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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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So Erdogan won the Turkish presential election in the final round today.

First, a brief guide to Turkish politics. The liberals in Turkey are often paradoxically more racist than the conservatives. This sounds very weird in a Western context but Islam is after all a proselytizing religion. Race is a barrier that must be broken to increase your adherents to the faith. What follows is that if you're a serious moslem (and Erdogan is by all accounts) then you must categorically reject racism.

Unsurprisingly, Erdogan has taken in millions of Syrian refugees and even began to slowly give them citizenships. The liberal/secular opposition in Turkey have no strong religious identity. In its stead, there is often an ethnic emphasis and, as you might imagine, they are not too happy with being flooded with millions of Arabs.

There are of course other factions. Some ultra-hardliners on the right have campaigned even harder against refugees but their main candidate got eliminated in the 1st round and who did he endorse? Erdogan! I never promised this would make sense.

Given how long Erdogan has been in power, I don't think it's necessary to provide some in-depth commentary on the man. He is a "known entity" by now. I suspect the biggest impact will be in foreign policy. The liberal candidate openly distanced himself from Russia during the campaign, whereas Erdogan has repeatedly emphasised his supposed friendship with Putin. Erdogan will also likely want to extract a steep price from the US in exchange of Sweden's NATO membership. The official explanation about some Kurdish terrorists is likely mostly a smokescreen. The US kicked Turkey out of the F-35 programme after the Turks bought the Russian S-400 missile system. Now Turkey wants at least F-16s but opposition in the US congress is steep. Enter the NATO accession diplomacy and you begin to understand the context.

From a European perspective, I am not certain a victory for Erdogan is bad. I don't want to see his country in the EU and while the chance would have been remote if the liberal opposition won, it is all but dead with him in power. Turkey is also more likely to keep refugees in their country, though they will probably continue to intermittently use them as human shields in order to get something they want in exchange from Europe.

One final reflection. Given Erdogan's economic mismanagement, many wonder why he wasn't voted out. I think this is yet another example of the importance of cultural politics. Why has the white working class been voting GOP for many decades despite essentially voting against their economic interests? Because they sense the seething hatred that liberal elites have for them. I suspect it isn't much different in Turkey. Politics is often tribal, more than we give acknowledge in the West, and so who you voted for is often a function of your identity as much as your rational interests.

GOP for many decades despite essentially voting against their economic interests?

The usual answer would be ‘they aren’t voting against their economic interests, but they understand their economic interests better than CNN talking heads paid to sell books about the culture wars’.

Ding ding.

Consider the possibility that the elites living in Washington aren't actually in tune with the true interests and preferences of people they never interact with and live entirely different lifestyles.

Whether this is true or not, it doesn't really have any partisan implications, it's hardly as if the GOP national-level politicians are any less part of that elite.

Oh, it is indeed Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The only thing is that Tweedledee at least pretends to be on your side, while Tweedledum is calling you a bunch of dumb ignorant redneck fascists.

at least pretends to be on your side

Is that really any better? Anyways what matters in policy not general cultural vibe. Let me know when Democrats start pushing Right-to-work, cuts to public services and tax cuts for high earners.

Anyways what matters in policy not general cultural vibe.

So you'd vote for an anti-idpol pro-worker party? The whole "will breaking up banks solve sexism?" bit from a certain politician does not inspire a lot of confidence that anyone cares about policy.

So you'd vote for an anti-idpol pro-worker party?

Yes. Within reason obviously (not if they started literally trying to bring back Jim Crow or something), but if it were a choice between a politician with average Republican social views and average Democratic economic views, and the opposite, I would certainly vote for the former. Assuming with all else equal, for instance that they had the same foreign policy views.

I don't know how you decided Jim Crow is an example of an extremely anti-idpol policy, but otherwise it's good to hear.