SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
recep tayyip erdogan
Video From 2040 Begs This Question of Gaza Genocide in 2024: 'What Did You Do to Stop It?'
"Yes, we watched hundreds of thousands of children being killed, maimed, and starved—and we just kept watching," one writer said in response to the powerful clip.
Oct 09, 2024
To mark this week's anniversary of Israel's yearlong assault on Gaza—which has killed, maimed, displaced, starved, and sickened millions of Palestinians with no end in sight—Palestine defenders shared a video set in the year 2040 in which children around the world ask their elders, "What were you doing during this genocide?"
The video—which is reportedly linked to the Turkish government—was reposted by prominent international figures including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, and U.S. peace activist Medea Benjamin.
The clip shows the world commemorating Gaza in ceremonies, museums, and films, with kids asking their grandparents questions like, "What were you doing during this genocide?" and "Did you just watch it?" as the elders hang their heads in shame at images of slain and suffering Palestinian children.
The video ends with a message that fades from, "The genocide committed by Israel is killing Palestinians" to, "The genocide committed by Israel is killing humanity."
Benjamin called the video "haunting." Husam Zomlot, Palestine's ambassador to the United Kingdom, hailed it as "powerful." British author Jonathan Cook lamented that "yes, we watched hundreds of thousands of children being killed, maimed, and starved—and we just kept watching."
Varoufakis posted: "'Where were you,' they will be asking us, 'when this was happening? What did you do to stop it?'"
Erdoğan included a lengthy message with the video as he shared it on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
"Israel's long-standing policy of genocide, occupation, and invasion must now come to an end," he wrote. "It should not be forgotten that Israel will sooner or later pay the price for this genocide that it has been carrying out for a year and is still continuing."
"Just as [Nazi leader Adolf] Hitler was stopped by the common alliance of humanity, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his murder network will be stopped in the same way," Erdoğan continued. "A world in which no account is held for the Gaza genocide will ever find peace."
He added that Turkey "will continue to stand against the Israeli government, no matter what the cost, and call on the world to take this honorable stance."
Turkey has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel's Gaza onslaught. The country officially supports the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. In 2024, the Turkish government halted direct trade with Israel over its invasion of Rafah, although commerce continued via third countries including Greece.
However, the Turkish government has also been criticized for not doing enough to support Palestine despite its scathing anti-Israel rhetoric. Some critics also noted the hypocrisy of Turkey vocally condemning Israel's genocide in Gaza while denying the 1915-17 Turkish genocide against Armenians in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Autocratic Rule' of Erdogan Cracks as Secular Left Wins Big in Turkey Elections
"You opened the door to the rise of democracy, equality, and freedom," Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu said following his re-election. "You ignited hope at the ballot box."
Apr 01, 2024
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party suffered its worst-ever defeat Sunday when the country's main opposition party scored major wins in municipal elections, including in all five of the nation's largest cities.
With nearly all ballots counted, candidates for the center-left Republican People's Party (CHP) emerged victorious in Istanbul, the capital Ankara, İzmir, Bursa, Adana, and other cities and towns. Turkish media reported CHP victories in 36 of the country's 81 provinces. The right-wing Justice and Development Party (AKP) performed best in the largely rural Anatolian interior.
It was the first time in Erdoğan's 21 years as Turkey's increasingly autocratic president that the AKP suffered such a nationwide electoral defeat.
"My dear Istanbulites, you opened the door to a new future today," incumbent CHP Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu told jubilant supporters during his victory speech following what's likely to be a double-digit win over AKP challenger Murat Kurum. "Starting from tomorrow, Turkey will be a different Turkey. You opened the door to the rise of democracy, equality, and freedom... You ignited hope at the ballot box."
Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has dealt the biggest blow in two decades to President Erdogan’s AK Party by winning control of major cities in local elections. Ekrem Imamoglu secured a second term as Istanbul’s mayor ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/fjgsLzuEYg
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) April 1, 2024
Imamoğlu said that Sunday "marks the end of democratic erosion in Turkey and the resurgence of democracy."
"People oppressed under authoritarian regimes now turn their gaze to Istanbul," he added.
In Ankara—where an ecstatic crowd chanted "Turkey is secular and will remain secular!" and "Tayyip resign!" outside the city hall—CHP Mayor Mansur Yavaş promised his second term would be one of greater inclusion after beating his AKP rival by a stunning 25-point margin.
"Our political views may be different... But now the election is over," he told supporters. "We will... continue to serve 6 million Ankara residents without discrimination."
Erdoğan, meanwhile, acknowledged that the AKP "lost altitude" with Sunday's sweeping losses, vowing, "We will correct our mistakes and redress our shortcomings."
Imamoğlu's reelection was a personal blow to Erdoğan, an Istanbul native who launched his political career as the megacity's mayor in the 1990s. The AKP had set its sights on retaking control of Istanbul and Ankara but came up empty-handed.
Analysts said skyrocketing inflation, the collapsing value of the lira, disaffected Islamist voters, and Imamoğlu's popularity—which transcends the CHP's traditionally secular base—were major factors in Sunday's results.
So was the Gaza genocide. While Turkey is supporting the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, Erdoğan and the AKP have been accused—especially by Islamists—of paying little more than lip service to the cause of Palestinian liberation, while Imamoğlu has said that Turkey should immediately sever trade relations with Israel.
Experts said Imamoğlu's victory puts him, and the CHP, at the center of Turkish politics.
"Imamoglu demonstrated he could reach across the deep socio-political divisions that define Turkey's opposition electorate even without their institutional support," Mert Arslanalp, assistant professor of political science at Istanbul's Boğaziçi University, toldReuters. "This makes him the most politically competitive rival to Erdogan's regime."
In the predominantly Kurdish southeast, the progressive People's Equality and Democratic Party (DEM) won 10 provinces. Election-related violence erupted in parts of the region, including in the village of Ağaçlıdere in the Sur district of Diyarbakır, where DEM polling officer Emin Çelik was killed and around a dozen others were wounded. There were multiple reports of Turkish police violently dispersing Kurds celebrating election wins.
International leftists hailed the big wins by CHP and DEM candidates, with Party of European Socialists president Stefan Löfven cheering what he called "a great victory for democracy and a giant step towards a better future of the Turkish people."
"Erdoğan is losing the local elections in the entire country, leaving room for the opposition to breath and to come back victorious at the next national elections," he added. "We are looking forward to that."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Milei’s and Wilders’ Wins Suggest We Haven’t Reached Peak Right-Wing Populism
Instead of supporting candidates who promise truly transformational change, voters are backing fast-food populists who advertise options that are even unhealthier than what’s currently on offer.
Dec 03, 2023
Panic does not produce prudent politics. Panic produces provocative populists. And it reduces pundits to Seussian spluttering.
How can voters choose such… panic-peddling panderers?!
The defeats of Donald Trump in the U.S. elections in 2020 and Jair Bolsonaro in the Brazilian elections in 2022 were supposed to prove that the wave of right-wing politicians had crested worldwide. Brazilians wisely barred Bolsonaro from running again for office until 2030.
The far right sees 2024 as its greatest opportunity since the 1930s to push the needle toward fascism.
Trump, on the other hand, is on the rebound and leading the polls in the lead-up to the presidential elections in the United States next year. Even more troubling, the recent electoral victories of Javier Milei in Argentina and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands suggest that the world has not yet reached peak populism.
Brace yourself for the next potential tsunami. In 2024, elections will take place in 50 countries and engage up to 2 billion people. The Economistcalls it the “biggest election year in history.” Voters will go to the polls in the United States, Russia, Mexico, South Africa, Indonesia, and the European Union, among other countries.
The far right sees 2024 as its greatest opportunity since the 1930s to push the needle toward fascism. If the recent victories of Milei and Wilders are any indication, they ain’t just whistling Dixie.
Something Different?
When I was studying Russian in Moscow in 1985, my fellow students complained about the food. It was your basic Soviet fare of meat and potatoes. It was rather monotonous, to be frank, but it was filling and plentiful.
After the semester was over, we all took the train to Helsinki. After checking in at the hotel, I went down to the city’s famous Harbor Market to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, which had been in short supply in Moscow. I had difficulty persuading my fellow students to come with me. A large number of them couldn’t wait to have their first, post-Soviet dinner at McDonald’s. That’s right: After all those Moscow meals of meat and potatoes, they immediately went to the Golden Arches to have… meat and potatoes.
“But it’s different!” they said, salivating over a Big Mac and French fries.
Voters in democracies across the world are tired of what’s on the political menu. They’re rejecting the “same old, same old” policies of Joe Biden even though the U.S. economy, by all standard measures, is doing pretty well. They’re souring on the European Green Deal of the Socialists and Greens even though the continent is at the forefront of addressing climate change.
Instead of supporting candidates who promise truly transformational change, voters are backing fast-food populists who advertise options that are even unhealthier than what’s currently on offer.
The desire for profound change is surely understandable. The conditions that generated victories for the far right that I describe in my 2021 book Right Around the World have not changed in any substantial way. Economic globalization, after all, continues to benefit the few and burden the many. As Zia Qureshi writes at Brookings:
Over the past four decades, there has been a broad trend of rising income inequality across countries. Income inequality has risen in most advanced economies and major emerging economies, which together account for about two-thirds of the world’s population and 85% of global GDP. The increase has been particularly large in the United States, among advanced economies, and in China, India, and Russia, among major emerging economies.
Note that the far right has prospered in precisely the countries that have experienced this rising income inequality: Donald Trump in the United States, Narendra Modi in India, and Vladimir Putin in Russia, as well as Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and now Geert Wilders in the Netherlands.
Voters have been disgusted by how parties of the center-right and center-left have done little to address this inequality. And they’re worried that an influx of immigrants, the very embodiment of globalization, will only make matters worse (and there’s evidence that immigrants do indeed exert a downward pressure on wages).
This is the triple whammy that helps the far right: increased economic inequality, increased disgust with conventional parties, and increased fear of immigration. It’s also the perfect storm that has put Geert Wilders so close to becoming the next Dutch prime minister.
Have the Dutch Gone Crazy?
Geert Wilders has been a platinum-haired presence on the Dutch political scene for two decades, chiefly as a mischief-maker on the margins. But in elections this month, his party won 37 seats in parliament, the most of any party and 20 more than in the last election.
If these were ordinary times, the informal prohibition of mainstream parties in Europe against working in coalition with the far right would hold and Wilders would remain in the wilderness. The former ruling party led by outgoing prime minister Mark Rutte has indeed refused to partner with Wilders’ Party for Freedom. So, too, have the coalition of socialists and Greens led by former European Commissioner Frans Timmermans and the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy.
Only the centrist New Social Contract party and some minor parties are available for the wooing. But cobbling together a coalition out of these disparate elements will not be easy. Indeed, the first negotiator to attempt this sausage-making on behalf of Wilders resigned in the wake of charges that he engaged in bribery and fraud in his previous job as director of Utrecht Holdings.
Let’s not overstate Wilders’ surprise victory. He won less than a quarter of the votes.
The real sticking point, however, will be Wilders himself and his wilder-than-wild political proposals. Most potentially destabilizing has been his support for Nexit, a withdrawal of the Netherlands from the European Union, about which he has promised to hold a referendum. This is as impractical as it is unpopular. According to the last major poll, the leavers could count on only 25% support. Dutch voters are well aware of what a mess the U.K. stepped in after voting for Brexit. According to one estimate, leaving the E.U. has cost the U.K. $100 billion a year in lost output.
Then there’s Wilders’ enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin and his channeling of Kremlin propaganda (such as his noxious notion that Ukraine is led by “National-Socialists, Jew-haters, and other anti-democrats”). Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reduced some of his fawning, but Wilders will undoubtedly try to cut back on Dutch aid for Kyiv.
On immigration, Wilders calls for “borders closed” and “zero asylum seekers.” The first is going to be hard to push in a Europe of open (internal) borders—thus his support for Nexit—while the second would violate international law. On Islam, he wants to ban the Quran, Islamic schools, and mosques. Ever the political opportunist, however, Wilders has offered to put those bans on hold in order to achieve his cherished dream of leading the country.
Finally, on the economy, Wilders has no patience for Green policies. His party backs the traditional, meat-and-potatoes positions of more drilling for oil and gas, no solar or wind farms, and a withdrawal from the Paris accord on climate change. Add to that the restriction of government assistance to immigrants and the far right promises to take the Netherlands one giant step backward.
The Dutch live in one of the richest per-capita countries in the world. But poverty has been projected to increase substantially from 4.7% of the population in 2023 to 5.8% in 2024. “Fear of falling” can easily slip into fear of immigrants.
Then there’s the rural-urban divide that has fueled the rise of the right in so many countries: Poland A versus Poland B, red state versus blue state in America, and countryside versus prosperous cities in the Netherlands as well. The industrial-strength nostalgia that the far right sells has appeal for farmers, unskilled laborers in rural factories, and pensioners in deserted villages. The past might not have been a golden age, but many things really were better back then for folks outside the big cities.
But let’s not overstate Wilders’ surprise victory. He won less than a quarter of the votes. The party of the even crazier Thierry Baudet—yes, as in Russia, there are even worse options lurking on the margins—actually lost more than half its seats in parliament. And the toxicity of Wilders’ persona and positions may well make him coalition-proof. Dutch common sense—on display in the expression meten is weten (measuring things brings knowledge)—may prove too large an obstacle for Wilders to overcome.
Meanwhile in Argentina
Unlike the Netherlands, Argentina truly is an economic mess. Annual inflation is more than 120%. The peso has given way to the dollar as the everyday currency. The government is perpetually at risk of debt default.
Economic polarization in Argentina is severe. The richest families have concentrated the wealth of the country into their hands, and this inequality only deepened during the Covid-19 pandemic. Seven Argentinians are on the Forbes list of richest entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, more than 40% of Argentinians live in poverty.
Then along comes economist Javier Milei who promises to fix everything. As a newcomer to politics, he has no track record to criticize and can safely rail against corrupt insiders. As an economist, his off-the-wall proposals have a veneer of credibility. Anyone else who would propose to eliminate the central bank, replace the peso with the U.S. dollar, and whittle the government down to the merest nub would be dismissed as insane within the Argentine context. But the average voter can easily be fooled into thinking that this “anarcho-capitalist” must know what he’s talking about.
Whether they succeed or not, Milei’s team will push through painful reforms that will eventually get them voted out of office.
He doesn’t. Get rid of the central bank and Argentina would no longer have any control over its own economy. Even though the dollar has become the de facto currency, making it the official one would require the government to have sufficient dollars at its disposal (it doesn’t). And taking an axe to the government would effectively take an axe to the poorest of the poor, who need government assistance.
Milei is globalization on steroids. He liked to campaign with a chainsaw in hand. And now he’s on the verge of turning the Argentina Chain Saw Massacre into reality.
However, as with Wilders, Milei doesn’t really have the political support to govern as he pleases. True, he won the presidential run-off by a convincing margin of 11 percentage points. But his party won less than a quarter of the legislature, leaving it in a distinct minority. It won’t be easy for Milei to push through his most radical suggestions.
Here’s what’s more likely to happen. Milei has already sent his “shock therapy” plan to an emergency session of the Argentine Congress, which is set to convene shortly after he takes office next month. The stabilization, which consists of rather conventional fixes to reduce inflation and government spending, has already won Milei favor in international financial circles.
“Our approach is fiscal and monetary shock from day one,” says Luis Caputo, the head of Milei’s economic team and likely to be the new economy minister. “The roadmap is orthodox and without crazy things.”
Whether they succeed or not, Milei’s team will push through painful reforms that will eventually get them voted out of office, just like the political victims of “shock therapy” in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. In other words, the so-called populist will ultimately be tripped up by the very unpopularity of his economic plans. Unless, of course, he manages to fix one thing in Argentina: elections.
The Institutionalization of the Far Right
The far right is able to stay in power only when it games the system. It does so not so much by outright vote-stealing but by restructuring government in its favor. Vladimir Putin turned the chaotic and ineffectual democracy of Boris Yeltsin into a petro-oligarchy. Viktor Orbán created a powerful patronage system that privileged members of his Fidesz party. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pushed through a referendum that concentrated power in the hands of the executive. Putin has been in charge since 1999, Erdoğan since 2003, and Orbán since 2010.
That’s the model that Donald Trump wants to emulate. He didn’t want to leave office in 2020 but hadn’t prepared sufficient institutional power to launch a coup at that time. If he returns to office in 2024, he is determined to remake American politics so that his MAGA project will outlive him. To do this, he will depend on Project 2025—a plan hatched by right-wing thinktanks in Washington—to seek out and destroy opponents. He will attempt to use the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against domestic opposition. And he will not bother, in a second go-around, to appease his critics by appointing “compromise” figures in his administration. He wants nothing less than an all-out power grab.
Neither Wilders nor Milei will likely achieve such lasting influence. They will be undone by the very populist politics that have brought them to the top. Ruthless populists know that the very People that they laud are ultimately fickle; they manage to safeguard their positions from the winds of politics by cutting the People out of the loop and turning elections into farces.
That’s what separates the men from the monsters in the world of the far right. Unfortunately, on a planet in panic mode during an election year that will function as a stress test for global democracy, much damage will be done by men and monsters alike.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular