Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with a student who is from Turkey. He told of how unsettled he and his friends felt, watching from afar, as an insurrectionist mob, supporters of President Trump, descended on the Capitol on January, 6, 2021, in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the presidential election. His own country has had a fraught history with democracy. Turkey’s recent past offers a whole host of examples of disrupted democracy and struggles over power outside the electoral process. As recently as 2016, Turkey witnessed an unsuccessful military coup. Responding to the coup, the country’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, took a turn in an authoritarian direction. Among other actions, Erdoğan and his supporters abolished the office of Prime Minister in order to consolidate power into the office of President. This student and his friends were thus no strangers to the fragility of democracy. But the assumption has always been that these kinds of things happen in countries not long steeped in democracy; it is not supposed to happen in the United States, the nation that thwarted the age of monarchical empire by forging the flagship modern republic. The scenes of the siege on January 6th were thus disturbing and confusing.
Peaceful Transfers
Peaceful Transfers
Peaceful Transfers
Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with a student who is from Turkey. He told of how unsettled he and his friends felt, watching from afar, as an insurrectionist mob, supporters of President Trump, descended on the Capitol on January, 6, 2021, in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the presidential election. His own country has had a fraught history with democracy. Turkey’s recent past offers a whole host of examples of disrupted democracy and struggles over power outside the electoral process. As recently as 2016, Turkey witnessed an unsuccessful military coup. Responding to the coup, the country’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, took a turn in an authoritarian direction. Among other actions, Erdoğan and his supporters abolished the office of Prime Minister in order to consolidate power into the office of President. This student and his friends were thus no strangers to the fragility of democracy. But the assumption has always been that these kinds of things happen in countries not long steeped in democracy; it is not supposed to happen in the United States, the nation that thwarted the age of monarchical empire by forging the flagship modern republic. The scenes of the siege on January 6th were thus disturbing and confusing.