being transcended. The much more troubling thing, much bigger hurdle is the ethnic issue about which we have spoken. and that needs to be transcended and the left needs to speak out for the rights to the workers. But the problem from their point of view, the mainstream left, the Republican people's part, is that they are beholden, not only the nationalism, but they are also the party of the bourgeoisie. of the secular bourgeoisie, the middle class or the overclass. And so this is the, so in a sense, they are back in the 1960s when the CHP was a centrist party that catered to the interest of the dominant class in Turkey

and moved to the left for tactical reasons. But today, there are no tactical reasons that impel them, that compel them to move to the left. Because the labor movement is, yeah, it is there, but it is really such a small force, powerless compared to what it was in the 1960s. So what I am thinking is that what would it take for the labor movement to grow stronger in Turkey? What would it take a deeper economic crisis, deepening social crisis and the shadow of the pandemic? maybe could possibly change the equation. And also, another thing that is lacking is a leader.

I talk about it in the book. We need organization from below labor movements, social movements, but we also need a leadership, which edge of it provided in the 1960s, a very clear example of the importance of a leader. And the Turkish left does have that leader today. Unfortunately, he is imprisoned, and there seems to be no prospect that he will be released in the near future,

Salatin de Mertas, which is a charismatic person, has an ability, Salate de Mertas, to transcend both the ethnic divide. He was able to reach out as a presidential candidate back in 2014, also to the Turkish voters. And he is also good at reaching out to religious conservatives. Remember, the Kurdish population is an interesting case study, actually. The Kurds in Turkey, as you remarked earlier, had traditionally voted for the conservative parties

because they are in their majority of religious conservatives' rural population. But since 2015, the majority of the Kurds have been supporting the HDP, which is a secular left-wing party. Now, in the election 2015, seven out of ten Kurds voted for the HDP. That was a break in history, a historical break. Until then, the majority of the Kurds have always voted for the conservative parties. So that is a result of, that showed that Demirtas and the others in the HDP had succeeded

in kind of transcending this secular religious divide within the Kurdish community. And what needs to be done is, of course, to transcend. this ethnic divide and bring the Turkish and the Kurdish lefts together and for that to happen the two main parties, the CHP on the Turkish side and

the HDP on the Kurdish side so I need to do their homework as I see it. The HDP must in a way try to convince the broader Turkish population that they are not a strictly ethnic party but they are a progressive party that, you know, transcend

ethnic divisions, and the CHP must embrace the Kurds and speak up against the authoritarian right-wing regime and his persecution and his oppression of the Kurds. And in order to do that, the CHP, I'm returning to that, my mantra here, has to break with this Kemalist nationalist legacy of nationalism. So that is, it takes two for a tangle. Both the Turkish mainstream left and the Kurdish left have homework to do in order to create this synergy between them. But that progressive coalition would truly alter Turkey's course. And I want to be optimistic.

I want to be optimistic. And the, unfortunately, Most of the signs show that Turkey is becoming, you know, the right-wing national and it's becoming more entrenched among the population. But I still think that the synergy that would be created by CHP and HDP, and together with the labor movement, would potentially alter Turkey's course. And I certainly think that I certainly would like to encourage both the Turkish left and the Kurdish left to do whatever is in their power to bring about this this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, uh, which I think is holds the keys of Turkish, Turkish future. There's so, there's so much left to say. This is an excellent conversation where, but we're just about out of time.

but we got one time for one question left and brett uh i'll let you have the last question for hello before we we thank him for coming on the show yeah absolutely you've been uh incredibly generous with your time so thank you so much as one final question just to sort of you know zoom out and put a bow on this conversation what can the left outside of turkey and around the world learn from this history in your opinion yeah that was actually one reason why i wrote the book It was actually a little bit of an intervention in this international debate, international struggle, if you want, against the rise of the authoritarian right. Because we can be very happy today that the main representative of that right has lost, even though he has gained more votes than before. Yes, I think that the left can certainly learn from the Turkish example that it has to do two things.

It has to fight for social justice. It has to make sure that, you know, those in society, the masses who feel that they are left behind and everyone else rushes ahead, the elites, their feeling they have to be taken into consideration. They cannot be, this feeling of being left behind, this cannot be neglected anymore. Okay, that's one thing. And in a sense, the left needs to return to those policies that were abandoned. at the end of the 1970s, go back to things that were normal before the advent of neoliberalism,

kind of resurrect the New Deal, that era, the classical era of social democracy and democratic left in the U.S. and the Western world in general. So go back to promoting social justice. And second, the left and progressive, The Turkish example, again, shows that the condescending attitude to the culture of the broad masses, calling them racist or calling them backward because they are religious or because they have national feelings, ethnic feelings, that is certainly not the way you should be doing it,

because that hands them over to the right, to the authoritarian right that claims that we are on the side of the people, we are defending the culture and traditions of the people. But the left should, the Turkish example clearly shows that that is something that it cripples the left. The condescending attitude toward people, the broad masses, the kind of progressive elite condescension is something that would disables the left. And I don't think that we need to look at the Turkish example anymore because all other examples, the American example, most vividly, should have shown that by now, that unless the left fights for social justice and promotes equality, abandons the condescending attitude toward, you know, the so-called, you know, people say, calling, saying that they belong in a basket of deplorables, for instance.

And, yeah, then you will, then, then you ensure that they will be, you know, pick, you know, they, you know, they, they fall into the arms of the next authoritarian right-wing leader who claims that he is on the side of the people. So the Turkish example is a cautionary tale that shows exactly what the left should not be doing and also clearly shows that as was a case in the 1970s when Turkey did have a left-wing leader who fought for social justice and who was not condescending, who said, you know, who embraced the culture of the people, he was rewarded.

It is as simple as that. And of course, he was crushed by the onslaught on the right. But I think that ultimately that lesson is something that inspires hope. It shows that there is actually, we are not. in any way condemned to the neoliberal authoritarianism in any way. It is just returning to the classical, traditional, old-fashioned progressive formula from the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and I'm sure, and that will ensure that the left blocks the authoritarian right.

And I think that, in a sense, of course, even though the Turkish example shows that nationalism and religious conservatism can be, constitute huge obstacles for the left, there are also ways to overhaul. come them to transcend them. I hope that satisfies. That was a really, really fantastic discussion. I know I speak on behalf of Breton Adnan as well as myself when I say that we really enjoyed having you on and really explaining to us the through line of Turkish authoritarianism and some

of the history that isn't typically covered in our Western media, at least, if not even more broadly. So thank you so much for coming on the show, Halil. Once again, listeners, we were speaking with Halil Caravelli's senior fellow with the Turkey Center of the Central Asia Caucusis Institute and Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center and the editor of the publication, the Turkey analyst. He also was the author of the book, which we were discussing for the show, Why Turkey is authoritarian from Ataturk to Erdogan, which is out from Pluto books. And I highly recommend everybody pick up that book you're going to learn a lot from it so uh thanks a lot hello how can our listeners uh keep track of the work that you're doing and uh kind of follow what you're up to

occasionally i write i'm the editor of the turkey analyst as you pointed out and i mostly edit other people's articles but i also write occasionally myself there so i think that checking out the turkey analyst is a good way uh to keeping track of what i'm writing now also i don't write in other places but turkey analyst is a good place to start you know we we often have you know links to other published articles there as well so i think that i would recommend the turkey to follow them to follow the turkey analyst and i would also like to thank you very much for inviting me i very much enjoyed this talk and it was great talking to all of you and to hearing your comments and questions it was really rewarding for me thank you very much

excellent and i'll link to the turkey analyst in the show notes for the show so uh thanks again, Hello, and listeners, we'll be right back with our brief wrap-up discussion. So we're back on guerrilla history. We just finished our conversation with Halil Karavelli, author of Why Turkey is Authoritarian, from Ataturk to Erdogan, from Pluto books. And it was a really fascinating discussion. And even after, reading the book, the conversation itself still taught me a lot more beyond what I already knew. And I feel like that was probably something that we all shared in common. But let's give our thoughts on the interview that we just had with Hilo, before we talk about the book a little

bit more to wrap up the conversation. Brett, what were your feelings on that, on that interview? I mean, I love the interview. Like you said, I learned so much. You know, reading the book, but then hearing him speak concisely and eloquently and in depth about it also helps drive home those facts and and helps you get a good perspective on it. I really like, you know, things that I just think worth are reiterating as we close here is the part that the U.S. took in the reactionary crackdown against the social democratic and left wing. And as Halil said, moderate social democracy.

And in that context, it wasn't acceptable to the U.S. or to the Turkish far right, institutional forces as well as non-state fascist actors. And that's a reoccurring theme throughout history, right? I think many of our episodes are going to come back to just how central of a role U.S. imperialism plays in the fates of so many of these societies and how that legacy lives on decades and decades, even after that formal imperial attack has been backed off of. So that's something that is worth keeping in mind. And then just the idea of how the left alienates itself from certain elements of the working class and the lessons that we can pull from it. I think it's a particularly relevant thing. What we've seen lately is in the last several decades with the neoliberal period is this Democratic Party elitism, this snobbishness, this sort of upper middle class, professional class perspective that is taken as the default of the Democratic Party.

And we see when that happens, even in center-left formations that we disagree with, when they take that perspective, it opens up the door for the far right and the populist and the fascists to take advantage of that. And so we really have to get away from that. And one of the central contradictions of the Democratic Party for any of our listeners who might still have illusions of using the Democratic Party as a mechanism for more freedom and liberation is precisely this big tent approach where you're supposed to be put in the same tent with multimillionaires, business CEOs, and people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer who live just lives of extreme luxury and comfort. And that's supposed to be the vehicle through which we pursue working class or liberatory politics. It has to be a dead end. There has to be some sort of fracturing on that front from the progressive left to that moderate, centrist, corporatist left. And that's how it manifests here in the U.S., but it was fascinating to see how it manifests in Turkey and then thinking about how it manifests in unique ways all around the world.

So those are some things that I pulled out that I wanted to really highlight at the end of the episode. And Adnan, what did you think about the conversation with Hello? Well, I thought that he did an excellent job of bringing to bear the key points from the book and expanding on them in our conversation. And I can't really add much to Brett's points of what he highlighted. I think those are the really key points that Halil made in our conversation and that echo the book. But I think what listeners and hopefully readers, because I do encourage you to get the book, it's very well written and very clear, might be surprised by is how much Turkey's history really serves to give us a sense of the incubation of certain processes that happened in

Turkey in the 50s, 60s, and 70s that are actually very similar to what we're experiencing now in our current situation, that in some cases, because of the particular trajectory of Turkey, we have lessons that we can learn about our contemporary U.S. struggles. And I think that's quite fascinating, actually. We tend to think that Turkey is some very different, exotic, different society. And when you talk with somebody like Halil who uses class analysis to really understand the dynamics of that history, you have a legible story that makes sense outside of just. just the specifics of that context that may seem so foreign or so different, and you can

really appreciate the way in which, you know, the struggle for justice, it may take very different particular forms, but the dynamics of these kinds of struggles between those who wield power, you know, are capitalist classes, and the workers and the people, and the way in which class consciousness gets derailed, you know, these are important. lessons that I think we can understand today as relevant to our own situation and struggle. Yeah, I agree entirely with what both of you are saying. And the point that I want to draw out, it basically follows up on what both of you were saying. But from the conversation with Halil, and this is really hearkening to what Brett said, is that we have kind of this dichotomy

where on one hand, and this is relating to U.S. politics as well as Turkish politics, On one hand, the center-left, you know, to social democratic party presents itself as a big tent party. But inherently, the leadership of that party, if you look at it, it's a bourgeois party. But they present themselves as a big tent party. You know, working class people, you're invited into here, this, that, you're invited into here. But at the same time, that same big tent party apparatus alienates themselves from large sections of the working class based on some other division beyond class. whether that's religion. In the case of Turkey,

Alila was talking about how the social democratic party, the People's Republican Party in Turkey, basically saw religion as a form of the opposite of enlightenment, unenlightenment, if you want to think of it that way, and that being secular was an embodiment of being enlightened,

and thereby they alienated themselves from a large swath of the population who are very devout in their religion and were therefore being told that they weren't enlightened individuals. But at the same time, they are portraying themselves as the party of the working class. And I think that we have that same kind of division in the U.S. if we look at the Democratic Party. And this is, again, what both of you were saying, the class analysis that Addan was talking about. and then the big tent approach of the Democratic Party in the United States, they try to be all things for all people,

but inherently there's still a bourgeois party. And yet, despite being a big tent bourgeois party, they alienate large swaths of people by saying, ah, yeah, they're religious, they're going to vote for the Republicans because they're religious extremists. They're uneducated. They're a basket of deplorables was the example that Haleel used when he was talking about U.S. politics.

That was a great example. When you alienate people while portraying yourself as a big tent party, but you're still a bourgeois party, you're not really appealing to anyone in the working class because they see that they're locked out from the party structure and large swaths of them are being alienated by the party itself. But that was just kind of the threat I wanted to draw out from the conversation. But before we do the final wrap up and have you guys tell the listeners how to follow you. on social media. Just any final thoughts on the book and encouragement for the listeners to read the book? Well, I think definitely as somebody

who's familiar with scholarship on the Middle East, I was impressed with how cogent and clear his analysis was. And people may not be familiar with all of the details and the context, but he's very good at explaining a lot of history and complex dynamics in a really effective, clear way. And I think it's because he has such a handle on and a really clear thesis that the difference between the so-called secularists on the one hand and the Islamists on the other is really not the fundamental division in society, but rather it is a phenomenon that is an expression of, you know, intra-class cultural conflict rather than based in any material.

material reality. And I think when you have that realization, a lot of other things can be clarified. And so I really encourage people to read this not only to understand more about Turkey and the problem of authoritarianism is not easily resolvable by waging the battle between the secularists and the Islamists. What he tries to show is essentially that there's a continuity because there's a more fundamental capture of the state by these bourgeois and interests, and that without resolving that, there's no way to reverse it. And you will have Islamist authoritarians, just as you'll have secularist military-based authoritarians. So I think people will learn a lot not only about Turkey specifically, but about how to analyze political

disputes and within a society and a state from a class basis and how much that can clarify some of the apparent contradictions or mysteries. Some of the mysteries get unraveled quickly when you have that kind of an insight. Yeah, and just to end it, I agree with all of that. It's wonderful. It's also really wonderful to have anon here to help us through some of this stuff, to give us that preliminary history, et cetera. It really made this entire episode, I think, much more accessible to the average listener.

And then I would just say to the left before we wrap up here is engaging with this history is important for a number of reasons. One of the reasons, though, I think, is that, it's a sort of inoculation against forms of orientalism, which still exist on the left. When you're ignorant about these histories, you fall in to these hyper oversimplifications, and you see these people often as one-dimensional. Of course, we see it on the left with how, like, North Koreans are viewed and talked about how Chinese people are talked about and conceived all along the political spectrum.

But just engaging with the richness and the complexity of this history can act as a bulwark against some of those instincts within an American, which again, given our lack of really good global understanding and our lack of really good education on these fronts is something that's very easy for people to fall into. So I just wanted to highlight that as well. Yeah. And then the last thing that I'll say before I have each of you tell the listeners how to follow you is that I really am encouraging the listeners to buy the book, why Turkey is authoritarian from Ata Turk to Erdogan. Not only is the book, a great book that was very clear, as both of my co-hosts have said, it taught me a lot. And this is coming as someone who had, you know,

a rudimentary basis for knowledge on Turkish history and Turkish politics, but certainly not anything, you know, to really brag about. But it taught me a lot. And finally, the book is from Pluto Press. And these independent radical publishers, especially during the pandemic, are really needing our support to keep going and publishing this kind of work that you're not going to really see anywhere else. So same thing with our previous episode with Vijay Prashad by Washington Bullets. His book is available for, I think it was the equivalent of $2.75 for the e-book. You can get it in print from monthly review press. This book from Pluto, also available for a very, very reasonable fee and you're going to learn so much from that.

So really, I am encouraging you to buy the book that we discussed today and read it and then perhaps come back to this episode again to really engage even deeper with the material that was discussed. So that's my pitch for you is to please support our independent radical publishers as well as people who are doing the work like Khalil to bring this history to us in an accessible way. But thanks guys for coming and joining, as always, with these episodes. It's a lot of fun working with you, putting these together and doing the interviews with you. Brett, how can our listeners follow you? Yeah, I agree with that. I love working with you guys. This is really turning into a wonderful project, and it helps inform my other

projects. Crucially, I took something away from our Washington Bullets episode, and I even applied it like what vj said about fidel castro's education speeches you know i take i picked it up and i run with it and i mentioned it in the next rev left episode and with this turkish history i'll continue to do that so i'm really thankful for that and for both of you but yeah if you want to find anything i do just go to revolutionary left radio dot com and that will you'll find all of our stuff and then we also worked with a co-op out of out of europe um making making merch for the show so two dollars for every shirt you get at goods for the people dot com goes to support the show and then you can rep this really cool design that I helped design with the co-op over there. So definitely check that

out if you haven't as well. Adnan, how can our listeners follow you? Well, you can find me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain, 1-S-A-I-N. But I also want to pitch if you're interested in Middle East and Islamic World, if this wet your appetite, you want to learn more about the Middle East, for example, then I encourage you to subscribe and listen to another podcast I'm in involved was called the Mudgellis. That's M-A-J-L-I-S. And you can find it at anchor.fm slash MSG-P-Dash-Q-P-K-K-E-S. And it's the podcast of the Muslim Society's Global Perspectives Project at Queens University. I encourage you to listen to that. We will be having episodes once a month, basically, on major books and subjects related to the Middle Eastern Islamic world.

Yeah, and that podcast is available. on basically every platform that you can possibly imagine. And it's definitely worth the list. And I've listened to all of their episodes. And it's great, Adnan. You're doing a great job there with the Mudgellus podcast. For me, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995, H-U-C-K-1995. I also have a Patreon account to help support myself through the pandemic,

where I break down science and public health research, as well as current events in those fields. That's patreon.com for research. slash Huck 1995. And our show, Gorilla History, you can follow it on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A underscore pod. And find us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Take care, everyone.

Solidarity. I hope that you enjoyed this conversation and we'll be back relatively soon with another episode of Gorilla History. You know, I'm going to be able to do. Thank you.