Another major party is the People’s Democratic Party (HDP). Its support base has been largely Kurdish. In the early years of Erdoğan’s rule, the HDP supported his government. Now, the party is supporting Kılıçdaroğlu. 

The first round of the presidential election will be held on May 14. According to recent polls, Kılıçdaroğlu is currently ahead of Erdoğan. Opposition party leaders are confident that they will win with Kılıçdaroğlu as their candidate. This victory is unlikely to be because of the opposition’s policies, discourse or promises. The opposition is likely to win because the economy is in a tailspin and the Erdoğan government has botched earthquake relief efforts. 

A Country in Peril

The Turkish economy has declined rapidly, especially in the last two years. One of the most important indicators of this economic regression is the depreciation of the Turkish Lira (TL). According to the central bank data from March 2021, 1 US Dollar equaled 7.5 TL, and 1 Euro was worth 8.95 TL. Today, those ratios have changed dramatically, with 1 US Dollar now worth 18.8 TL, and 1 Euro fetching 20.35 TL. The collapse of the Turkish currency has led to rampant inflation and massive difficulties for most people.

According to TURKSTAT, the official statistical institution, the annual inflation rate in 2022 was 64%. However, according to ENAG, an independent statistical institution, inflation was 112% in 2022. Besides, in the latest Food Safety report of the World Bank, Turkey had the fifth highest food inflation in the world.

Inflation has affected every area of the economy from the automotive to the real estate sector. One of the most concerning areas affected is the housing market, as hundreds of thousands of houses have been built in the last two decades. Despite the increase in housing supply, prices have increased dramatically in the last two years. In some places, housing prices have tripled. In other places, housing prices have increased eightfold. As a result, it has become exponentially more difficult for young people to buy a home.

Erdoğan’s government has been hit hard by two major earthquakes that took place in Southeastern Turkey on February 6, 2023. The first earthquake had a magnitude of 7.8, and the aftershock that accompanied it approximately 10 hours later had a magnitude of 7.5. Erdoğan lost a great deal of votes during these earthquakes. More than 47,000 people died, over 160,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed and cities turned into heaps of rubble.

The late arrival of rescue and aid activities resulted in even more deaths. A humanitarian organization called the Red Crescent (known in Turkey as Kizilay) was the subject of widespread outrage when it sold 2,050 tents to another charity organization for a 46 million TL profit. Critics condemned Kizilay for not providing the tents to the thousands of displaced Turkish citizens in need of shelter free of charge.

Erdoğan is on the ropes. Yet it is important to remember that he has more than 20 years of political experience. Erdoğan has won every election he has entered for the past few years. He is a savvy political operative and could still win the forthcoming election as well.

Since first coming to power in 2003, Erdoğan has built up a formidable political base. He has millions of loyal supporters, who blindly support him. They are primarily middle-aged, religious, conservative and nationalist voters who see Erdoğan as the leader who gave them a voice. Erdoğan also has a huge media presence. He uses news outlets to disseminate propaganda. If Erdogan makes a speech anywhere, almost all news outlets scramble to broadcast it live. 

Erdoğan’s control over the media is not total though. There are still multiple opposition outlets. They regularly call for the end of the Erdoğan era. Yet that end is not guaranteed. The opposition has been accused of complacency and many of its supporters are getting nervous. Kılıçdaroğlu is currently ahead in the polls. However, any assumption that the election is already in the bag could be a historical mistake. 

A Turning Point for Turkey

Erdoğan has historically benefitted from the fragmentation of the opposition parties. This time, however, the opposition has found a way to unite, despite differing identities and ideologies. 

Many of the opposition parties were founded by former ministers and prime ministers who once served in Erdoğan’s administration. For example, the DEVA Party was founded by Ali Babacan, who served as Turkey’s economy minister for 13 years. Part of Babacan’s tenure was under Erdoğan’s premiership.  If Babacan wins the election, many believe he will be able to reform the Turkish economy and revive Turkey’s lost democratic ideals. 

Another former ally turned opposition leader is Ahmet Davutoğlu. Davutoğlu served as Erdoğan’s prime minister, before stepping down from the position in 2016. Davutoğlu opposed Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian policies and went on to found the Gelecek Party, which is also known as the Future Party. Davutoğlu’s party has also joined the opposition coalition.. Many predict that the coalition of these parties will win over a significant number of voters who previously supported Erdoğan.

However, nothing is certain yet. Erdoğan could still win. If he does despite such unfavorable circumstances, the united opposition parties will have failed miserably. If Erdoğan loses, the election will prove historic. It will mark a watershed where a fragmented opposition united to unseat an authoritarian president.

Turkey will experience an intense election campaign in the coming weeks. The election has the potential to radically change Turkey’s political system. The opposition has promised to replace the current presidential form of government and return to the parliamentary one that  Erdoğan dismantled. If Erdoğan is reelected, his strong one-man regime will persist and weaken Turkish democracy further. Needless to say, his election is a major crossroads for the country, and will directly shape Turkey’s political, economic and social future.
[Hannah Gage edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What You Need To Know About Turkey’s Upcoming Election appeared first on Fair Observer.

Around the World, Femicide Is on the Rise

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It is astonishing that every day that goes by, women are killed the world over in the ordinariness of daily life — not in times of war, internal conflicts or gang violence, but by the people closest to them. These women are not mere statistical data: When you know their names, once you have seen their photographs, watched their videos or read their stories, the individual tragedies become haunting nightmares.

Drivers of Violence

To put matters in context, it is important to point out that violence is widespread around the world, especially in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. For example, in Mexico, with a population of 130 million, 3,752 women were killed in 2018 compared to 32,765 men. There is a similar picture in Brazil, with a population of 210 million. A total of 41,634 murders were committed in 2019, of which 1,314 were women and nearly 40,000 were men. In South Africa, with a population of 60 million, another country where violence is common, 20,336 murders were committed in 2017; of these, 2,930 of the victims were women and 16,421 were adult males.

It should be noted that the countries with the highest total number of murders are also the ones with the highest rates of income inequality in the world. According to the Gini coefficient that measures income inequality, South Africa is in first place, with a score of 63.1, while Brazil is at high at the top with 54.7 and Mexico with 47.2. These can well be understood as meaningless, technical statistics. However, they describe the current social inequalities that translate into unemployment, poverty, hunger, homelessness — drivers of crime and, inevitably, of violence.

Due to social inequality, almost all buildings in rich districts in Brazil are fenced up and equipped with cameras. Because of this distorted social structure, the number of private security guards employed in the wealthy districts of South Africa far exceeds the number of police in the country. Again, due to social inequality, the drug trade has been one of Mexico’s main problems for decades and is one of the main causes of violence.

Violence is an inequality-driven social problem and must inevitably be addressed together with other social phenomena. However, the experiences of women who continue to be killed every day should be described as a distinct social problem that requires a unique approach and understanding. First, femicide is global in scale. Some countries see lower rates of femicide, others higher, but, ultimately, it happens in every country in the world. The main factor that distinguishes femicide from other types of murders is that it is the murder of women by their husbands, ex-boyfriends, fiancées, lovers — those with whom they shared their lives together and even had children.

According to UN statistics, women are killed mostly because they wanted a divorce or to break up the relationship, or because they did not accept the man’s proposal. Even if they manage to get a divorce, their lives are often taken by the ex-husbands. If a woman is married, she shares the same house with the murderer. If she wants to escape, she is obliged to find another place to shelter. If she lives separately, she has interactions with the father of the children. If there are no children, her home or workplace addresses are known to the potential perpetrator.

I Love You to Death

All this makes women easy targets. The limited number of measures that women can take to protect themselves, such as taking shelter with relatives or getting a restraining order, don’t always work. Women can be stabbed or shot on the street, in front of their homes or offices, in cafes, in broad daylight. Headlines such as “He Killed His Wife After Meeting Her to Make Peace” that frequently appear in the back pages of local newspapers reflect how easily women are killed like sacrificial sheep.

This precarious situation women find themselves in is related to their status in the patriarchal structure and the cultural values of the societies ​​in which they live. Factors such as women’s education, participation in the labor force, participation in the public sphere and in politics determine their levels of safety. Some cultures ​​allow the man to see his wife as a piece of property rather than as an individual with whom he has a marriage contract. Such values ​​imply that the woman’s desire to end the relationship or divorce constitutes a sufficient reason for her death or that the man has the right to kill the woman because she does not return his “love.”

These values ​​are rooted in tradition and history and are often reproduced in everyday life. Pop music provides a perfect example. Lyrics like “You are either mine or nobody’s,” “I love you to death,” “I will sacrifice myself for you,” “I will die but I will not leave you, my dear” settle into the collective consciousness of a society and gain legitimacy in a latent way. Such nuances point to the motives behind the human actions expressed by Wilhelm Dilthey and are critical for understanding social actions.

This patriarchal social structure, which allows men to have power over women, also oppresses the man. It expects him to behave like a “real man,” demands of him to “avenge his honor” and stigmatizes him for not being able to “control his woman.” This structural pressure, either directly or indirectly, pushes men toward violence.

Looking at Turkey

However, femicide cannot be blamed on the patriarchal social structure alone. There is a need to analyze the social change in society on the basis of gender. In other words, it is necessary to look at the changing status and roles of men and women over time.

Turkey provides a good case study. Over the past three decades, the status of Turkish women has changed significantly. First of all, due to the urbanization of the country that exceeds 90%, social pressure on women has decreased. Of course, this does not mean that Turkish women are completely emancipated. However, the communal social structures specific to the countryside have been broken as a result of migration to the cities, and this has provided women with a limited amount of ​​freedom. Part of it is the increase in the schooling rate. Non-governmental organizations established in the 1990s that fight against violations of women’s rights have also played a role.

Perhaps the most emblematic development in relation to the changing status of women in Turkey is the 2011 Istanbul Convention. It is the most current internationally recognized legal text for combating discrimination against women and granting protection from violence. Turkey was the first to ratify the convention, which has since been signed by 45 countries and the European Union.

On the other hand, the disadvantaged situation of women in society still continues. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Gender Gap Report, Turkey ranks 130 among 153 countries. (This index should not be used as a sole indicator of the social status of women. For example, Mexico, one of the countries with the highest femicide rate and where female labor force participation is 47%, is ranked 25, while Japan, where female labor force participation reaches 70%, is 121.) Again, women are far behind men in terms of participation in the labor force. According to TURKSTAT data, the female labor force participation rate in Turkey was 29.4% as of 2019. In addition, women’s participation and representation in politics are low. As of 2019, the rate of female deputies remained at 17.3%.

Due to these and other factors, the status of women in Turkey is still fraught with disadvantages. It is such disadvantages that make women vulnerable to violence. This summer, the country was rocked by protests following a brutal murder of a 27-year-old student by an ex-boyfriend, just one of the hundreds of others; in 2019, at least 474 were killed, a grim record of the decade. But, ultimately, a woman in Turkey today is not a woman of 30 years ago. Social change, in which globalization, urbanization, communication technologies, women’s social movements and many other factors can be included, has also changed the status of women. This situation, of course, brought about a psychological transformation. For example, the weakening of social pressures allows women to develop a new awareness about divorce. The idea that being divorced is not shameful for a woman constitutes one of these mental shifts. This change in perceptions has led more women to seek divorces, and more women found the strength to say no to the violence they experienced.

All this means that Turkish women are challenging the established structures more often. This situation, of course, has taken shape as an attitude that challenges the traditional status of men as holders of power. From this point of view, the increasing number of murders of women committed by an intimate partner — up nearly six times since 2008 — can be explained, in part, by the conflict between this changing status and mentality of women and men. Amendments to criminal law that increase penalties for violence against women even if applied without compromise will alone not solve the problem.

Prevention of femicide, the scope of which exceeds this article, can be achieved with long-term and multidimensional reforms, programs and projects. We can start by developing an approach based on understanding this problem in its sociological, anthropological and psychological dimensions. Ultimately, we need to understand both men and women, and what drives the dynamics of the relationships between them.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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In thinking about the rise of populism against centrist politics today, it is interesting to remind ourselves that similar divisions occurred in Ancient Greek philosophy. Aristotle, who lived in the 3^rd century BC, and his mentors Socrates and Plato were questioning the concept of existence in different aspects on the base of logic. On the other hand, sophists would praise the relativity of knowledge, putting man’s perceptions at the center.

According to the sophists, it was not facts or observed phenomena that constituted reality, but rather what an individual perceives, thus making it essentiality all about rhetoric. As great demagogues, sophists would make their living by selling the art of demagogy to the people of Ancient Greece.

This time around, populist politics, whose actors favor demagogy to target the masses with their convincing rhetoric, focus on what people want to hear rather than the facts. Modern-day populists are employing so-called post-truth politics as their method of choice to derail centrist approaches shaped by facts and logic.

Aristotle described man as a “political animal” — zoon politicon — referring to communitarian life and its inevitable result as a development of politics. Living in a collective also developed along with the distinction between “us and them.” This distinction has become a fundamental issue that gives a sense of solidarity, belonging and, ultimately, identity to a society. Each identity has developed at the same time or beyond other identities. The foreigner, the unknown and often the potential enemy is positioned as one of the main factors that represent the “other” in this sense. Communities have maintained their existence by establishing a social structure based on solidarity against those who are “the others.”

Beyond Nationalism

German philosopher Ferdinand Tönnies, who describes this social structure as Gemeinschaft (community), claims that it has disintegrated as a result of the Industrial Revolution and capitalism. A new social structure then developed in the modern age, which he describes as Gesellchaft (society), on the basis of individualization in European societies.

Emile Durkheim, who conceptualized this distinction as mechanical and organic solidarity, emphasizes that collective consciousness is very strong in the former, while in the latter individual consciousness is more developed. This new social structure, fed by migrations from rural to urban areas, refers to a modern stage where diverse cultures and identities share a common ground, and thus the division of “us and them” begins to fade. This means that cosmopolitan thought and social structure, which are important features of modern societies, are widespread in the Western.

Nationalism, which developed in Europe during the early modern period and laid the foundations for the nation-state, designates a process of reconstruction of the “us and them” distinction around mass populations. Nations appear, on a very large scale, as constructions around the concept of “us.” This process, in which centrist and homogenizing policies dominated at first, has followed a process of multiculturalism that advocated pluralism and diversity since the 1960s, followed by a process of globalization, which became evident in the 1980s and, finally, the development of liberal democracy at the end of the Cold War in 1989.

Such developments created optimism in the development of a civilization of mankind, but caused great disappointment soon after. One can put forward many reasons for this. However, the most prominent phenomena among them are ethnic awakenings, micro-nationalisms in different parts of the world, the emergence of new ethnic minorities as the result of global migration and, consequently, a rise of xenophobia and racism.

This new situation, where cultures are getting politicized and identity politics dominate the political sphere, makes us consider the ongoing process as the rebirth of the Gemeinschaft. According to Ulrich Beck, “today’s great problem is the jarring contradiction between our already-close-to-cosmopolitan plight and the virtual absence of a cosmopolitan awareness, mindset or attitude.”

French sociologist Alain Touraine expresses his frustration about this new situation in such words: “We were convinced that we have been transitioned from the Gemeinschaft to Gesellchaft; that is, instead of whom we are to what are we doing. However, we have acted in the opposite direction, and from every possible point of view, from the most negative aspect to the most disgusting point, the communitarian spirit emerges everywhere.” The communitarian soul was, in fact, always present. Experiencing the Gesellchaft was maybe just a historical case in certain geographies and certain periods.

The misconception of Marxist theory, which defines the class as a fundamental subject of history and ethnicity as a transitory fact, has failed, along with many ideas, with the decline of the working class, the unions and the leftist politics defending them. In their work on ethnic awakening, Stephen Castles et al., remark that ethnic mobilization is replaced by class as the result of the decline of its influence in advanced industrial societies.

The Communitarian Soul

One can claim that ethnic or national communitarianism, which expresses a social organization where emotions predominate and are fed by nationalism, is providing nations with a new communitarian soul. It can be argued that this development, which reintegrates the “us and them” distinction, involving millions of people, is different from the process of early nation building. Unlike a republican or a multicultural model, this new communitarian process does not entail integrating varied ethnic or migrant groups and, therefore, it cannot be defined as an inclusive one.

Instead, it is exclusive, which creates an isolationist solidarity based on economic concerns against migrant or refugee groups for nations who belong to a dominant culture and identity. This can be described as a new communitarian soul around “being the host.” This soul, based on the judgment that “this is my country,” identifies itself as being different from the individuals belonging to other identities, and mostly against newcomers. This new communitarian mentality has emerged, in particular in the societies of migrant states with a conservative, reactionary and exclusionary discourse.

For example, US President Donald Trump’s motto, “Make America Great Again,” the UK Independence Party’s Brexit campaign motto, “We Want Our Country Back,” as well as the Alternative for Germany slogan, “Take Your Country Back,” reveal such reactionary discourses that glorify the past when the issue of immigration was perceived as being less acute. Ultimately, we are living in a world where millions of people are not satisfied with where they live. On the one hand, everyone is trying to migrate to another place or dreams of it, or at least of being globally interconnected. On the other hand, there exists a communitarian world where no one wants a stranger to be their neighbor.

In this sense, an emphasis on identity and values ​​in order to foster a communitarian mentality is critical. Newcomers are generally accused of putting the “real” identity of the host society in danger as the result of new practices they bring, which are presumed to corrupt the values of the local society. Newcomers are described as a threat to the national culture. It can be argued that such justifications are expressed mostly by populist politicians, and judging by the success of populist parties around the world, it works.

The problem is obvious to a populist: people who have migrated to their countries en masse, who are on the news all the time, visible in almost every public space — people who are not same us, the others, foreigners.

This success of populist politics, which has reached a position that can determine the political sphere today in terms of its achievements in many countries around the world, can be sought after using the distinction of “us and them” in a predominant way. Such rhetoric can easily gain the support of the masses because it shows the voters the “exact problem” in a concrete and simple way. The problem is obvious to a populist: people who have migrated to their countries en masse, who are on the news all the time, visible in almost every public space — people who are not same us, the others, foreigners.

In a debate about what gives rise to populist politics and the xenophobia that feeds it, a global migrant population of 65 million, driven by factors such as economic insecurity, conflict and climate change, is hard to ignore. Global social inequality and poverty, due to globalization and its component neoliberalism, which created the structural changes — the marketization of social relations and daily life, the dominance of finance capitalism, the fading of the welfare state, etc. — constitute some of the main causes of mass international migration.

As a result of the structural changes that neoliberalism has created in economic and social policies beyond the production process, migration occurs in the zones where poverty is widespread and the population is increasing, moving toward the zones where economic conditions are better. We see this in those migrating from African countries to Europe despite all the risks of crossing the Mediterranean Sea, and in the thousands who formed caravans and marched from Central America to the US border.

And of course, these newcomers are the first subjects to be blamed for problems such as decreases in incomes, rise of unemployment, increase of cost of living, etc., that occur in prosperous countries due to structural changes.

Nothing New in the West

This analysis should also include the free circulation of capital and goods that make up some of the opportunities that the globalization process has created, thanks also to mass media and transportation technologies. The unrivaled superiority and economic prosperity of Western countries since the Industrial Revolution began to disappear with developmental successes in areas such as Asia and Latin America. It can be claimed that globalization, which has made the pioneer of the West and is advantageous for these societies at first, began to work against the West as a result of opportunities provided by the global economy to non-Western countries.

Policies aimed at preventing capital flight and efforts to increase border security support this claim. At this point, it can be said that terrorist attacks in the West often provide a justification for harsher border protections. These restrictions on free movement are among the main issues that populist leaders defend.

These factors can also be added to the fact that the world population is growing rapidly and that managing these vast masses of people has become very difficult. The population of over 7 billion needs to meet basic needs such as housing, education and health. Today’s world population does not have the characteristics of the mass society of the 19^th and the first half of 20^th century. But far beyond that, although today’s world benefits from more advanced technology, it still remains similar in a cultural sense. In other words, today’s global society has not overcome being a mass society — it still keeps its features, which is to say that one can hardly claim our global society has achieved ethical or cultural enlightenment.

In this sense, the criticism of the Spanish philosopher Ortega Gasset toward the early modern European society which was made up of the mass man — whom he describes as spiritually and culturally void, who doesn’t question and is one-dimensional — can be applied to the current global mass society. We have developed new technologies, and thus created a new form and complicated social structures. Gasset, in his book The Revolt of the Masses, describes the societies that are dominated by the masses as consisting of very similar people. “Ordinaryzation,” in other words homogenization, brings about one of the important characteristics of these societies. People are tactful, and sometimes intolerant of differences. Because of their lack of historical conscience and cultural depth, masses can easily drag societies into conflict.

Im Westen nichts Neues — nothing new in the West, the German title of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. This phrase resonates in my mind while reading political news, particularly concerning the West, where enlightenment has been achieved, individual freedoms secured, modernity constructed. Not much has changed since Ancient Greece: Politicians are almost the same politicians; societies are almost the same societies.

It is tragic to observe that the cultural form of societies remains almost same through the ages, with people still readily manipulated and mobilized by a hollow rhetoric. We are witnessing the rise of populist politics in different parts of the world today, from Brazil to Hungary and the Philippines, because mass societies can be easily mobilized, open to manipulation, can easily support identity politics and, eventually, can easily slide into communitarianism, which stands awkwardly in contradiction to our highly interconnected global society.

But let’s not sound too pessimistic and remember the existence of people and platforms that act for the general good, using the light of logic and common sense. The number of people who advocate for truth, peace, diversity, heterogeneity, ecology and so on may not be massive, but their voices give us hope to believe in the future despite regressions. As a matter of fact, when it comes to Greek philosophy, it is the ideas of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle’s ideas that we remember first, not of the sophists.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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