CULTURE | VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN | ADVOCACY & POLICY | EUROPE | MIDDLE EAST

In Conversation with Hannah Smith: Erdoğan the ‘Original Modern-Populist’

WORDS BY JOSHUA EDWICKER | JOSHUA@THEIWI.ORG | 18 MAY 2024

“Elections are just the tip of the iceberg, underneath all that there’s so much that you need, you need a healthy civil society, you need people who are educated enough to take the right decisions, you need a political culture which isn’t just about worshiping the strongest guy”
- Hannah Smith, author of Erdoğan Rising and Times Correspondent for Türkiye

Türkiye

Straddling the Bosphorus strait, Istanbul is a city unlike any other, its unique position between Europe to the West and the North and the Middle East to the South and the East only add to the romanticism of this eclectic and buzzing metropolis. The country of which it is the capital, Türkiye (Turkey to Western readers), the country borne from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the First World War is itself unique and fascinating.

Following the abolition of the Sultanate in late 1922, the Republic of Türkiye was declared on the 29th of October 2023, a little over one hundred years after its formulation of the country, still gripped by the hero worship of its founder Kemal Atatürk, is at the centre of world geopolitics. Not just thanks to its geographical position as the gateway between Europe and Asia, or its diverse populous, both Islamic and Western in varying measures, but as one of the earliest examples of the twenty-first century style of populism that has taken root across Europe, the Americas, and swathes of Asia.

The country’s current President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has held an iron-like grip on the nation since his initial election as Prime Minister in 2003, following a stint as Mayor of Istanbul. Initially a figure of liberalisation, seen as an advocate for moderate Islam, defending his nation from oppressive secular measures, opposing the armies prevalence for interference in politics and appearing to open up Türkiye to European Union membership, Erdoğan has increasingly become a pariah in the international community, imprisoning dissenters, undermining the rule of law, and removing the right to free-speech.

To find out more, I had the pleasure of interviewing Hannah Smith, author of Erdoğan Rising (2019) and Zarifa (2022), as well as the Times correspondent for Türkiye having previously reported from Syria and Libya during the Arab Spring uprisings. Having lived in and reported from Istanbul for over a decade, Hannah is uniquely placed to discuss this great nation and what it’s future may hold.

Breaking Down Stereotypes

“I think it’s a cop out, it’s lovely to be going into people’s house and to talk but I want to be going to the Parliaments and all the places where all the important decisions are being made”
- Hannah Smith

As a female journalist working in Türkiye and the Middle East, Hannah was very conscious of the stereotype expected from some editors of what she calls “Gloss and Landmines”. The idea that female journalists out in warzones had a certain beauty standard not only to live up to but to sell as part of their story. Unfortunately this form of patronisation still exists in journalism today. The experience of working in the Middle East was particularly dangerous for Hannah as a woman and shockingly she believes that “every single female journalist working in the Middle East has been sexually assaulted to greater or lesser degrees”. Hannah highlighted to me the stress and conscious worry that she experienced trying to not be perceived in a certain way by men in the Middle East, calling it “another job on top of her job”.

*Rena Effendi – Picture by Eman Helal (The Guardian)*

Hannah’s experiences are far from unique and photo-journalist, Rena Effendi, has recently published an eye-opening article in The Guardian detailing the abuse she suffered in Cairo. What Hannah’s and Rena’s experiences speak to is the way in which male privilege is still a fundamental corner-stone of much of the Middle East and the way in which such patriarchal societies can have such powerful psychological effects. That sense of fear and alertness to danger for women, whether in the Middle East or in the United Kingdom walking home from a night out, exposes the psychological privilege of being a man that for a large part of my life I was naïve about.

Hannah chastised the retort sometimes offered to female journalists in the Middle East that they get access to the home in a way that men do not, quite rightly pointing out that “That’s not where the stories are and it’s not where the power is”. Once again, my conversation with Hannah elucidated how power becomes situated in certain areas and contexts, with women simply being refused access to the very sites of power, such as Sharia Courts or Parliament buildings.

When Hannah was reporting in Aleppo at the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, a clear indicator of her own personal bravery and desire to be in the ‘thick of it’ that flies squarely in the face of any Victorian notions of gender stereotypes, she wrote in her book that she often fixated on her own mortality. What lessons did she learn from this truly formative experience? “It’s a cliché but seize the day” she laughs, “We all go through life thinking it won’t happen to me, and what this job has taught me, not just working in warzone but meeting people, unfortunately being a journalist, I tend to meet people at either the most interesting or distressing points of their lives and what this has taught me is that bad things happen to people from wherever and whatever background they are from”. For Hannah, her experience of reporting from Aleppo, from witnessing death and destruction, despair, and destitution, seems to have been freeing in a sense, encouraging her to live for today and embrace the present.

Türkiye & Populism

“If you look at the 2020 elections in the U.S. and what Donald Trump tried to do, he only wishes that he had been trying to do that in Türkiye because he would have just steamrolled over the courts and got what he wanted”
- Hannah Smith

In her fantastic book, which I would thoroughly recommend, Erdoğan Rising, Hannah labels Erdoğan ‘the original post-modern Populist’. In our modern world predominated by the populist movements the last decade, Brexit, the elections of Trump, Modi, and Bolsonaro amongst others, it may surprise readers to learn that Erdoğan rose to power using those very same populist tactics, straight from the populist playbook in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s before his election in 2003 as Prime Minister.

Hannah argues Türkiye, like any emerging democracy, was susceptible to the allure of populism as it came out of an era of military tutelage at a time when there was a certain naivety in the Western psyche about what democratisation meant. Following the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was a misplaced hubris and optimism surrounding the process’ of democratisation as symbolised by Francis Fukuyama’s famous ‘End of History and the Last Man’. This hubris is encapsulated by the experience of Türkiye, where simply the process of holding elections, with their high turnouts, was seen as enough to label democratisation a success.

However, despite Türkiye’s elections still receiving turnouts of around 87% in the Presidential Election of 2023, Hannah explains that “people know all the foundations underpinning those elections are rotten, things like the freedom of the courts, that’s gone in Türkiye, because it was never fully there in the first place”. This speaks to the dangers of incomplete democratisation process’ and is the price the West and many Western scholars must pay for the premature celebration of the victory of democracy in the 1990’s. Whether in Pakistan, Hungary, or Türkiye, we see such emerging democracies being undermined, exposed as being built on pillars of sand. Worryingly, other Eastern European and Balkan countries appear to be following the Erdoğan blueprint, such as Serbia and Bosnia who are currently experiencing populist challenges to their fledgling democracies.

Religion as a Tool Rather Than a Motivation

"Islamism is his (Erdoğan’s) flavour, but his brand of populism is almost identical to what Orban does and what Trump does which is this idea of us and them, there’s insiders and there’s outsiders, in order to be popular, you also have to be unpopular with people, you’ve got to create this other”
- Hannah Smith

Erdoğan’s particular brand of populism is inherently Islamic, during the late 1990’s he acted as bulwark against secular oppression, symbolising the desire within many who practised Islam in Türkiye to have their beliefs and practises respected by a State which they saw as demeaning and an army that they saw as overbearing, interfering when Islamist Parties saw electoral success. Erdoğan was himself, famously was sent to prison for four months in 1999 for reciting an Islamist poem, which became one of the key sources of his charismatic power and popularity amongst Türkiye’s Islamic population. However, despite not doubting Erdoğan’s personal piety, Hannah believes that unlike Narendra Modi’s brand of religious populism and Hindu Nationalism, explicitly motivated by the expansion of Hinduism, Erdoğan’s use of Islam has been more a mechanism for gaining and maintaining power than about changing the religious culture of Türkiye.

Erdoğan managed to successfully situate himself in opposition to the secular elites, characterising himself as the sole defender against the threat of such an elite continuing to discriminate against religious Turks. However, over Erdoğan’s now 21-year rule of the country, attendance to Mosques has remained around the same.

There are two key stages to Erdoğan’s rule of Türkiye according to Hannah, first, 2003-2010, this period was characterised by a modernisation and democratisation drive in Türkiye, attempts to join the European Union and a foreign policy which showed a desire to act as the exemplar of Moderate Islam and Western alliance to the rest of the world.

This all changed with the Arab Spring of 2010-2012, Hannah explains that Erdoğan sensed there was a ‘rising wave of Muslim grievance’ in the region and was hopeful that his Muslim Brotherhood style of Islam could continue to be in the ascendence in countries such as Egypt or Syria and that eventually Türkiye, and by extension himself, would become the most powerful player in the region. This intuition saw Erdoğan become more Islamist in his policies as he attempted to position himself as the new predominant Islamic political figure.

Interestingly, in recent local elections the AKP (Erdoğan’s party who have dominated Turkish politics for over 20 years) were surprisingly defeated by the CHP (the main opposition party) who won 14 more provinces than the previous election, whilst comparatively the AKP lost 15 seats, a staggering 29 province swing in a system which only has 81 provinces. Hannah suggests that this electoral shock may have been caused by the introduction of a new Islamist party, YRP, who appear to have split the Islamic vote away from the AKP due to criticisms of Türkiye’s trade deal with Israel interrelated to the ongoing conflict in Gaza. It appears then that Erdoğan may have been politically outflanked by a more stringently Islamist party than his own.

Türkiye Beyond Erdoğan

"When I go out to talk to people whether it’s about the local elections or whether it’s about the parliamentary elections, whenever I spoke to AKP supporters, they would never say I’m voting for Davutoğlu (Turkish PM 2014-16) or whoever’s standing in their municipality, they would always say I’m voting for Erdoğan, so I don’t really see how the party can survive beyond him”
- Hannah Smith

All dynasties run their course and all careers must come to an end, some hold onto power until death, others decide their race has been run. It appears that Erdoğan has chosen to do the later suggesting he will retire in 2028 when the next Presidential elections occur, at the time of the next elections he will be 74, too old perhaps to be Türkiye’s President and yet too young to be America’s. How does one retire after 21 years at the helm? Marred with the creation of plenty of political rivals, as receptive to adoration as hate, Erdoğan faces a tough set of decisions, how to organise his succession. Hannah herself has written a fantastic article on this topic for Engelsberg Ideas.

For Hannah, Erdoğan is most likely to try and pick a successor and leave office come 2028, the two main names in the running are Selcuk Bayraktar, Erdoğan’s 44-year-old son-in-law and businessman, and current Foreign Minister and spy-chief Hakan Fidan. However, it appears clear that for whomever comes to power after Erdoğan they will struggle to match the man’s charisma and recreate the personality cult carefully cultivated over almost three decades. Like all leaders, timing is everything and context is king, whilst Erdoğan was able to harness the dormant energy of his nation at just the right time, his successor will be inheriting a Türkiye which is economically stunted, suffering from brain-drain and whose international reputation has been derailed by Erdoğan’s proclivity for throwing journalists in jail who dissent against his regime.

This is a poisoned chalice from which Erdoğan’s successor must sip. On the one hand they are unlikely to possess the same personal gravitas to justify the oppressive behaviours, but on the other, if you loosen your grip on the institutions which enable your empowerment you risk losing power altogether. Erdoğan by strengthening his own hand by removing dissenters from his party has fundamentally hamstrung any successor by creating a party filled to the brim with ‘yes men’ defined more by their loyalty than their competence.

However, Türkiye is a member of both the G20 and of NATO, and as the gateway between Europe and the Islamic world carries an enormous amount of symbolic and strategic importance, it will be fascinating to see what happens in Türkiye post-Erdoğan, but Hannah appears confident that there will not be a similar collapse as seen in Iraq or Syria. For her there appears what she terms ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’ which has continued to motivate her to stay in the country over the last decade and beyond. “Maybe” commented Hannah “there will be a backlash once he goes, I think there’s a backlash already”. Perhaps in 10 years’ time we will be seeing a Türkiye once again on the brink of joining the European Union, once again an economic success story, and once again positioning itself as the moderate Islamic mediator between the West and the East.

I would like to give special thanks to Hannah Smith, for the generosity of her time in taking the opportunity to speak to me.