New York Times | How Autocrats Can Triumph in Democratic Countries New York Times Today, the most common way for a democracy to collapse is through the actions of an elected incumbent, not a coup or revolution. Hugo Chvez, elected to four terms as president of Venezuela, used his time in office to dismantle the institutions of ... |
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How Autocrats Can Triumph in Democratic Countries - New York Times
The Republican war on local democracy is a top-down effort to prevent Americans from voting where they live to protect the environment, preserve their communities, promote public safety, respect civil liberties, organize fair elections, raise wages, guarantee family and medical leave for workers, and welcome immigrants.
While the Trump administration's assault on sanctuary cities as part of the aggressive anti-immigrant agenda promoted by the president and Attorney General Jeff Sessions gets a good deal of attention, the federal and state pre-emption of local ordinances and local processes that ensure voters have a voice has accelerated as President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan have taken power in D.C. and Trump-style governors and Ryan-style legislators have placed their imprints on Republican-controlled states across the country.
Encouraged by groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, with an authoritarian agenda dictated by corporate-allied funders such as billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, the top-down politicians in states across the country have attacked local democracy at the county, city, village and town levels of government. And in few states has the gubernatorial and legislative overreach been so extreme as in Scott Walker's Wisconsin.
But voters are starting to push back by pushing out politicians who go along with top-down and anti-democratic policies.
In Wisconsin, resistance came about recently after a bill was introduced in the Legislature that proponents said would streamline the process for towns to withdraw from countywide zoning. As originally written, the legislation would have made any vote by town residents on opting out advisory rather than binding, taking the decision out of the hands of voters and giving it to the town board.
As the Republican-controlled Legislature advanced the legislation, residents of the town of Middleton in Dane County caught wind of what was happening. They wanted to send a clear signal that the town should protect the right of residents to have a say. Dissatisfied with what they saw as failures of focus and advocacy on the part of the town chairman and a key Town Board member, challengers stepped forward to highlight the local democracy issues that came into play as the state Assembly was considering the zoning bill in March.
But the April 4 election was only a few weeks away, and the filing deadline to get on the ballot had passed. So the local-democracy candidates had to mount write-in bids.
We just decided the way to win this was to knock on every door in the town of Middleton that was physically possible, said Cynthia Richson, a town plan commission member, who took on the incumbent town chairman. Former Town Board member Richard Oberle challenged an incumbent board member who,as The Capital Times reported, had pushed for a zoning opt-out law that was signed in 2016 and had also backed the bill that "would have relegated resident votes to advisory, as opposed to binding.
Both Richson and Oberle won their write-in bidsin a result that shocked local political observers and made news well beyond Dane County.
Rightly so, as the town of Middleton election was about more than local issues. It was about defending local democracy at a time when too many politicians in Madison and Washington are attacking it.
The challengers were opposed to opting out of Dane County zoning. But the primary focus of their campaigning was the right of citizens to have a say when big decisions are being made. Number one, explained Oberle, is to make sure the citizens are allowed to have a vote on this opt-out issue and get informed about it so they can make a good decision.
The opt-out bill, which is still pending, was eventually changed to restore a vote by town residents, and the wranglingover zoning has continued. Different sentiments have been heard in the town of Middleton and in towns across Dane County. But this is about more than zoning and land use. This is about democracy.
When you cut the people you are elected to represent out of the process, thats going to haunt you, said Dane County Executive Joe Parisi, a critic of the zoning opt-out bill. People in our community overwhelmingly want us to manage our growth in a manner that maintains the quality of life and the character of our community. And people want to have a voice in how we grow.
There are voters in Dane County towns who have agreed with Parisi, just as there are voters who have disagreed.
Whats essential is that the process remain open and transparent, that barriers to civic participation be removed, and that voting is easy, inclusive and definitional.
Thats something conservative Republicans in the Legislature do not understand.
They have little respect for local democracy especially when local democracy might trip up the plans of development interests that make substantial campaign donations.
If write-in candidates mounting last-minute bids on behalf of local democracy can win in the town of Middleton, they can win in other places as well. And a new generation of contenders can take on the Republican legislators who so frequently disrespect and disregard the will of the people who live in Wisconsin towns, villages and cities.
Newly elected town of Middleton Chair Cynthia Richson got it right when she said after her write-in win: I would hope that it would be a reminder and perhaps a wake-up call to other representatives who may be deciding that once they get elected that they can pursue any agenda they personally want to as opposed to reaching out to their electors and taking public input.
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Editorial: Rejecting the Republican war on local democracy ... - Madison.com
Elif Shafak is a Turkish novelist and essayist whose works include The Bastard of Istanbul, The Architects Apprentice and Three Daughters of Eve. The WorldPost interviewed her about the results of Turkeys historic referendum granting President Recep Tayyip Erdoan sweeping new powers.
What does it mean for Turkeys long experiment with democracy now that President Recep Tayyip Erdoan has gained more autocratic power through this referendum?
First of all, it needs to be acknowledged that the months of campaigning prior to the referendum were neither balanced nor fair nor free. Every day and night the yes vote was propagated all over Turkish media, both print and TV, most of which are blatantly pro-government. The no vote was not given an equal voice or a free platform to express its concerns. Most of the states resources and news outlets were unilaterally used by and for the yes campaign. People who publicly dared to say that they were going to vote no were intimidated, bullied and attacked by trolls on social media and some of them even lost their jobs. President Recep Tayyip Erdoan included, the AKP [or ruling Justice and Development Party] elite repeatedly accused supporters of the no vote of siding with terrorists. We therefore need to understand the turbulent background to this referendum. Turkey has become the worlds biggest jailer of journalists. Academics have been sacked for signing a peace petition. The co-leaders of the pro-Kurdish HDP, [or Peoples Democratic Party], alongside the local mayors, have been detained and imprisoned. In such a climate of fear and intimidation, how can there be a free, fair and balanced referendum and especially on such an important issue that will alter the countrys entire political system?
This referendum is going to have a massive impact on Turkeys destiny for generations to come. And Turkeys journey will have an impact on an entire region. A decision of such magnitude has been taken through an unfair, one-sided campaign with a slight margin of electoral victory in the end. Given the fact that the governments propaganda has been so widespread and systematic, it is remarkable that only 51 percent have voted yes eventually and that with some serious questions as to the validity of the total number of votes. What the electoral board did at the last minute changing the rules and deciding to count the votes without unofficial stamps was totally unexpected, scandalous. So I am sad about the outcome and worried about my motherland. The referendum has not solved anything. If anything, it deepened the existing cultural and ideological divisions. There is no national consensus, there is no culture of coexistence. Sadly, there is no unity among the opposition either. Turkey is going through not only a political crisis, but also an existential one. Ours is a nation in a deep identity crisis.
Umit Bektas / Reuters
What do the referendum results mean for Turkeys relationship with Europe?
Turkeys relationship with Europe has already hit a rock bottom. The governments rhetoric is jingoistic nationalist and anti-Western, especially with Europe. So we can expect an escalation in that kind of language now. But these things can change and fluctuate, depending on the politics and the interests of the day, for both sides. We should also bear in mind that Turkey is a society of collective amnesia. Last year, Russia was the enemy. This year, it was our friend. It is amazing how fast feelings and foreign policies change when societies are unstable. In fact, one of the first things Erdoan mentioned in his victory speech was reinstating the death penalty. This means severing ties with the European Union. The hegemonic discourse in Turkey today is shaped by Islamism, Turkish nationalism and Euroskepticism.
Does this mark the most significant turning point for the Turkish republic since Mustafa Kemal Atatrk? In a way, is it the final repeal of Kemalism?
This is the most significant turning point in Turkeys modern political history. It is a shift backwards; the end of parliamentary democracy. It is also a dangerous discontinuation of decades of Westernization, secularism and modernization; the discontinuation of Atatrks modern Turkey. Those who defend the presidential system are trying to play it down by arguing that it will be just like France or America. But it wont. It wont because we do not have the culture of democracy, we only have the shape of democracy. In Turkey, the ruling elite do not understand that you need more than the ballot box for a proper, functioning, pluralistic democracy. Turkey does not have the same checks and balances, rule of law, separation of powers and free/diverse media that the U.S. and France relatively enjoy under their presidential systems.
BULENT KILIC via Getty Images
A little over a year ago you said the crackdown on media in the country and the refugee crisis were causing Turkey to slide backwards and become increasingly polarized. You say the referendum is also a shift backward. The narrowness of the victory, the critique by monitors and Erdoans loss of Istanbul also highlight these divisions. What does this identity crisis mean for the future of Turkey?
Turkey has been sliding backwards for many years now. It is not new. But there have been accelerating factors and moments when the decline in our democracy became faster, sharper. The collapse of relations with the EU was one watershed moment. The abandonment of the peace/reconciliation process with the Kurdish PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] was so sad, if not dangerous. Another horrible moment was the bloody coup attempt in July. Then came the purge. Today, politicians and pro-government newspapers tell young people that it is better to abandon any prospect of joining the EU and walk in the other direction and enter the Shanghai Pact [also known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization] with Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and China. Its true that this would be the right place for any country with a depressing freedom of speech violations record.
Last summer you described the coup attempt in Turkey as a nail in the coffin of democracy and said we are heading into a Kafkaesque world. Where does Turkey go from here? What are you most concerned about?
The coup attempt was wrong, shocking, sinister and it made everything worse. Turkeys liberals and democrats do not want another military takeover. They dont want a military or a civilian dictatorship. What we need is a proper, functioning, pluralistic democracy. I do not wish anyone in Turkey to have extraordinary powers, to tell you the truth. Whoever has power, demands more and then more. It is never enough. So, primarily, I am concerned about the monopolization of power, the crackdown on diversity and dissent. Turkey is fast becoming yet another Middle Eastern country. Once we used to think this country was a successful and sui generis synthesis, blending a majority-Muslim culture with secularism and Western democracy. No longer.
OZAN KOSE via Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump recently congratulated Erdoan on his win. How might his victory impact U.S.-Turkey relations? Do you think Erdoansnewly won power will give hope or momentum to other populist leaders worldwide, specifically Marine Le Pen ahead of the French election? If so, how so?
What is very worrisome is how democracy stopped being a priority, both in the East and in the West. This is the trend we need to reverse across the globe. How can we make democracy a priority again? After decades of globalization, whether we like it or not, we are all interconnected. That is why the kind of isolationism that populist movements champion is neither feasible nor realistic. Populists are encouraged by each other, for sure. The erosion of democracy in one country gives pretext for the erosion of democracy in another country. Extremism in one country breeds extremism elsewhere. Turkey holds important lessons for the world. Turkeys story is a lesson in the fragility of democracy vis--vis populist demagoguery.
Are there any benefits to this result? Stronger defenses against terrorism or a reunified Cyprus, for instance?
That is what the proponents of the presidential system claim they say Turkey will be stronger and decisions can be made speedily. They also say that in the Middle East, we need to choose between stability and democracy. But this is a false dichotomy. Those who believe in this have learned nothing from history. History has shown us time and again that top-down monopolization of power, no matter by which individual, group or party, will bring only unhappiness, and unhappy nations cannot possibly be stable.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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Turkey Is A Cautionary Tale Of Fragile Democracy, Says Turkish Novelist - Huffington Post
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Image via Wikipedia)
Turkeys April 16 referendum will be long remembered as a turning point in the countrys political history.
Turks were asked to grant additional executive powers to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, bringing an end to the separation of powers. The 18 proposed constitutional amendments grant the Turkish president sweeping authority over the executive, legislative and judiciary branches, including power to dismiss the Turkish Grand National Assembly and autonomy in drawing the state budget with minimal parliamentary oversight and directly appointing 12 members of the 15-member Constitutional Court. The post of prime minister will also be eliminated to make way for an executive president.
The meager 51.4 percent yes vote shows a divided Turkey. In main urban centers and western Turkey, people overwhelmingly voted against the executive presidency, while rural and poorer segments of the Turkish society mostly voted in favor of strong-man rule.
The no campaign has called for the cancellation of the vote due to fraud. They argue that the High Electoral Board unlawfully allowed for the count of 1.3 million unofficiated yes ballots halfway through the count, tilting the result in favor of Erdogan. A group of international observers has also voiced concerns over the legality of the referendum.
Lets take a look at how a once trustworthy NATO ally, an aspiring EU candidate and an emerging power came to the brink of autocracy.
Erdogans AKP, the Justice and Development Party, has been running the country since 2002. This 15-year-long journey started with a series of democratization reforms supported with steady economic growth.
Ever since his days as the mayor of Istanbul during the 1990s, Erdogan has built his political career as a crafty politician willing and capable of making temporary deals with nonconventional partners against common enemies. For example, Erdogans persistent struggle against the Turkish militarys influence over the regime helped him gain the alliance of the secretive Fetullah Gulen network.
Id argue that liberals in Washington, D.C. and in European capitals misread Erdogans ambitions. They saw him as an open-minded reformer who could bring Islam and democracy together at home and abroad. Barack Obama visited Turkey on his first major foreign trip in April 2009 to underline Turkeys unique role in the Middle East. I myself recently edited a volume that examines a period (2007-2011) when Turkish diplomats and businesspeople served as mediators in different parts of the world from the Western Balkans to Somalia, from Golan Heights to Afghanistan.
But that period was short-lived. The turning point in Turkeys slide toward authoritarianism came as the result of a major miscalculation in international politics.
In 2011, in the wake of the revolutionary uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria, Turkeys former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu saw a great opportunity for Erdogan and his AKP to leverage Turkeys liberal Islam model elsewhere in the Middle East.
Erdogan unconditionally supported Islamist groups across the region under the disguise of supporting democratization against dictatorships. Even after the revolution in Egypt failed, Erdogan persisted in pursuing pro-Muslim Brotherhood policies across the Middle East. As the Syrian civil war raged on, Turkey allowed jihadist fighters to cross from Turkey into Syria to fight against the Assad regime.
With time, Turkeys sizable democratic and liberal-minded population began to react against the growing government intervention in their way of life. The Gezi Park protests in summer of 2013 started against the demolishing of a central city park in Istanbul to build a shopping mall. However, it quickly turned into a widespread pro-democracy show of force against Erdogan and his brand of Islamist politics. This drove Erdogan to relinquish his ties with his former liberal allies.
Another thorny issue for Erdogan has been making peace with the countrys 14 million Kurds. Kurds have been demanding political and cultural autonomy from the central government in Ankara. Clashes between the the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Turkish military have cost lives of more than 40,000 people over the last four decades.
When official peace talks began between Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, and President Erdogan, a sense of optimism prevailed in the Kurdish towns of Turkey. But the peace process lacked parliamentary oversight, and it collapsed when Ankara refused to help the Kurdish fighters surrounded in September 2014 by the Islamic State in Kobane, Syria just a few hundred yards from the Turkish border.
The following summer, the AKP lost its majority in parliament when a pro-Kurdish party won a record number of seats. As a result, Erdogan unilaterally ended the peace process with the PKK. He built a new alliance with ultra nationalists that carried out retaliatory attacks in Kurdish population centers, further alienating the Kurds from the countrys political mainstream. Many elected Kurdish MPs and mayors have been imprisoned since the failed coup attempt in July.
Erdogans last and most formidable enemy turned out to be his former ally, the U.S.-based cleric Fetullah Gulen and his secretive and extensive network. Erdogan believes the Gulen network was behind the failed coup attempt of July 2016. He alleges the Gulenists wanted to retaliate against Erdogans punitive measures against their education, business and media networks in Turkey which began after corruption allegations against Erdogan and his family.
Turkey has been living in a state of emergency since July 2016. Erdogan claims that the new executive powers granted him in the referendum will allow him to single-handedly cleanse the enemies of the nation from the judiciary, military and media. Already, thousands of people have been forced out of their government jobs and put in high-security state prisons due to allegations of being a member of the Gulen network.
Is democracy dead in Turkey?
The 51.4 percent yes vote certainly seems to mark the beginning of the end for Turkeys fragile democracy. However, Erdogans clear defeat in Turkeys urban centers and in the western part of the country suggests that a self-confident pro-democracy movement could make life much more difficult than Erdogan expected in the coming months and years.
Doga Ulas Eralp, Professorial Lecturer, American University School of International Service
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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A Turning Point For TurkeyAnd Democracy Across The Globe - GOOD Magazine
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: In what may be the single largest dismissal of wrongful convictions in U.S. history, Massachusetts prosecutors announced Tuesday theyre going to throw out 21,587 criminal drug cases. The cases were all prosecuted based on evidence or testimony supplied by a former state chemist who admitted to faking tests and identifying evidence as illegal narcotics without even testing the evidence. The chemist, named Annie Dookhan, pleaded guilty in 2013 to tampering with evidence during her nine years working at a state crime lab in Boston. During that time, thousands of people were convicted based on her false statements. Tuesdays announcement is a major win for civil liberties attorneys and public defenders who spent years in litigation fighting to have these drug cases dismissed. Many of the so-called Dookhan defendants have completed lengthy prison sentences and continue to suffer the consequences of being convicted of a drug offense, from not being able to get jobs to already being deported.
Well, for more, were joined by three guests. Matt Segal is with us in D.C. He is the legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. Mallory Hanora is a member of the Boston-based group Families for Justice as Healing, which has been advocating for those wrongfully convicted as a result of tainted evidence handled in the scandal. And Timothy Taylor also joins us from Massachusetts. He was arrested in 2009, served five years in prison on a drug trafficking charge. Annie Dookhan is on record as having handled evidence in his case. Taylor has asked for it to be reopened.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Matt Segal, first talk about the breadth, the scope of this case. This is historic. Over 21,000 cases? Whats happening to them?
MATTHEW SEGAL: Well, youre right, Amy, and thank you for having me. It is historic. We think it is going to be, when all is said and done, the single largest dismissal of cases in U.S. history. And its because this misconduct was allowed to go on for so many years. And as a consequence of that, people have already served their sentences and have been living with the collateral consequences of those sentences. So what we hope will happen as a result of these dismissals is that it will allow people like your guest, Timothy, to move on with their lives, to rebuild their lives and to move on from these convictions.
AMY GOODMAN: So, give us the history of what took place, Matt. Talk about thethis one tester in Massachusetts and what this led to, how many years she worked there. And are there others involved?
MATTHEW SEGAL: Well, she worked there for around eight years. And, unfortunately, you know, it sort ofit takes a village to taint 21,000 cases. And although she was probably the only person who was intentionally falsifying evidence, there were a lot of missteps along the way. She was caught red-handed in June 2011. Her misconduct wasnt disclosed to the public until August 2012. And even then, prosecutors didnt step forward to voluntarily vacate these convictions. Instead, it took years of litigation by the public defenders, by pro bono lawyers and by the ACLU to get to this point now, where prosecutors, having lost in court at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in January, are agreeing to these dismissals. So it was, unfortunately, a really long and difficult process. But what were hoping comes out of it is a roadmap for dealing with these kinds of scandals, both in Massachusetts and throughout the country.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, explain again. What is the deal that was worked out? Originally, you had the state prosecutors pushing for individualindividual reconsideration of Dookhans cases rather than a mass resolution.
MATTHEW SEGAL: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: But whatultimately, how was it resolved?
MATTHEW SEGAL: Well, so, I mentioned the roadmap. And I think the thing that really flipped the switch and made these dismissals possible was putting the burden on prosecutors to come forward to say which cases that they think should be dismissed and which cases they think they could keep, using untainted evidence. And thats crucial, because when the state wrongfully convicts people, it should be up to the state to say how theyrehow its going to fix that problem, instead of requiring individual people, by the thousands, to come forward and litigate case by case. So, what happened in this litigation was our states highest court put that burden on the prosecutors to come forward, and to do so in 90 days from the courts decision, to identify cases to dismiss. And that flipping of the burden really opened the doors to a more just outcome. And in addition, what were going to see, going forward, is a process of giving robust and real notice to the people who are wrongfully convicted, so that they can take advantage of these dismissals and help to rebuild their lives.
AMY GOODMAN: How was Annie Dookhan caught, this chemist at the Hinton drug lab? How was she caught falsifying evidence? I mean, the number of people that she has been responsible for putting away.
MATTHEW SEGAL: Yes. Well, she was caught, essentially, several times, because people kept coming toreportedly, to supervisors at the lab, expressing concerns that she was doing a superhumanly high volume of testing. And it turns out thats because she was inventing the test results. But eventually, the final disclosure that allowed the public to eventually learn about this was when there was a transfer in who was running the lab where she worked. She was actually interviewed by the state police and essentially confessed to all manner of wrongdoing. And this was in 2012. And what had happened before then is that potential whistleblowers, people who came to lab managers to express concerns about their colleague, Annie Dookhan, were told things like, "Well, this is being handled as a personnel matter," when in fact it wasnt. So what we had was the silencing, really, of whistleblowers, of potential whistleblowers, and then followed by a state police investigation, which revealed this to the public in 2012.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about another lab worker, at another lab, at the Amherst lab, Sonja Farak, what she did?
MATTHEW SEGAL: Well, this was a lab worker who was actually, herself, suffering from addiction and was taking drugs and using drugs and even manufacturing drugs at the lab where she worked. And thatshe, too, has been prosecuted. But there, again, we havent seen resolution. And this is something that the ACLU and defense lawyers all across Massachusetts are working on. And thats why its sort of crucial that what we hope comes out of this is not only justice for the defendants who have been harmed, but a roadmap for fixing these scandals without allowing them to linger on for years, because the one thing we know about treating the problem of drug addiction or drug use as a criminal justice issue and not as a public health issue is that these kinds of scandals of wrongful convictions are going to be inevitable.
AMY GOODMAN: Mallory Hanora, you are with Families for Justice as Healing. Talk about
MALLORY HANORA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: first, your response to the vacating of these cases, the dismissal of the more than 21,000 drug cases, and how your organization was involved.
MALLORY HANORA: Im experiencing happiness when we win a victory for the people. I think that people have been waiting a long time to experience any amount of relief and validation for the burden that theyve experienced with these wrongful convictions. And the mission of Families for Justice as Healing is to end the incarceration of women and girls. And also, as women in the community, we experience harm when our loved ones go to prison and were dealing with our loved ones who arent with us. So, for us, we see this as a systemic issue. And moving forward, we are continuing to organize, because I agree with Matt that this type of abuse of power and misconduct is inevitable when were prosecuting so many thousands and thousands of people every year. And instead of doing this, we need healing, housing and treatment. We dont need to be railroading more thousands of people into the criminal punishment system.
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Massachusetts to Throw Out 21000 Drug Convictions After State Chemist Tampers with Evidence - Democracy Now!