Arch of Autocracy
Eric C. AndersonI just stepped off the bus in Ankara. Imagine 90 degrees Fahrenheit and 80 percent humidity. All at 0220 in the morning. On a day in June when most Americans cannot find Turkey on a map nor answer why they should care about Recep Erdogan. Unfortunately, I suspect the same quandary has befuddled a vast majority of the Oval Office staff at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
You should be worried.
Mr. Trump, or at least his Secretary of Defense, will soon arrive at the same conclusion. Mr. Erdogan’s election is no victory for democracy, nor a reason to celebrate a revival of civil polity. There is a reason this Turkish president fails to win accolades as the next Atatürk or a breath of reason on Mr. Putin’s front door. Dictatorship, even when purchased with a satchel of ballots, is still a dictatorship.
A frightening penchant that is sweeping across Europe. And has caused significant hand-wringing here in the United States.
Consider my current reading list. (Don’t hand these tomes out to the neighborhood teenagers, they have enough to consider without this forbidding.) Atop the pile: Piers Brendon’s “The Dark Valley,” to be closely followed by Mark Mazower’s “Dark Continent,” then there is Levitsky and Ziblatt’s “How Democracies Die,” Madeleine Albright’s “Fascism: A Warning,” Johan Goldberg’s “Suicide of the West,” and, finally, Benjamin Hett’s “The Death of Democracy.”
I am intellectually prepared for the apocalypse. I doubt most Turks, Poles, Hungarians, or Italians are so forearmed. Nor, alas, is a majority of our U.S. national legislature.
Back to Mr. Erdogan. Make that President Erdogan. The cutting edge in Eastern Europe’s new arch of autocracy. While the press in Washington is harrumphing about children detained for abetting a parent’s illegal flight across our southern border, or decrying the First Lady’s poor wardrobe selections, a tenuous border separating Mr. Putin from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s dream of export-fed excess is in immediate danger of becoming wet tissue paper daubed on a broken window just before the hurricane arrives.
Mr. Erdogan, newly emboldened and considering a tenure that will rival Mr. Putin’s indefinite stay in the Kremlin, arrives on the heels of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Slovenia’s Democratic Party leader Janez Jansa. Did I forget Italy’s Giuseppe Conte? Is anyone other than Francis Fukuyama paying attention to where our beloved “liberal democracy” is headed?
Probably no. Likely too busy following the escapades of the Philippine butcher…aka President Duterte or that bastion of civility, Syrian President Bashir Assad. Or perhaps North Korea’s Kim Jung-un. Egypt’s Mr. el-Sisi? All is well in the world…only if you reside in Trump Tower, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mansion or Aung San Suu Kyi’s gilded prison. (Why denounce genocide once you’ve won the Nobel Peace Prize? Might detract from other political ambitions.)
At this point I suspect Chinese President Xi Jinping may be more of a democrat than the self-proclaimed popularly elected politicos “enlightened” citizens have selected to chart their fate in nations ranging from the Philippines to Algeria.
Are you paying attention?
Britain is about to commit economic suicide by departing the EU…because a majority of some constituency thought it would be a good idea. The Italians and Spanish now reject refugees because a supposed majority of the electorate figure drowning migrants is better than feeding an unwashed mass. And we, here in the United States, imprison children and parents, because, god forbid, the people who would clean our bathrooms, change sheets in hotels, or cook meals at a minimum wage are not “Americans.”
I’ll wager 99.9% of you reading this are not “native Americans.” Take your smug attitude and go home to hug a dog that’s fed better than most people I’ve met in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and, yes, a good deal of Turkey.
Autocracy wins because it works. Assad, Colin, Duterte, el-Sisi, Hitler, Kim Mao, Mussolini, Orban, Putin, Stalin, Xi...and, yes, Mr. Trump.
You laugh.
Just another pessimist, scribbling visions of dystopia.
I spent 25 years in service with the U.S. military and intelligence community only to witness the folly of Afghanistan, Iraq and now, certainly Iran and North Korea. Whence goes Turkey, Hungary and Italy goes Europe. The British drove off this bridge back in 1945 by insisting they could cling to an empire.
Will we be so foolish? Or should the next jacket Ms. Trump wears on Air Force One read: “I really care, so should you!”
Might want to go ask Mr. Erdogan.
It’s now 92 degrees and the temperature is climbing in Ankara, Athens, Budapest and Berlin.
About the Author: Eric C. Anderson is a retired member of the U.S. Intelligence Community whose work focused on Northeast Asia — specifically China and North Korea. He is also an author. His latest text is "Anubis," the second book in a trilogy examining the rise of ISIS.
