Strongmen by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Author:Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2020-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

Projection on Trump International Hotel by Robin Bell, May 2017.

PHOTO BY LIZ GORMAN / BELL VISUALS / COURTESY OF ROBIN BELL

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THAT MESSAGE WAS POLITICALLY SUCCESSFUL in Istanbul in 2019, when Ekram Imamoğlu, the opposition candidate, won the race for mayor of Istanbul while demonstrating the power of positive emotions in politics. “We had two simple rules: ignore Erdoğan and love those who love Erdoğan,” said his campaign manager Ates Ilyas Bassoy. Imamoğlu, then mayor of an Istanbul district, combines liberal views with an observant Muslim lifestyle. He had been chosen after much vetting as a strong prospect to beat Erdoğan’s candidate, Binali Yildirim. Still, no one could have predicted the success of his platform of “radical love.”73

Imamoğlu turned the strongman’s politics of aggression and arrogance on its head. Instead of the mass rallies that stage authoritarian leader-follower dynamics, he walked the streets to “engage people directly, no matter what their ideology,” greeting voters in cafes, mosques, and parks. Instead of menacing repression, he gave hugs. He countered Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) belligerent tone and predictions of apocalypse if they lost with a calming and optimistic campaign slogan: “Everything will be fine.”74

When Imamoğlu pulled off an upset in the March elections (48.77 percent to Yildirim’s 44.61 percent), the Erdoğan-allied electoral board cited irregularities and announced that the election would have to be redone. “They want conflict from us,” Imamoğlu told his angry followers, but “we will insist upon embracing each other.” Seeing the mayoral contest as a proxy vote about his popularity, Erdoğan (a former Istanbul mayor) made house visits to voters in each of Istanbul’s thirty-nine districts during the new round of campaigning. His authoritarian tactics, like threatening to jail Imamoğlu for insulting a politician, did not go over well. When new elections were held in June, Imamoğlu increased his lead to 54.2 percent (versus 45 percent for Yildirim, who lost another eleven districts). “Maybe we should have given another message instead of ‘survival,’ ” a source from AKP reflected.75

For one hundred years, the strongman has made political capital out of such dire thinking, exploiting what Imamoğlu calls the “barriers of distrust and hostility that are created by the politics of fear.” Those are the barriers that the new Turkish mayor explicitly campaigned to remove, in the spirit of resisters past and present. “Polarization is a universal problem,” he says. “All around the world, populism is used to divide and rule. But I believe we can turn this trend upside down.” Imamoğlu’s victory holds out the possibility of a different future for Turkey and sends a message to strongmen everywhere.76

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