Astral Codex Ten

Erdogan

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Erdogan

Article

Erdogan is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 8 times across 8 issues between March 18, 2021 and November 02, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “‘Young Erdogan decided that supporting Erbakan’s crusade…’ ‘Erdogan was pretty devastated…’ ‘Erdogan returned as his lieutenant.’”; “The Islamists were almost the only ones left - and they nominated Erdogan for mayor of Istanbul”; “Erdogan lost his first two elections. But before his third”. It most often appears alongside Trump, Modi, US.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 8
  • Issue count: 8
  • First seen: March 18, 2021
  • Last seen: November 02, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: The New Sultan
March 18, 2021 · Original source
I got The New Sultan: Erdogan And The Crisis Of Modern Turkey because, as a libertarian, I spend a lot of time worrying about the risk that my country might backslide into illiberal repression. To develop a better threat model, I wanted to see how this process has gone in other countries, what the key mistakes were, and whether their stories give any hints about how to prevent it from happening here. Recep Tayyip Erdogan transformed Turkey from a flawed democracy to a partial dictatorship over the past few decades, and I wanted to know more about how.
Inline links: The New Sultan: Erdogan And The Crisis Of Modern Turkey
Recep Tayyip Erdogan was born in 1954 in Kasimpasa, an Istanbul slum with the same kind cultural cachet in Turkey that Eight Mile Road or Compton has in the US - a place where you have to be tough to survive. His family were recent immigrants from Turkey's equivalent of the Bible Belt, and figured young Erdogan needed strong values if he was going to resist the temptations of the big city. They decided to send him to an Imam Hatip school, even though it meant throwing away his future.
As an analysis of the rise of a dictator, this book fails a pretty basic desideratum: it seems less than fully convinced the dictator's rise was bad. Again and again I found myself checking to make sure I hadn't accidentally picked up a pro-Erdogan book. I didn't; author Soner Cagaptay is a well-respected Turkey scholar in a US think tank who's written other much more critical things. The fact is, Erdogan's rise is inherently a pretty sympathetic story. If he'd died of a heart attack in 2008, we might remember him as a successful crusader against injustice, a scrappy kid who overcame poverty and discrimination to become a great and unifying leader.
Open Thread 164
March 21, 2021 · Original source
6: Some good comments on the Erdogan post. Turkish ACXer Emrah D gives some commentary and corrections - Erdogan’s predecessor as Istanbul mayor was merely left-wing, not communist, and Imam Hatip schools seem less “stigmatized” if you just think of them as trade schools not intended to provide general education (plus 16 other excellent points). Fellow Turksih ACXer Fevzi P has some other thoughts, including that Ataturk didn’t really want democracy for Turkey (he modernized it, but it was his successors who extended this to democratization). Also:
Inline links: some commentary and corrections, some other thoughts
There was a clear pattern to the repression of the Islamist movement in Turkey. The army and the judiciary felt that they did not have the backing to totally eradicate them (like they did to the communists), but kept picking the most egregious examples and pruning them with political bans and jail time. This has created an environment of artificial selection in the Islamist movement where the most cunning, skillful and politically savvy individuals easily rose up to the top, as the less savvy people around them were taken out by the military. Such people had no qualms with breaking the rules, since the rules were obviously rigged against them and wielded non-charitably. This is the environment that formed Erdogan's political personality and made him thrive.
And demost compares Erdogan to seven other dictators and concludes there are common threads that do provide generalized lessons. Also, how do you pronounce “Erdogan”, anyway?
Inline links: compares Erdogan to seven other dictators, how
Book Review: Modi - A Political Biography
September 14, 2021 · Original source
So I thought I'd make Modi the next entry in the ACX Dictator Book Club (previously: Erdogan). The Internet recommended Andy Marino's Modi: A Political Biography, and it seemed the least overtly hagiographical of the options Amazon gave me:
Inline links: Erdogan, Modi: A Political Biography
Modi's rise eerily parallels Erdogan's. Both grew up in poor families and got involved early in religious/political organizations. Both were sufficiently committed to their religious/political organization that they joined as junior cadets even though religious parties had never taken power in their country and it seemed like career suicide. Both suffered through genuinely-terrible dictatorships led by secular liberal elites, which soured them on a secular liberal model. Both rose through the ranks of their parties and got elected regional administrators. Both did good jobs as administrators, plus had the PR skills to make it look like they did even better jobs than they did. Both used their religious connections to semi-accurately present themselves as beacons of piety and virtue amid a corrupt establishment. Both tried to shed their party's far-right image in favor of being center-right free market capitalists, and both implemented free-market reforms that helped them get the credit for a good economy. Both were raised to power by a coalition of moderate-rightists who wanted good economic policy and were wowed by their administrative accomplishments, plus far-right religious zealots who expected that it was all a charade and they would govern as far-right religious zealots.
(questions about minorities and racism were less prominent in Erdogan's rise, making him a proof of concept that you can do this without them)
Dictator Book Club: Orban
November 04, 2021 · Original source
(previously: Erdogan, Modi)
Inline links: Erdogan, Modi
He manipulated government procurement contracts so intensely that it’s hard to accuse him of corruption, because corruption requires that there be some standard noncorrupt practice to compare it to. “If something is done in the national interest, it is not corruption”, said the head of a government-affiliated think-tank. The Fidesz-controlled national bank grants loans to promising national projects (read: anyone who Orban would like to grant loans to). Sometimes this is as simple as loaning a Fidesz loyalist enough money to buy some important business (ie a newspaper). The business will offer the buyer a great deal (so it doesn’t get on Fidesz’s bad side), the loyalist will continue running the business, and either repay the loan or get it forgiven. Other grants are for vanity projects - for example, building a giant football stadium and football academy in Orban’s home town (like Erdogan, the Hungarian dictator is a fan of football and former semiprofessional player).
I mean, it’s Dictator Book Club, I’m not supposed to like the guys. But I had some sympathy for Erdogan and Modi. They both seemed like committed, idealistic people who fought for something they really believed in, and maybe took it a little too far. Okay, a lot too far. Still, they fought for a cause.
Highlights From The Comments On Orban
November 11, 2021 · Original source
As a Hungarian, I found some glaring problems in the review, almost enough that I feel myself in a Gell-Mann Amnesia situation. I don't really blame Scott though, getting informed about the politics of a foreign country is very hard. Still, I trust the Erdogan and Modi reviews significantly less now.
Also, border wall: not long after Orban built his wall and was called a fascist for that, the Germans also panicked after the first one million migrants poured in in a few months, so they made a deal with Erdogan, and paid Turkey not to let in more migrants to Europe, so now most Syrian migrants are stopped on the turkish border, sometimes by gunfire.
Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping
April 06, 2022 · Original source
Xi launched the most extensive anti-corruption campaign in Chinese history, which caught many high-level officials. Dictators throughout the world have used anti-corruption campaigns to eliminate opponents (see eg Erdogan), and the timing is right, so this would be a really plausible theory. The guy who ran the anti-corruption effort, Wang Qishan, is a childhood friend of Xi’s (they were roommates together on the farm commune) and 100% one of his clients and loyalists.
Inline links: the most extensive anti-corruption campaign in Chinese history, Erdogan
Dictator Book Club: Putin
August 03, 2023 · Original source
[previously in series: Erdogan, Modi, Orban, Xi]
Inline links: Erdogan, Modi, Orban, Xi
Dictator Book Club: Chavez
November 02, 2023 · Original source
[previously in series: Erdogan, Modi, Orban, Xi, Putin]
Inline links: Erdogan, Modi, Orban, Xi, Putin
All dictators get their start by discovering some loophole in the democratic process. Xi realized that control of corruption investigations let him imprison anyone he wanted. Erdogan realized that EU accession talks provided the perfect cover to retool Turkish institutions in his own image.
Inline links: Xi, Erdogan