Books & Spoken Word
Ece Temelkuran
The celebrated writer, journalist and political commentator, Ece Temelkuran, introduces her latest book, How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship.
Ece Temelkuran, one of Turkey’s best-known political commentators, has reported on democracy worldwide. She heard ‘it couldn’t happen here’ on the night of the Brexit vote; when Trump won in America (against chants of ‘Build that Wall’ and ‘Lock her up’); and when Erdoğan rigged elections, rebuilt the economy around cronyism, and labelled his opposition as terrorists in Turkey. The wave has continued with a populist government elected in Italy and severe restrictions on democracy and freedom in Hungary and Poland.
Temelkuran now offers a guide to spotting the insidious patterns and mechanisms of the populist wave sweeping the globe – before it’s too late. She identifies the early-warning signs of this phenomenon, which is sprouting up across the world from the West and Eastern Europe to South America, defining a global pattern and providing solutions to reversing this.
This event is part of the Festival of Ideas annual Coleridge Series, inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s wide-ranging and radical lectures in Bristol in the 1790s.
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