Hosted by Faisal Al Yafai
Featuring Ece Temelkuran
Produced by Finbar Anderson
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When Ece Temelkuran published her acclaimed nonfiction book “How to Lose a Country: The Seven Steps From Democracy to Dictatorship,” she had a nagging feeling that the subtitle wasn’t strong enough. This year, she chose to republish that book, this time with the subtitle, “The Seven Steps from Democracy to Fascism.”
“I should have done it in 2019,” Temelkuran tells New Lines’ Faisal Al Yafai, “but the reaction to the word fascism was so strong from editors all over the world.”
“This is how you lose a country. It’s not because of them, it’s because of us.”
Temelkuran sees fascism gaining strength across the globe. She suggests that in many Western democracies, a certain “arrogance” and a misplaced faith in institutions causes citizens to believe they are protected from the movement. Those whose countries have already succumbed to what she perceives as fascism and those whose countries are in danger of doing so should unite, she says. “If those two come together, with experience and stamina, then we could change something.”
Temelkuran worries that supporters of the global anti-fascist movement have become politically homeless, with governments in Western democracies choosing to pursue populist policies around topics such as immigration. “Decision-makers, politicians, have to make up their mind,” she tells Al Yafai. “Are they more afraid of fascism or socialism? Because if they are really afraid of fascism, they will have to find a way to accommodate the political energy of the masses that is on the streets today, fighting for democracy, fighting against fascism.”
Al Yafai asks whether the Gaza war might be looked back on as a “watershed moment in the decline or the crisis of democracy,” much like the invasion of Iraq 20 years earlier, and Temelkuran agrees.
Recent restrictions on abortion rights in the United States, she says, are a sign of creeping fascism there. “There is a global war [on women], and this global war is part of the rising fascism. That’s why we have to interconnect all the struggles for democracy and anti-fascist struggles in general.”
Speaking on why she left her native Turkey, Temelkuran says, “You don’t leave a country because there’s fear and oppression, you leave a country because there’s not enough people supporting you. … This is why you lose a home. This is how you lose a country. It’s not because of them, it’s because of us.”