From America’s leading scholar of democracy, a personal, passionate call to action against the rising authoritarianism that challenges our world order—and the very value of liberty.
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East,
August 1, 2019
This essay examines “professions of friendship”: efforts by populations who are targeted as enemies of the state to proclaim their historical fidelity to the state's foundation and preservation. Such declarations often reinscribe a rigid and often violently statist narrative of politics. The essay argues that the retrenchment of this narrative, when reissued in the name of friendship, does not simply close down political options. It seeks to embolden sentiments of moral obligation across instituted lines of enmity. These solicitations of friendship are burdened by a particular historical task: to envision a past and a future of social cohabitation in a present where its possibilities have been violently undermined and morally devalued. The essay centers on two instances that bookend the past century: the first was delivered in Istanbul by an organization speaking on behalf of Armenians living in territories claimed by the Turkish nationalist movement in 1922; the second was issued by a Kurdish Peace Mother in Diyarbakır, as a plea for an end to state violence in late 2015.
Twenty-first century Turkey has been shaped by two conflicting trends: all-encompassing reform in almost all aspects of law that were transformative if not altogether progressive, and an increasing erosion of the rule of law, which finally culminated in a nation-wide emergency regime and the April 2017 constitutional referendum. The pressing question for many is why the promising reform era was abandoned for crude repression? In this essay, we answer this question by challenging its very foundation and pointing instead to an alternative line of inquiry concerning Turkish politics and society, one that focuses precisely on the interplay between reform and repression. The constitutional referendum of April 2017 compels observers and scholars of Turkey to reevaluate the interplay between reform and repression. Rather than reading contemporary Turkey as a case of relapse from reform into repression, as many commentators do, we suggest approaching reform and repression as concomitant and complementary modes of government.
