Talking Turkey Ahead of the Vote

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2023

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There are authoritarians and there are tyrants, and sometimes they’re the same person. But would a true tyrant put himself up to face the people in an election that could be free and maybe even fair?

With Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, we’re going to find out the exact flavor of authoritarian he is on Sunday, May 14, and in the days immediately following. Erdogan has been in power in his nation of more than 80 million people for nearly two decades, and in some ways, he’s brought it to near ruin, with economic policies based more on his gut than sound economic theory.

He’s also not much on newspapers, freedom of information, or freedom of speech.

On the other hand, no one is going to doubt the importance of his country on the world stage. Erdogan has become something like the Bosporus itself, a gateway or meeting point between NATO and Moscow, and even Iran occasionally. That sounds good, but it hasn’t made the West particularly happy. In one of the most recent examples, Turkey’s veto is the only thing standing between Sweden and NATO membership. Erdogan says it has to do with Sweden harboring Kurdish terrorists, but, like buying S-400 missile batteries from Russia, it could just be a thumb in the eye of all concerned.

Maybe the U.S. should just sell Turkey those F-16s it wants.

The main question, however, is what Erdogan will do when all the votes are counted. If he loses, does he go away? If he wins, does he take away more freedoms from Turks and become the tyrant he always had the potential of becoming?

To answer these questions, Angry Planet spoke with Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign relations. He had some surprising thoughts—and a wager.

Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.

https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribe

You can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Love this podcast support this show through the a cast supporter feature
0:05.1	It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world with their own making.
0:25.0	Frankly, that seems to be the problem.
0:31.0	Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello and welcome to angry planet. I am Jason Fields. Matthew Galt is not here.
0:49.3	Turkey would like to rebrand itself trying to persuade the world that it should be called Turkey, uh.
0:54.8	I guess they were tired of the jokes.
0:57.1	We hear at Angry Planet wish their marketing team good luck.
1:00.8	But the truth is, Turkey isn't so fond of change or at least its president isn't.
1:06.0	Resep Taia Erdogan has been in power for well over a decade switching jobs from
1:12.0	Prime Minister to a newly powerful presidency, and then
1:15.2	tightening his grip on the media and virtually everything else, especially after a coup attempt.
1:21.3	On May 14th, he's facing an election that few expect to be free and fair.
1:25.4	We'll get to all of that and we get to do so with friend of the show Stephen Cook.
1:31.2	He's any Enrico Matai Senior Fellow for Middle East and
1:35.8	African Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and he also writes a lot for
1:40.0	foreign policy. Thank you so much for joining us. It's great to be back with you
1:44.0	Jason. Well so maybe not everybody knows Erdogan as well as as you do. So can you just
1:50.4	tell us briefly who he is and I think really why does he want to stay
1:56.0	president so badly? It's a really good question.
2:01.9	Regid Taibertoan has been the leader of Turkey since March of 2003.
2:07.0	He was first the Prime Minister from 2003 until he began the President in 2014. and then has enjoyed enhanced power since 2017 when he helped
2:19.2	shove through constitutional amendments that made him even more powerful than he was during
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Matthew Gault, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Matthew Gault and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.