In the summer of 2013, groups of Turkish citizens gathered in Istanbul’s Gezi Park to protest the government’s development plan for the park which included a new mall and luxury apartments.
The plan came at a time when Turkey’s economy was struggling, unemployment was high, the war across the border in Syria was raging, and Turkey’s longtime ruling party, the AKP, was governing with an increasingly heavier hand.
Turkish citizens were seeing a growing authoritarianism in their country: greater restrictions on public behaviour, a clamping down on free expression especially anti-state or anti-religious views, and a growing sense that only a supporter of the ruling party was a good citizen.
It seemed like the kind of restrictions and surveillance historically felt by Turkey’s minorities — especially Kurds — was now pervasive and normalized.
Those protests grew to an estimated 3.5 million people across the country. The state’s response to the Gezi Park protests was swift and brutal. Turkish citizens say Gezi Park felt like a moment of shift.
Hundreds of people in New York City, including many Turkish Americans, protested in solidarity with demonstrators in Istanbul, June 1, 2013. Protests grew in other countries, along with the number of issues at the core that included freedom of speech and the erosion of secular norms. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images )
Strongman meets the rich west
Turkey is hardly the only country facing what experts call “democratic backsliding.”
Looking at a map of the world, it’s clear in the last 30 years the presence, demise, and return of authoritarian governments has contracted and expanded like an accordion.
Despite this decades-long turn, the rise of Donald Trump in the United States came as a shock and signalled that even the longest-standing democracy of modern times was not safe.
The strongman, long associated with the dictators and tyrants of the postcolonial world, had now found his way to the rich west.
Strongman politics are nothing new but its embrace among democracies — new and old — feels confusing and overwhelming. There are similarities among these leaders in the use of a muscular, exclusionary rhetoric, strident nationalism, the invocation of a more glorious but mythical past, and the abandonment of the long-held liberal ideal of equal rights for all.
According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance — International IDEA — authoritarianism is expanding not just in terms of the presence of autocratic government but also in terms of democratic governments engaging in similar repressive tactics including restricting free speech and weakening both the rule of law and democratic institutions.
Hungarian President Katalin Novak (L) and her Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro at a meeting, in Brasilia, July 11, 2022. According to an International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance report, Brazil and Hungary are two of several countries listed that govern under autocratic leadership. (Sergio Lima/AFP via Getty Images)
The institute points out that “over a quarter of the world’s population now live under democratically backsliding governments, including some of the world’s largest democracies, such as Brazil, India and three EU members — Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia. Together with those living in non-democratic regimes, they make up more than two-thirds of the world’s population.”
Rising authoritarianism
The world’s largest democracy, India, has seen its relatively stable democratic freedoms decline with the rise of Narendra Modi.
The suspension of historical autonomy and further restrictions on political freedoms in Jammu and Kashmir; the marginalizing of religious minorities — especially Muslims — as Modi’s political rhetoric enfolds a Hindu-first narrative; and the implementation of a national register of citizens which has critics fearing generation-long residents of India will be stripped of their citizenship, are all examples cited by critics as examples of Modi’s shift toward authoritarian governance.
The only way forward for any society to remain free is to treat its citizens equally.– Arfa Khanum Sherwani, broadcaster journalist
Arfa Khanum Sherwani is an Indian broadcast journalist whose work has a human rights focus. She says the current moment in India is both one of joy and fear. Joy because India has just celebrated the 75th anniversary of its independence — something that felt improbable at the outset. But at the same time, Indians are grappling with the question of whether the current state of India is what its “nation builders” envisioned.
“We are going through perhaps an existential crisis for Indian democracy where the biggest threat to Indian democracy is coming from the people who are ruling us.”
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves during a ceremony in New Delhi, Aug. 15, 2019, to celebrate the country’s 73rd Independence Day, which marks the end of British colonial rule. (Prakash Singh/AFP via Getty Images)
It’s a sentiment echoed by Cihan Tekay Liu, the Turkey page editor at Jadiliyya.com, a publication focused on the Middle East. She grew up in Turkey during some of its most volatile times in the 80s and 90s but, she says, political and social life improved as Turkey transitioned into a multiparty democracy.
Tekay Liu adds the latest twist in the story began shortly after 2010 when the government “began acting more like a regime.” The ruling AKP under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan began purging members and silencing dissent. These were followed by the jailing of opposition leaders and growing restrictions on the press.
According to Reporters Without Borders, Turkey currently ranks 149th out of 180 countries on its press freedom index, just above India and just below Hong Kong.
Lessons for all nations
Sara Khorshid worked as a journalist in Egypt for more than 15 years and is currently a PhD candidate in history at Western University. She says the hope that came with the so-called Arab Spring in 2011 has long passed and that Egyptians are now repressed in an unprecedented way.
“Under [el-] Sisi, we’ve reached the point where the army is actually the state. It’s not just a state within the state anymore. It exercises control over everything in the country, over the economy, over politics.”
Khorshid says the constraints Egyptians feel are made that much worse given the harsh economic situation. In Egypt, citizens are now less concerned about democratic backsliding than they are about surviving an authoritarian regime.
According to Sara Khorshid, under Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, ‘ the magnitude of the army’s control over everything in people’s lives… is reaching an unprecedented level.’ (Khaled Elfiqi/EPA-EFE)
According to Freedom House, a mostly-U.S. government funded think tank, 2021 was the 16th consecutive year the world saw a decline in political rights and civil liberties. But people in repressive regimes still find a way to resist whether it’s using jokes or social media posts in the absence of a free press as Egyptians do or it’s by spilling into the streets to protest specific laws targeting particular communities as Indians have been doing.
Khanum Sherwani says democratic countries need to pay attention to the human rights conversation in other democratic countries — that the backsliding of one will lead to the backsliding of all.
She adds that despite India being such a diverse nation geographically, linguistically, and religiously, the key reason for its survival has been the reliance on the idea that every citizen was guaranteed certain basic democratic rights. But those rights are no longer guaranteed.
“I think right now that place is threatened. That minimum guarantee is threatened. And that is why I get a sense of insecurity. I feel the only way forward for any society to remain free is to treat its citizens equally.”
She points to the current situation in India is a lesson for all nations.
“Every global citizen is a stakeholder in what happens in the largest democracy of the world. So the world cannot really afford to turn its back towards us and say, ‘look, whatever is happening to you is your internal matter.’
“I do feel when India goes downhill with this whole terrible backsliding of Indian democracy, every global citizen has something to lose.”
Guests in this episode:
Arfa Khanum Sherwani is a broadcaster and editor with The Wire.in
Cihan Tekay Liu is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the Graduate Center at City University of New York. She is also co-editor of the Turkey Page at Jadaliyya.com.
Sara Khorshidis a PhD candidate in history at Western University.
*This episode was produced by Naheed Mustafa. It is part of our series, The New World Disorder.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MONTREAL – NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says he will not be taking advice from Pierre Poilievre after the Conservative leader challenged him to bring down government.
“I say directly to Pierre Poilievre: I’m not going to listen to you,” said Singh on Wednesday, accusing Poilievre of wanting to take away dental-care coverage from Canadians, among other things.
“I’m not going to listen to your advice. You want to destroy people’s lives, I want to build up a brighter future.”
Earlier in the day, Poilievre challenged Singh to commit to voting non-confidence in the government, saying his party will force a vote in the House of Commons “at the earliest possibly opportunity.”
“I’m asking Jagmeet Singh and the NDP to commit unequivocally before Monday’s byelections: will they vote non-confidence to bring down the costly coalition and trigger a carbon tax election, or will Jagmeet Singh sell out Canadians again?” Poilievre said.
“It’s put up or shut up time for the NDP.”
While Singh rejected the idea he would ever listen to Poilievre, he did not say how the NDP would vote on a non-confidence motion.
“I’ve said on any vote, we’re going to look at the vote and we’ll make our decision. I’m not going to say our decision ahead of time,” he said.
Singh’s top adviser said on Tuesday the NDP leader is not particularly eager to trigger an election, even as the Conservatives challenge him to do just that.
Anne McGrath, Singh’s principal secretary, says there will be more volatility in Parliament and the odds of an early election have risen.
“I don’t think he is anxious to launch one, or chomping at the bit to have one, but it can happen,” she said in an interview.
New Democrat MPs are in a second day of meetings in Montreal as they nail down a plan for how to navigate the minority Parliament this fall.
The caucus retreat comes one week after Singh announced the party has left the supply-and-confidence agreement with the governing Liberals.
It’s also taking place in the very city where New Democrats are hoping to pick up a seat on Monday, when voters go to the polls in Montreal’s LaSalle—Émard—Verdun. A second byelection is being held that day in the Winnipeg riding of Elmwood—Transcona, where the NDP is hoping to hold onto a seat the Conservatives are also vying for.
While New Democrats are seeking to distance themselves from the Liberals, they don’t appear ready to trigger a general election.
Singh signalled on Tuesday that he will have more to say Wednesday about the party’s strategy for the upcoming sitting.
He is hoping to convince Canadians that his party can defeat the federal Conservatives, who have been riding high in the polls over the last year.
Singh has attacked Poilievre as someone who would bring back Harper-style cuts to programs that Canadians rely on, including the national dental-care program that was part of the supply-and-confidence agreement.
The Canadian Press has asked Poilievre’s office whether the Conservative leader intends to keep the program in place, if he forms government after the next election.
With the return of Parliament just days away, the NDP is also keeping in mind how other parties will look to capitalize on the new makeup of the House of Commons.
The Bloc Québécois has already indicated that it’s written up a list of demands for the Liberals in exchange for support on votes.
The next federal election must take place by October 2025 at the latest.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante is defending her decision to turn off comments on her social media accounts — with an announcement on social media.
She posted screenshots to X this morning of vulgar names she’s been called on the platform, and says comments on her posts for months have been dominated by insults, to the point that she decided to block them.
Montreal’s Opposition leader and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association have criticized Plante for limiting freedom of expression by restricting comments on her X and Instagram accounts.
They say elected officials who use social media should be willing to hear from constituents on those platforms.
However, Plante says some people may believe there is a fundamental right to call someone offensive names and to normalize violence online, but she disagrees.
Her statement on X is closed to comments.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
