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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan is massively expanding his own powers.

If it seems strange that Donald Trump telephoned an authoritarian to congratulate him on becoming more of an authoritarian, thats partly because we dont expect to see such bold displays of international solidarity among these mens ideological foes. Certainly their foes would not call themselves foes. After all, good liberals arent proud liberals.

Of course you could argue that it was just a business call, Trumps overture lastweek to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan. Youd be correct in pointing out that the family shop hawks rather a lot of goods in Turkey, including a couple of shiny towers. And its not like he hasnt tried this stunt before; one of Trumps first acts as president-elect was to chat with the president of Argentina on the phone, reportedly about whether Buenos Aires could please stop giving him such a hard time about building permits.

But never mind all that. If the most important leadership skill is knowing how to delegate, the United States can at least trust its leader to know he can always send his daughter off to play diplomat whenever it becomes imperative to score, say, a trademark in China and Japan.

So its not business. Not just business, anyway. Its personal. Trump called Erdogan because populist authoritarian strongmen tend to understand that its in their interests to promote their ideological friends.

Promoting authoritarianism can be a dry and discrete exercise in policy implementation. It may take the form of a regimes favourite fascist-leaning candidate abroad benefiting from the provision of support services support services that may be rendered by Kremlin-bankrolled hackers and bag men, for example.

But its often overt. Like most people, authoritarians may seek the company of those with whom they have things in common. This goes some way toward explaining Silvio Berlusconis bizarre friendship with Moammar Gaddafi. (Although, in addition to having a mutual aversion to basic democratic principles, the former prime minister and chief media mogul of Italy and the late brotherly leader and reigning nut-job of Libya also enjoyed a taste for underaged girls. Theirs was a relationship based on many shared interests.)

Even if strongmen dont genuinely like or respect each other, though, it may benefit them to pretend that they do. Like any idea, ideology or form of government, people probably wont buy authoritarianism unless its sold to them. Putin, Erdogan and Trump have made sure that theyre singing the same terrifying and mindnumbingly stupid jingle: Were being brought down by the (insert preferred scapegoat from list that includes immigrants, liberal ninnies and continental Europeans here).

The leaders of liberal democracies need to find a sales pitch that is at least this compelling. Then they have to find the courage to pitch it.

It seems to me that you can build a pretty convincing case around liberal convictions. It worked for some revolutionaries a long time ago, anyways, and then for some street demonstrators. Granted, they cant make their case in all the same ways that authoritarians can, such as congratulating a leader on particular referendum results; that would violate the democratic norms that authoritarians are attacking. But I suspect its mostly courage thats lacking.

Liberals may be, I think, the victim of their own mistaken interpretation of tolerance. Liberals value a respect for difference. This is admirable. But some may risk stereotyping the very societies they claim to tolerate, presuming these societies to be somehow inherently hostile to the most foundational principles of democracy and human rights, and to be lacking any internal advocates for them.

This is not admirable. Not only is this a tolerance nearly as ignorant as the racism and xenophobia it means to counter, but the one type of obtuseness accidentally affirms the other.

The people of Turkey and Russia are no less deserving of human rights and civil liberties than are the people of the United States; the people of the United States, no less susceptible to the call of authoritarianism. To counter this call, perhaps liberal democrats need to make more calls of their own.

ShannonGormleyisanOttawa Citizen global affairs columnist and freelance journalist.

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