How To Lose Your Country, with Ece Temelkuran (Part One)

Summary

Intelligence Squared: “How To Lose Your Country,” with Ece Temelkuran (Part One)

Date: November 14, 2025
Host: Coco Khan
Guest: Ece Temelkuran
Producer: Mia Sorrenti
Location: The Kiln Theatre, London

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Episode Overview

In this thought-provoking live conversation, Turkish writer, journalist, and political thinker Ece Temelkuran discusses her seminal book How to Lose a Country, its continued relevance, and the global rise of authoritarianism and populism. In dialogue with Coco Khan, Temelkuran shares personal experiences of exile, draws sharp parallels between Turkey and Western democracies, and challenges conventional wisdom about democracy, hope, and resistance.

Temelkuran argues that the decline toward authoritarianism is not confined to any one nation; rather, democracies worldwide are vulnerable, and understanding this process is crucial for those who wish to resist. She explores the emotional and psychological dynamics of “losing a country,” the systemic failures enabling populism, and the need to rethink what democracy actually means in the 21st century.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Ece Temelkuran on Exile and Personal Journey

• Reflections on "Exile":

  • Temelkuran resists the "exile" label—used frequently by others—emphasizing that her story isn't more interesting or tragic than that of any refugee (07:27).
  • She explains leaving Turkey in 2016 due to threats, highlighting the normalization of self-exile among critical voices under authoritarian regimes (07:27–09:15).

• Living as an Outsider:

  • Writing in English for the first time in Zagreb, Temelkuran notes the strangeness of being an outsider to her own nation and the universality of the feeling: “There are so many people now losing their homes for different reasons. It is almost embarrassing to talk about the exile.” (08:52)

2. How Does Fascism Take Root?

• The Early Warnings:

  • Temelkuran asserts that journalists and truth-tellers—especially women—are targeted first: “They are the easiest target and they are the most powerful people who can actually fight against fascism. That’s why they’re going first.” (10:37)

• Chilling Recognition of Political Shifts:

  • Host Coco Khan shares a personal story of witnessing “ordinary” British people normalizing Trump on a right-wing talk show, echoing the slow normalization process described in Temelkuran’s book (12:21–14:21).
  • Temelkuran describes her own “chills” beginning in 2002, seeing the rise of Erdoğan: “This is not a party, this is something else. This is a movement… manufacturing victimhood to consolidate the crowd.” (14:21)

• Normalization and Denial:

  • Populist leaders rapidly become normalized. Temelkuran distinguishes between those quick to accept ("fall in line") and those who are “paranoid” early on—often proven correct: “That normalization begins quite early… It makes people fall in the line before they are being forced to. Nobody forces this guy to say Trump is normal, but he says it because there is a sense of power.” (16:56)

3. Naming the Threat: Fascism or Populism?

• Reluctance to Call It “Fascism”:
  • Temelkuran humorously observes that established, especially German, intellectuals resist using “fascism” due to historical and psychological implications: “Once you call it, you have to do something about it. So don’t ask me why I’m doing this. I have to ask you why you are not calling it fascism.” (19:44–20:18)
  • She challenges the tendency to water down terms: “…when you say right wing populism, oh, it’s like, we’re going to fix things here and there. You know, Trump will die or whatever. Erdogan cannot live forever…” (20:30)

4. Systemic Failure of Democracy

• The Myth of a Functional Democracy:

  • Temelkuran criticizes superficial faith in democracy without social justice: “If you cannot change one single fact, which is there is no social justice in this system and we’re bringing social justice, you cannot change anything. You’ll just have better Trumps, really.” (26:36)

• No Political Solution in the Current System:

  • She argues the crisis is systemic, not just about individual leaders: “This is a systemic failure… if democracy doesn’t put social justice at the center, it doesn’t work. It becomes a theatrics of itself and nobody takes it seriously.” (24:15)

• Historical Context:

  • She traces today’s predicament to the Reagan-Thatcher era, the rise of neoliberalism, and the abandonment of equality as a central democratic value (24:49–25:57).

5. Beyond Hope: Faith and Moral Transformation

• Faith Over Hope:

  • Temelkuran reframes the discussion from hope to faith: “…I don’t believe in the word hope because it’s too fragile for our times. We need to refresh our faith in ourselves, in each other, and in politics. What we lost is faith.” (05:32)

• The Limits of Democratic Rhetoric:

  • Both speakers reflect on how Western democracies mythologize their histories, often ignoring their own exclusions and flaws: “I find it crazy when people in America talk about being a great democracy. I’m like, guys, you didn’t give black people the vote for a very long…” (29:00)

• What Now? Love, Dignity, and Connection

  • Temelkuran calls for a return to fundamental human values—dignity, solidarity, and “radical love”—as the core of true democratic renewal: “Maybe we should be talking about moral transformation, because all this frenzy, all this political mess, creates a confusion… you begin forgetting what you stand for.” (31:00)
  • She argues that the coming crises “will give us the meaning that we can sacrifice something for. We will need to make some sacrifices, but we will have better friends. We will have amazing time. We are going to find each other. We are going to be in solidarity and it’s not going to be... because it’s chic. We’re going to be in solidarity because our lives will depend on it.” (34:44)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Ece Temelkuran on hope and faith

  “I don’t believe in the word hope because it’s too fragile for our times. What we lost is not hope… What we lost is faith, actually.”
  (05:32, Temelkuran)

• On being exiled:

  “I hate the word. I never use the word myself, but it’s always used for me… It gives you a certain aristocratic flare among the other people who lost their homes, as if my story is more interesting than any other refugee.”
  (07:27, Temelkuran)

• On journalists as targets:

  “All of them, the ones who are trying to tell the truth and be on the right side of the history. Yes, they are, because they are the easiest target and... the most powerful people who can actually fight against fascism. That’s why they’re going first.”
  (10:37, Temelkuran)

• On the normalization of authoritarianism:

  “That normalization begins quite early. It makes people fall in the line before they are being forced to... there is a sense of power. So this is becoming powerful. So I have to side with it. It’s an emotional thing and... mostly it’s about politics of emotions.”
  (16:56, Temelkuran)

• On not calling it fascism:

  “You’re not calling it fascism because once you call it, you have to do something about it... There is that as well. Saying ‘right-wing populism’ gives you the sinister chance of saying, ‘Oh, there’s, of course, the left-wing populism as well.’ These are narrative games.”
  (20:18–20:54, Temelkuran)

• On the crisis of democracy:

  “This is a systemic failure and it should be treated like that. And that systemic failure goes back to decades ago, in 1970s… when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher [said], ‘there is no alternative.’”
  (24:15, Temelkuran)

• On democracy and equality:

  “The main contract of democracy says everybody is equal… What does neoliberalism say? There’s no equality. Winner survives... There’s a main contradiction.”
  (30:19, Temelkuran)

• On moving forward:

  “Maybe we should be talking about moral transformation… What are those main values like human dignity? We want to believe in ourselves, in humankind, in politics. We want people to choose dignity over pride… friendship… radical love in politics.”
  (31:00, Temelkuran)

• On hard times as an opportunity:

  “Crises are good. You know… those wars is the biggest crisis. Then you have the chance to be a hero. This life doesn’t give us the meaning that we can sacrifice something for. We forgot that word. That’s why I say neoliberal morality kind of creeped in all of us. We will need to make some sacrifices, but we will have better friends. We will have amazing time. We are going to find each other...”
  (34:44, Temelkuran)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:12: Introduction to the episode and guest
• 04:50: Temelkuran on rejecting the word "hope" in favor of "faith"
• 07:27: Temelkuran’s description of self-exile and the problem with the label
• 10:37: On journalists and dissidents as first targets under authoritarianism
• 12:21–14:21: Khan’s personal media experience and question about recognizing the tipping point
• 14:21: Temelkuran on “chills,” early signs, and movement-building
• 16:56: On normalization, the creation of "the movement," and politics of emotion
• 19:27: Why editors and institutions fear the “fascism” label
• 20:18–20:54: On the politics of language and narrative games
• 24:15: The systemic failures of Western democracy and the triumph of neoliberalism
• 26:36: Why people want “their bad guy,” and the rejection of superficial democracy
• 31:00: Reframing the struggle as moral transformation and collective action
• 34:44: Embracing crisis as a moment for solidarity and the rediscovery of meaning

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Tone and Atmosphere

The episode is intellectually rigorous but also informal, self-aware, and occasionally humorous—Temelkuran is quick to joke about being “paranoid,” and both speakers blend personal stories with sharp political insight. The audience is invited to reflect on shared anxieties about the state of the world but also challenged to act and rebuild trust, not just “hope,” in one another.

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Conclusion

“How To Lose Your Country” part one sets the stage for a deeper investigation of how democracies falter and what citizens—globally—can do in response. Temelkuran’s perspective, shaped by both personal exile and broader historical awareness, urges listeners to be vigilant about incremental normalization, to name fascism honestly, and to embrace moral solidarity as the antidote to cynicism and despair.

Up Next: Part two will explore more practical strategies for solidarity, the politics of radical love, and how individuals and societies might reclaim democratic life from the brink.

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Transcript

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Producer Mia Sorrenti]

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with writer and political thinker ECE Tamil. Kuran Eshe Temilkuran is the award winning Turkish author who was forced into exile for her critical views of President Erdcan. She is best known for her books how to Lose a Country and its follow up Together, which explore how the world's democracies are sleepwalking into authoritarian and how we might be able to defend democracy and learn the lessons of resistance across the globe. Temulcohan was joined by podcaster and journalist Coco Kahn at the Kiln Theatre to discuss the global rise of fascism. Let's join our host Coco Kahn now with more.

[Host Coco Khan]

Hello, hello, hello. Thank you, Margarita. And thank you everyone for joining us this evening to talk about how fucked we all are. God, it's a delight to be sat next to ECE Temul Khurram, one of the, I would say, most interesting, exciting, beloved, influential political thinkers of our times. You've drawn comparisons to David Graeber, Yanis Varoufakis, you know, she's a big deal. So I need to make sure that I don't basically turn this into therapy for progressives. Because really what I want is for you to give me and this audience some hope because it's been, it's tough out here as your book, which we're here to talk about how to Lose a Country deals with. So let's just kick off. How are you feeling today? You feeling hopeful?

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

Here we go. Hello, welcome. I mean, like in a weekday, you came to see a person talk about two persons talking about fascism. So, you know, probably you're not in your best mood.

[Host Coco Khan]

I mean, it must be because I was thinking in my intro I should have mentioned that how to Lose a Country has become a classic. It's considered, I mean, it's strange to say that because it's what, 10 years old? Less than.

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

No less. Less than 2019.

[Host Coco Khan]

It's considered to be, you know, up there like a sort of seminal text. How does that feel having. Having written this thing and this and only becoming more relevant?

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

Well, it's not a, you know, nice feeling because when you write these books and when you write, when you say that fascism will come to you and then the fascism starts creeping into countries, you cannot say, well, I told you so. And also when your predictions come true, sort of, and when they are dark, you cannot indulge yourself in your success, so to speak. But speaking of hope, you know, I don't believe in the word hope. And you know, I wrote a sequel to how to Lose a Country Together, and it starts with this. I don't believe in the word hope because it's too fragile for our times. And we can do better than hope. And what we lost is not hope. You are not here because you lost hope. You are here. Or we are all here because we have to. We need to refresh our faith in ourselves, in each other, and in politics. What we lost is faith, actually. So I'm feeling faithful, okay? Oh, okay.

[Host Coco Khan]

You're feeling faithful.

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

And that's the plan tonight. Let's, let's, you know, feel more faithful.

[Host Coco Khan]

Okay, well, can I get an amen?

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

No, no, I'll do it. Don't worry. Give me 45 minutes.

[Host Coco Khan]

We will definitely talk about, obviously, how to Lose a Country, but also together a Manifesto against the Heartless World and your upcoming book, Nation of Strangers. So we'll try and cover all of those. Let's just start with a bit of bio. Right. So, you know, whenever you read a review of how to Lose a Country, they often talk about you in exile. It's a very specific word. You've been exiled. It's a very heavy word, very grand word. And I expect that for people currently living in a country going through a kind of populist slide, I'd include Britain in that. We might go, oh, exile.

[Producer Mia Sorrenti]

That, that's too.

[Host Coco Khan]

But that couldn't happen. It's almost a bit alien. So I wondered if you could just explain the circumstances around this.

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

First of all, I hate the word. I never use the word myself, but it's always used for me. And, you know, I gave up fighting against it. So actually I wrote the new book, the Nation, you know, Nation of Strangers because of that insistence on the word exile, because we're all going to be exiles very soon anyway. But that's a long story. So exile is a problematic thing because of many reasons, but the reason I hate the word most is it is. It gives you certain aristocratic flare among the other people who lost their homes. So, as if my story is more interesting than any other refugee, I am asked about my exile them constantly. And it has become the most important thing for many people in the Western world. However, yeah, I, Yeah, I actually exiled myself in 2016 from Turkey because there were too many threats, but it was like, normal for people like me, I wasn't the only one. So I said, yeah, fear is freezing my mind and I have to think and write. So When I was 44, in 2016, 43, I went to Zagreb and I changed my language to English. I started writing in English. How to Lose a Country is actually my first English book. Thanks to my editors. It's readable.

[Host Coco Khan]

It's very readable. You do, you're being very modest.

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

Thank you. It's not false modesty, by the way. I have to underline that. So the thing is, there are so many people now losing their homes for different reasons. It is almost embarrassing to talk about the exile. And also, yeah, I feel like a windbag when that word is used to describe me, I think.

[Host Coco Khan]

But let's. Just because you said you self exiled and I just want to dig into that because I think it's something that is going to happen increasingly, particularly to journalists. You were a journalist at the time and I mean, you all tell it better than me.

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

No, the funny thing is. Sorry to interrupt. In 2016, I left the country and when I'm, you know, suddenly I was on stages and people were asking me, like I was telling, you know, I had to leave Turkey. And then, what can we do for you? Americans, British, French, French do it best, actually. Whatever. Those very people now, you know, trying to find refuge in other countries, in Canada, in Italy, in Spain, in Athens, in Greece. So it's funny. It's not funny, it's tragic, but it is, it proves my point. There is nothing interesting about exile. You know, if the rise of fascism is global, which I think it is. Yeah.

[Host Coco Khan]

I suppose the idea that dissident voices, journalists will be the. But people say that they're the first to be chased out, but I don't necessarily know if that's true. Do you think that is true? Is that the first mark?

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

Absolutely not. All of them, the ones who are trying to tell the truth and be on the right side of the history. Yes, they are, because they are the easiest target and they are the most powerful people who can actually fight against fascism. That's why they're going first, that is. And it's easy to make people hate them.

[Host Coco Khan]

Okay, so you are a journalist. There's inordinate pressure put on you to silence you. You leave, you're in Zagreb, that's where you start working on this book. And now you're an outsider to your own nation. Does that give you clarity or is that just painful? Do we require an amount of exile them to see our countries for what they are?

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

Well, that's a hard question, I think, you know, many people living in London, sitting in their living rooms, they already feel like British people. I mean, they already feel like they're living in another country. They're feeling like strangers in their own country. Their country is strange to them. Who was that? Angelina Jolie or Julia Roberts? One of them from someone from Hollywood, I think. Angelina Jolie, who said, I don't recognize my country anymore. This is a strange country now. I thought I should have sent a copy, but it is exactly that. You don't have to leave the country. And that pain, I think, is shared by many here. Even though you're in London, in your home, just by watching the tv, just by hearing the news, you can suddenly feel somehow a breakup with your country.

[Host Coco Khan]

Yeah, no, I suppose that's the loss, in a way, of losing the country, a country, obviously. I've been reading this book ahead of us meeting and so it's been in my handbag as I travel through my life being a journalist. And I had a appearance on television on a couple of days ago. I won't say what I. I felt being on the show, that the show was inherently right wing show. I'm a left wing, so I knew it was going to be tough. I knew it was going to be. I mean, you always kind of know, being a progressive journalist, that it's going to be tough when you go into those spaces, but you figure it's worth it. Even if you change one person's view, it's worth it. You get shouted at for a bit, but whatever, it's fine. And, you know, they give you a croissant at the end and journalism's tough, so, you know, it's good to get breakfast. And they had his phone in section. And just the topic that we were all exploring was the ceasefire and Trump's role, which I found extremely patronizing anyway, because we're only talking about Trump and there's other countries involved and everyone can't even bring themselves to say the word Palestine. But nonetheless, this is the topic we're talking about. And one by one, British people are phoning in and they're saying, you know what? I think Trump's all right. And it just was. I felt this chill. It's happening, it's happening. You know, there was nothing about the people phoning in that made me think that they were extreme in their perspectives. They seemed quite ordinary. They had quite, you know, voices that sounded like they might appear on Radio 4 and they would say, well, you know, I had my doubts about him because, you know, he's a bit of a scoundrel and he lies and he's corrupt, but actually, I think he's okay. And in one sentence you say scoundrel, corrupt, whatever, but I think he's okay. And it really gave me the chills having read this book. That is a really long way of saying, when did your chills begin? When did you know? When did you have that feeling of, oh, God, no, this is serious now. We're looking down.

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

Well, I'm like, women in general, I think, in any country, like, operate like canaries in the mind when it comes to fascism. They sense the change of hair air very quickly, you know, oftentimes better and sooner than men, because men, I think, not all men, obviously. You know what I mean? Don't get me canceled here. I mean, like, in their genes, it is imprinted in their genes to find a way to have to make a new deal with the new regime, new status quo women. When status quo change, it's first women who's hunted down. So they kind of have this in their genes throughout history, imprinted that, you know, oh, something is happening, and it might not be good for us, and it's usually not good for women. So my chills began in 2002. Oh, wow. Yeah. Because I was a journalist, I was a writer, but I was doing real journalism. And that was the time when Recep Tayyip Erdogan was coming to power. So I went through the country, I don't know how many cities, and I talked to the new supporters of this new party. And that was when I understood, this is not a party, this is something else. This is a movement. And there is a distinction that they are mentioning, they're underlining, which is like, we are not one of them. Me referring to the politicians. We are clean. Which happened in every country in the United States, in here, in all of the European countries. We are above and beyond politics. This is not about politics. We are coming to clean the country. We are coming to make things right and so on, to drain the swamp. So there is this. It all begins like that. It starts with a movement, creating a movement. And then, of course, they're manufacturing victimhood to gather, to consolidate the crowd. So they are giving you a victimhood, and then you're taking that victimhood, and then you're becoming part of the group, part of the movement. And then immediately you associate with the leader, and the body leader embodies the entire movement after that. It's so easy, you know, after first power seizure, it's so easy to stay in power. So my chills begin in 2002, which, you know, I had a reputation then being paranoid. So did Cassandra. So finally, you know, it was 2007, actually, the second turn. The thing is, the thing that you mentioned, actually, he's okay. That normalization begins quite early. And people. This is the funny thing about fascism. It makes people fall in the line before being. Before they are being forced to. Like, you know, they are not forced to being in the line. Nobody forces this guy to say Trump is normal, but he says it because there is a sense of power. So this is becoming powerful. So I have to side with it. It's an emotional thing and it's mostly it's about politics of emotions. By the way, what's happening today. And I call it fascism, Some people call it right wing populism, some people call it authoritarianism. And so I have a funny story about that. Remind me. So, yeah. That normalization happens so fast, and then on you find yourself, am I really being paranoid? But then we passed that age, I think, you know, in 2016, this country and United States was at that stage, like, are we paranoid or is this something really horrible? We passed that stage. And my funny story is about that. This, this book. I wrote this book in 2018. It was published 2019, and it was published in 12 languages. And the subtitle was the, you know, the country Seven Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship. None of my European editors agreed with me. When I wanted to do the subtitle, seven Steps from Democracy to Fascism, they said, come on, it's not that bad. It's not going to be that bad. I'm like you. Well, of course, in Turkey, you're a Muslim country, there are so many arguments, not from editors but from other people as well. You're exaggerating it. Like, how many years later now, five years later, or. Yeah, four years later, all of my European editors said, let's change the subtitle so that normalization on one side happens so fast for some people, but for some other people who are in this room as well, the realization of the fact also happened quite fast.

[Host Coco Khan]

Why do you think that word scared them so much?

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

I've been asked this question, especially by white, established academic males. And then I go into, into these long discussions, like historic ideological, political discussions. And I can do that if you want, but it's really boring.

[Host Coco Khan]

Not show me.

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

No, this academic discussion is really boring. But the thing is, I've been having this discussion since 2016, actually. On several stages in several countries. And very recently, it occurred to me what the answer is. In Germany, again, a white male, established, asked me, why do you call it fascism? And Germans are quite jealous about fascism, by the way. No, seriously, they don't want you to use the word. It's like the patent is, you know, we have that. You know, we know what it is you're teaching us. Anyway, so this white guy, this German guy, amazing guy, by the way, he was an amazing guy. He asked me why you call it fascism? And then it just. And I was on stage and it occurred to me, and I said, you're not calling it fascism because once you call it, you have to do something about it. So don't ask me why I'm doing this. I have to ask you why you are not calling it fascism. Because there is that as well. Because when you say right wing populism, oh, it's like, we're going to fix things here and there. You know, Trump will die or whatever. Erdogan cannot live forever, so this will be over. It's just a wave. And then it also gives you the sinister chance of saying, oh, there's, of course, there's the left wing populism as well. These are narratives, these are narrative plays. These are narrative games. And once you kind of weed out the fancy curtain of that narrative, you see, actually there is this. It's an ideological stance not to call this fascism.

[Host Coco Khan]

I just wanted to add, when you said, oh, you know, people play these mental gymnastics and they think, oh, Trump will die. Are we on my podcast, everybody comes.

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

To that at some point. But then I have to remind everybody, Franco ruled for 40 years. I always remember this.

[Host Coco Khan]

Thing is, it's not absurd. We, on my podcast, we covered the Conservative Party Conference. And that is one of the things the Conservative Party are currently saying. Their big rival was Nigel Farage and they are saying, well, he could die. He drinks a lot of pints, he smokes, so we could be back and be a good opposition. You have this much moment being like, okay, wow, this is what democracy is pinning their hopes on, that the populace eat too much and die?

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

No, that helplessness comes over you at some point. It comes because you see that there is no political solution. And I have a serious answer about this. But I'm a smoker as well, and smoking has taken me to very low points in my life. But the lowest was to smoke with Nigel Farage in Denmark. I'm telling you, I didn't have the lighter. And he was the only guy who Was smoking. So he actually. And next day we were on stage together, we had a fight.

[Host Coco Khan]

But yeah, just trying to take that in.

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

The thing is the helplessness at the end, they're going to die anyway. That kind of thinking, it is not a joke. It comes to you because you intuitively or rationally know that there is no political solution within the current game setup. So you think that, oh, they must die in order this to change. And you are right to think that because, yes, in the current setup, in the current liberal democracy setup, no, there is no way that we can get rid of them. And, you know, you don't like Trump. Oh, you're going to have a better Trump next time, like a more intelligent one. So it is not like getting rid of these guys. And it's not about dying anyway. The problem is we have to change the system and we have to make people understand that this system cannot work anyway because democracy, if it doesn't put social justice at the center of, doesn't work. It becomes a theatrics of itself and nobody takes it seriously. What's happening today, Trump or whatever, it doesn't matter. This is a systemic failure and it should be treated like that. And that systemic failure goes back to decades ago, in 1970s, which everybody was made to forget. You know, it's as if we chose this. As if we chose this liberal democracy that doesn't put social justice in its center. No, it happened. It started with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. They said, there is no alternative. And some other guys told about end of history, end of ideology. Oh, you know, wonderful. We got rid of ussr so we don't have to think about social justice anymore. And neoliberalism rules. And this is the natural state of humankind anyway, so everything was cool. This perfect marriage between cutthroat capitalism and this, you know, benign kind of democracy. So they thought that this was the perfect combination and everything will be fine. But people knew. And everybody's talking about how they love democracy now, like in all these fancy panels and conferences. Oh, we love democracy. Why do you love democracy? Why would you love it? You know? Yes, please go vote. Why would people vote? You're telling them that you can decide your own destiny, blah, blah, blah. But with this one vote, they cannot change the one thing they want to change. Their salary or their pension plan or whatever, their livelihood. Since they cannot change their destiny through democracy, why would they believe in it? And why wouldn't they believe a guy who says that this whole system is corrupt and I'll be your guy and by the way, let's not be naive. All these people, they're not ignorant. They know how horrible Trump is. They are disgusted by this guy as well. They know he's dumb or whatever. And everybody knows Erdogan or Putin, especially Putin, is not the most beautiful human being, but they know that the system is corrupt. So they want their bad guy in the house making the decisions. And I told you about this creating a movement and associating with the leader. So when the leader comes in power, it's our guy. He's bad, but he's our bad guy. This whole thing is easier than it is. I mean, like, we, I don't know how many panels, how many conferences are, you know, organized, how many NGOs are running right now and millions of dollars are going to democracy, let's make people love democracy, and so on. If you cannot change one single fact, which is there is no social justice in this system and we're bringing social justice, you cannot change anything. You'll just have better Trumps, really.

[Advertiser]

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[Host Coco Khan]

I mean, I, I was thinking about democracy and very again, I feel ridiculous even talking about it. But one of my sort of frustrations about the conversation around democracy is that as you put it so eloquently, the democracy that we have all experienced has not been a real democracy. In many ways, you can get into like, the weeds of like, the electoral system or whatever. But fundamentally, at the end of the day, when you go and put your vote in, you don't feel that you've changed your destiny or the destiny of the country, really. So that's the heart of it. But it is strange how it. There's like, the narrative about democracy is very, very powerful to some people. I find it crazy when people in America talk about being a great democracy. I'm like, guys, you didn't give black people the vote for a very long. How long have you been a democracy? Because I would say you've not been in democracy that long. Even here in the uk, when did women get the vote? That's half the nation who didn't get. Are we sure we've been doing democracy for thousands of years? I feel like we haven't given it. Give democracy a chance. You know what I mean? Do you think democracy is a banner that people can be enthused by, or should we just drop it? Let's not try and convince people democracy's great. Let's invent something else. What do you think?

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

Well, that's why I wrote together, actually. After I have to Lose a Country, I depressed people enough. So I thought maybe do something nice as well. Maybe it's not democracy. It's, you know, maybe we shouldn't be talking about democracy as such. Maybe we should talking. We should be talking about other things which are closer to our hearts because. What. You know why we are talking about loss of democracy? Because neoliberalism has eaten up democracy. Because the main contract of democracy says everybody is equal and you are equal before the law and so on. And then what does neoliberalism say? There's no equality. Yeah, exactly. Winner survives and so on. So there's a main contradiction that. Very roughly put, so neoliberalism has eaten off democracy. That's why we are seeing all these techno giants, like filthy rich people, siding with Trump. That was the good picture of what happened to democracy inauguration in Capitol Hill. I don't know if you remember Trump with Zuckerberg, with Elon Musk and this and that, like Jeff Bezos. It was like, picture like, you know, if anybody asks what happened to democracy, this happened to democracy. These guys literally swallowed the whole thing because there's this incredible gap between the rich and the poor. So they became too powerful. So maybe we shouldn't be talking about democracy as such, but we should be talking about how this political corruption runs so deep that it became a moral corruption. Neoliberalism even for those of us who are against, you know, this whole system, even we are contaminated by it a little bit. So there is nothing outside the system, so to speak, very clean or uncontaminated and so on. So maybe we should look deeper to change the politics. Maybe we should be talking about moral transformation. Because all this frenzy, all this mess, political mess, creates a confusion. And then you start forgetting what you were for because you constantly say no to this, no to that. You're trying to stop something, something horrible to happen. You begin forgetting what you stand for. So what are those main values like human dignity? We want to believe in ourselves, in humankind, in politics. We want people to choose dignity over pride. We want people to choose friendship. We want people to choose radical love in politics. So maybe those concepts, I thought, when writing together, can gather enough people to fight against what's coming. One and also it can refresh our understanding of democracy. Because without that moral transformation, what we will reproduce is almost the same thing that we had before. And also we don't have the chance to go back to business as usual. This is really unlike everybody, I think somehow knows it even without knowing it. There is no going back. There is no going back to 1990s where there is this radical centrism. You know, you will love this. You. There's no going back to Blair or whatever when everything seemed normal. You see, it was like, you know, this is the system. It's going to be like this forever. There will be no political antagonism. There's always going to be the center and so on. There's no going back to that. Interesting times are coming. It's going to be awful, of course, but it's also going to be fun, Seriously. Because one thing about crises, they crystallize things. They crystallize the evil and they crystallize the good. And then it's good. We have to know that big part of our struggle is, you know, we are a little bit defeated. We have to know that. And this is also good because it makes us humble. And then it makes us think about, like, how am I going to survive? And then it brings us to the right question, which is, with whom am I going to survive? And then finally you can understand that we can understand that we have nothing else, each other. That's it. Which is the most beautiful thing. So then you can love people and you can bring love into political sphere, which we need a lot. When I speak about love, people think that I am this hippie hugging trees and so on. I'm talking about very real politic thing here when I speak about love. Because without loving each other, without showing compassion and care for each other, we will not be able to stop this what's coming. One and second. I think we need that humility to understand the depth of the question and therefore the depth of answer that this situation calls for. That's why I think it's going to be an interesting time and we're going to see ourselves in a different image. Crises are good. You know, when I was a journalist, I was in war zones and so on, in Beirut, in Iraq. You know, those wars is the biggest crisis. Then you have the chance to be a hero. This life we're living, this life doesn't give us the chance to be a hero. This life doesn't give us the meaning that we can sacrifice something for. We forgot that word. That's why I say neoliberal morality kind of creeped in all of us. We will need to make some sacrifices, but we will have better friends. We will have amazing time. We are going to find each other. We are going to be in solidarity and it's not going to be. We're going to be in solidarity because it's chic. We're going to be in solidarity because our lives will depend on it. There is a very dear friend in the audience who is a journalist. We were talking with him and then with Masha Gesam from New Yorker the other day, same conversation happened. Both of them are Jews. And I said, you know, when you're reading Second World War, I'm a Second World War nerd, old British man. And me, I'm watching all I read. And anyway, so when you're reading about Second World War, especially intellectuals, you have this sense of like, you know, bloody run away, get out of the fucking country already. Like, why are you still in Germany?

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Go.

[Guest Ece Temelkuran]

You know, Walter Benjamin, Adorno, Hannah Arendt. And I asked both of them, do you think we are at that stage now? Like, you know, 20 years later they will read about us and they will say, like, are you idiots? Like, you know, why didn't you? But then, and this happened in both conversations. There's a romanticism to it as well. We're living history, so whatever we do, it will count. Nobody will have the luxury of being ordinary, which is awesome. I think only those people who have kids. Yeah, it's harder for them. But then kids. I grew up in a leftist family. It was all depression. I'm like, horrible. But then I listened to amazing stories and those stories made me. I don't think I'm a fabulous thing. But it is those stories, real stories about pain, about sacrifice, about solidarity, about friendship. It gives you some structure or substance in life. And it gives you, I think, the most important skill, which is to differentiate between what is important and what is not.

[Producer Mia Sorrenti]

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by me, Mia Sorrenti and it was edited by Mark Roberts for ad free episodes and full length recordings. Become a [e-mail] membership and to join us at free future events, why not head to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full live events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.

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[Host Coco Khan]

Experian.