 Hello, hello, and welcome. I'm Meroen Kilili. We are DM25, a radical political movement for Europe. And this is another live discussion with our coordinating team featuring subversive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. And today we're talking about Turkey. Two weeks ago, a powerful earthquake ripped through the south of the country in the border zone with Syria. As we broadcast, the quake and its aftershocks have so far killed 46,000 people in Turkey and Syria. Hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed. Vital infrastructure lost. These events will have far-reaching consequences for a region already having a terrible time over the last decade. But today, as our hearts go out to the victims of this tragedy, we'll be looking at the politics of it. Turkey wields significant influence at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. And its leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has led the country for 20 years. The earthquake has left Erdogan particularly vulnerable, open to charges that his government reacted too slowly to the disaster, compounding his people's pain, and that the corruption and mismanagement he presided over resulted in unsafe buildings and a much higher number of casualties. Turkey has been struggling with a stagnant economy, a depreciating currency, rising inflation. It's also facing significant political and social challenges, including increasing tensions with neighboring countries like Greece over sea boundaries, social unrest, and at the escalating conflict in nearby Syria. With elections in both Greece and Turkey coming up in the next few months, what could these recent events mean for Erdogan, for his country, and for the wider region? Our panel, including our own Turkish activist, Defini Delkara and our own Yanis Faroufakis, investigates. And you out there, if you've got thoughts, comments, questions, concerns, rants, anything you want to get off your chest, please put them in the YouTube chat and we'll put them to our panel. Don't forget that if you would like to get notified whenever we put out new content, please click the bell icon on YouTube. Let's hand the floor now to Defini. Defini. Hello, thank you very much, Mehro. Just to rectify, I am in France, but yes, I am from Turkey. And these are obviously very upsetting and hard times. I won't go into the size, the geological exceptionalism of this earthquake and all these things that are already been talked about by geologists, small gists and all languages. Though I would touch upon how shallow the earthquake was. So that also was really remarkable. I mean, if you live in a country that is earthquake danger zone, you know, this is really even shocking for us. But we'll take the chance here, not to so much talk about the earthquake, but more about how we came to where we are today. And it's kind of fascinating actually, because we say, I don't know, I don't know if it was Hegel or something that said first as a tragedy then as a parse, because it's important to remember under what circumstances the AKP government came into power. So the party was founded in 2001 and they came to power one year after the foundation of the party in 2002. And it's very important to understand the backdrop of this for everybody, I think, because what was happening then in Turkey was they came at the aftershock of two maybe very important events. One was the 1999 earthquake that was a major earthquake that caused up to 18,000 deaths officially, most probably more. And of course, on the backdrop of a major economic crisis that Turkey went through in 2001. So already the Turkish government was in crisis, the economy was in crisis as a backdrop to the Asian market crash. And that was made, so there was already negotiations, loans from the IMF and then came the 2001 crisis which crashed the economy and got rid of the government at the time and bought in the elections that bought in Erdogan. So there was austerity, deflation, very hard times for everybody, big crisis reeling from the earthquake, reeling from economic pressures. And now if this tune is kind of sounding similar, it's because ironically, this is also exactly how it is today. We've been, the Turkish economy has been suffering and people have been suffering from high inflation for quite some time now. So, and there's been now a major earthquake. So it's interesting how things have turned out. So yeah, I thought that, so Erdogan's governments came on this backdrop as anti-Austrian and we will build, build, build with this type of very specific developmentalism because the AKP is Justice and Development Party, this very neoliberal developmentalist ideas with private partnerships and also important to maybe understand that Erdogan, although came as a populist leader, he was in no way, like he was left populist as we would understand it. He was basically the revenge of the old Islamic oligarchy against the secular oligarchy of Turkey. And he like not so long after, AKP became construction and construction became AKP, they grew a massive class around construction industry. And so this is what makes also this crisis so remarkable. And also the government has made very strange claims trying to like clean themselves, protect themselves of this very like obvious truth that everybody knows is by saying that, oh yeah, like 98% of the buildings were, that collapsed were before his time or some strange like ridiculous number that nobody was like, that things were more than two seconds can believe. So this is the backdrop and now I'd like to also talk a little bit about what happened after the earthquake. And as Mehran stated, it was extremely delayed responses. People were devastated for two days, there was almost no aid coming to these regions. And like every day people were on social media, on news channels saying, where is the state? The state was almost like, wait, oh us, we're supposed to be like as if this kind of public structures and institutions and aid has almost been a forgotten concept. Because for them the state was like construction building, military power, intrusion and nothing, all this thing of care and maintenance has been long forgotten. Although Erdogan had came into power by criticizing the previous governments on their failure on the 1999 earthquake. And we also saw the typical cronyism and corruption in what very little institutions that were left like the search and rescue institutions were filled with party members and their relatives with mostly that were like lacked any kind of expertise and showed on the ground, nothing was planned. It was really surprising. The scale of the chaos and the confusion almost of the state. So yeah, this was some of the things I wanted to say. Just looking, oh and of course everybody, so since there was no state it was people and solidarity that was trying to prevail. And this also panicked and scared the government for some reason because I guess like polarization has been such an important part of their body politic for such a long time. So as a big, at the height of the second day where people were really communicating through social media trying to organize their own aid, their own extraction teams, the government decided to close the social media and internet. So like it was really incredible to witness what the few reflexes of the state has. It's just blocked social media, do PR, try to, and they already own all the, have all the media. So really like the Emperor has no close moment. And the other shocking thing was the absence and very delayed response of the army. So normally in big catastrophes as we most of us seen during floods and fires in our own countries and even in COVID here in France for example, field hospitals, army, and because the roads were closed to the things you think that material the army has could have been directed this regions but the army was not deployed for unquestionable amount of time. And I remember one of the interviewees in Marash said that the first time I heard a helicopter sound was the helicopter that brought Erdogan to the region. So yeah, just to say and a reminder that we are NATO's second largest army. This is insane. We have all the army power and determination to attack Kurdish region in our own territory in Iraq and of course in Syria. And these regions know what the army is capable of. And then they needed the army. The army was not deployed. And so it was really interesting. And the only solution the whole time is the government officials saying on screen say, oh, don't worry, we construct in one year we will construct everything back in one year which terrified people even more because the extremely harmful developmentalism and urbanism and urban sprawl that the AKP had directed had caused has played such a big part in this disaster. And the state was somehow thinking this would reassure people while it frightened and angered them even more. So I guess I wanted to say everything. I mean, I could talk a lot longer but I will leave it to others. I just wanted to share a tweet that went viral from this girl called Sheyma and it was a tweet that was tweeted by her classmates in dentistry school. And she through the streets, she tweeted this in 2020 after the earthquake in Izmir. And she said, as someone who lives in the earthquake risk country and one of the high risk towns when I look on TV and see Izmir or I say to myself if one day this is me or my family, don't wipe wash this by saying, oh, they became angels. Please avenge me and look after our rights. So unfortunately, she died during the earthquake. So I think it shows very well with the theme. Thank you. Thank you very much for that, definitely. Thank you, Yanis. Let's begin or let me at least begin offering condolences to all the families, all the people who are there in Turkey, in Syria lost loved ones. The thought of some people, very few, still being alive and not having been reached by rescuers, the days that they have endured, buried alive and the nights and the horror, this simply fills our hearts and minds with horror. There is no doubt that the earthquake, any earthquake is a tragedy which causes enormous sorrow. But as we heard from Daphne, as we heard from many comrades in Turkey and in Syria, it is the thought of what preceded the earthquake, the complete lack of preparation, the violation of every building code that even the state of Turkey had imposed. And also the sorry response of the Turkish, Syrian, European world authorities afterwards, those are not a tragedy. Those constitute a crime. And the crimes of the authorities and the international community need not to sorrow but to intense anger in Turkey, in Syria, the world over. I shall begin, because Daphne already spoke about Turkey, I shall begin with Syria, not that I know much because nobody knows much. And we don't know much because Syria is sanctioned. Syria is encased in a big, tall wall built by the United States, NATO countries, European countries. It is preposterous. I was listening on the BBC the other day to an aid worker lamenting the fact that the NGO he was working for was sanctioned itself only last week, a few days ago, in the United Kingdom for having dared to gather money, the crowd fund, sending medicine and sending food to Syria on the basis that any organization that is money that will end up in some form in Syria is still sanctioned even after this deadly earthquake. So essentially the people of Syria are left there to rot in the ruins of first, bombed out and secondly, earthquake hit buildings. The fact that the West, despite its pretenses of caring about humanity, human rights, victims of disasters, after so many days, is continuing to prevent any kind of aid from going into the earthquake hit zones in Syria that is a crime against humanity. It is of equal veracity and veracity strengths and significance as the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies. It is a crime against humanity. There's nothing else to say about turning to Turkey. Daphne already mentioned that many of the important facets of the political economy of Turkey, which pertains to the manner in which the people of Turkey have been abandoned by the state. There is a delicious irony on the one hand, Erdogan rose to power as Daphne said because of the 1999 earthquake to a very large extent, which exposed the incapacity of the Turkish regime before 1999 to protect its own people. He learned no lesson. So now he's himself the recipient of this hunger for the fact that the people were left in an earthquake prone zone, completely undefended from an earthquake. There was, let me remind you, I'm sure most of you know it, but let's remind ourselves of it. There was a fund that people had to pay money into for decades in case there was an earthquake to pay for earthquake relief. The earthquake revealed that that fund had been completely and utterly sacked by members of the government of the governing party. The development, which as Daphne completely correctly said, the building development, I should say, not actual development, the housing bubble, the office bubble, the erection of buildings everywhere. Anybody who's been to Turkey over the last 20 years will have noticed that all slaves of countryside have been turned into motorways, into skyscrapers, into shopping malls. All that was the power of the AKP, the Erdogan government, hand in hand with developers. So in a sense, the AKP type of Islamist political force and economic force is nothing more than a housing bubble economic over covered up with a conservative pseudo-Islamist ideology that offers a cover for, I wouldn't call it definitely a liberalism. It's even more brutish than that. The plunder of earth, of communities and of people by developers who also pretend to be deeply religious. Some of them may be religious, but what they did, they did not because they were religious, but in spite of the religious. Now, a word of caution. In the West, there is a fallacy, there is a fantasy that whenever there is a government, which is illiberal, which is dictatorial, which is tyrannical, which is corrupt, cronist, like the governor of the one. Underneath the government, there is a boisterous democratic alternative that is pro-western and pro-human rights. And all that needs to happen is regime change for this democratic alternative to rise to the top. That's what they assumed when they invaded Iraq. They would democratize Iraq by getting, murdering Saddam Hussein and his cronies, and then suddenly democracy will spring up from the bottom. He didn't. Similarly in Turkey. On the one hand, Erdogan and his regime deserve to be defeated in the next election. But comrades, let me tell you that between you and I, don't tell anyone, it's our secret, I very much fear that the alternative would be worse. The Kemalists, who in the same way, definitely that the Erdogan Islamist oligarchy was waiting for his chance to exact its revenge on the pro-western Kemalist secular oligarchy. Now the latter is going to be exacting its revenge on Erdogan's oligarchy. And those Kemalists who are about, who may be, who may, if they get their act to get there and defeat Erdogan in the next election, which is far from certain. Well, they are even more nationalistic, even more militaristic, equally tyrannical as the Erdogan regime. Now, of course, there is a sway the political parties that are democratic, humanistic, are comrades of the Hadepe, for instance, but they will not be allowed to go anywhere near power after the next election. They will be banned, they will be imprisoned, they will be tortured. What we have is a permanent regime in Turkey which oscillates between different kinds of tyranny. We had the military inspired and propagated regimes prior to Erdogan. Erdogan at least, at least, tore Asanda, the power of the army to impose regimes. He created his own army of developers, who are now, who've now met their Kamapan's courtesy of the earthquake. I'm very worried about what's going to happen, not just in Turkey, but in the whole of the areas, the land mass and sea around Turkey, in the Middle East, in Libya, where Turkey is playing a very substantial role in the civil war there, all the way up north to Nagorno-Karabakh, where again, Turkey was central in determining the course of the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. What effect changes in Turkey are going to have to any chance of a peace process unfolding in the Ukraine? The Greek-Turkish relations, I have no doubt, that it will not get better if the opposition win. They may get much worse. There is no alternative to what DM-25 is doing, to transnational progressive politics, to helping our comrades in Turkey get rid of the yoke of both oligarchies, the Islamist and the secular, military-connected oligarchy, which is now trying to instate itself after Erdogan's fall, if Erdogan falls. Going back to the earthquake before I conclude, it was not just the absence of the state and of the army, that of course was the big item, the big headlines news, that the earthquake hit, there were tens of thousands of people that were under rubbles and the state was not there to help them, but it's worse than that. The state was active, even from day one, from the first moment in suppressing the people. Their number one concern was not to help the people. Their number one concern of the state and of the military authorities was to prevent the earthquake, unleashing political discontent against the regime, against the establishment. People who didn't have any way of communicating with one another except Twitter, there were these harrowing stories of people sending messages through Twitter, SOS messages under the rubble or holding the hand of the beloved ones, a hand that was sticking out of some hole. And what does the government do? It disconnects Twitter. The hostility with which the state and the regime treated its own people is indicative of how illiberal democracies, which let's not forget, begun in Turkey with Erdogan 20 years ago, before spreading to the rest of the European Union through, for instance, Erdogan in Hungary. Because Erdogan's model is the Erdogan model, the Polish social conservative ultra-right wing government is modeled on the Erdogan model. They are not practicing austerity those people. Erdogan never practice austerity, unlike other previous government, Republican secular governments in Turkey before. They have a two prong approach, whether it's Erdogan or Ban, the Polish nationalists, they invest in ancient traditions, whether it is the Catholic religion in Poland or Islam in Turkey, patriarchy, in other words, misogyny, orchestrated misogyny, and a combination of, on the one hand, helping out increases in minimum wages, inventions, looking after, but in a minimalist way, but nevertheless looking after, the very poor, this is the opposite of a state, that's not a state. Erdogan or Ban and the Poles are doing exactly the same thing, while at the same time handing over immense power to exploit to their mates, in the case of Turkey, mainly the developers. This model is crucially important for us to understand because it's one of the two faces of authoritarian, which is destroying Europe, which is paving the ground for right wing, racist, conservative, patriarchal, authoritarianism to grow, hand in hand and seemingly in opposition with the deep establishment, the secular establishment, the so-called liberal establishment, whether it is in Brussels or in Turkey for that matter. This is why I insist. The Kemalist oligarchy, which is waiting in the wings to replace the Erdogan oligarchy, is just as bad as the Erdogan militarist regime today. Our task should be to help our comrades in Turkey organize simultaneously against both kinds of oligarchy in the same way that we are in the business of fighting together simultaneously, the so-called liberal establishment in Brussels and the nationalist international across Europe. Thank you for that, Jernis. Two comments from the chat. First from Halil, my hometown of Antioch was raised to the ground. The state arrived three days later and from August. I feel anger over my sadness, he says. Hopefully this incident will be Erdogan's end. Judith, Judith Meier from Germany. Thank you, Mechan. I feel like everything has been said before by Wedefne and Jernis, but maybe I can add a bit perspective from Germany. Obviously, I'm not an expert on Turkey. And I think that here it's really awful, not just a tragedy itself, but it's awful how this is being instrumentalized by the worst parts of society here in the West. To validate the prejudices that people have against Muslims and against Turks in particular, when they hear that all these problems that Jernis and Dedefne have explained about these five big construction magnates that are very close to Erdogan, the lack of regulation, the amnesty that they got for the sins, the use of bribes and so on, it's very easy to assign these problems and say, oh, they're Oriental problems, right? This trap of Orientalization, when in fact they exist just the same in our societies. Just today I got another one of those popular memes about 10 giant corporations in the USA controlling virtually everything that is sold in the country. It pops up like every few years and people get angry, but also it doesn't change. 10 corporations like Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever and so on, they own all the other brands. In Greece, there's only five oligarchs which our party likes to name that also control basically everything. In Germany, there are only five companies that own hundreds of thousands of apartments to rent. Also there are similar oligopolies in other parts of the market. But just to give you an example, there's these five companies that own like the majority of the housing market. And in Berlin, we had an absolute majority in a referendum saying that these corporations should be expropriated with compensation, of course. And they're so powerful that no party dares to implement this. So we have a leftist city government in Berlin and it doesn't dare to implement this. So it's not Turkey, that's the problem. Or it's not this kind of Oriental structure of society as some people call it, it's everywhere. And it's oligopolies, it's everywhere. And they're having four main effects. One is that they can extort exorbitant profits from all of us, both from the customers and from the state. They cannot be allowed to go bankrupt because they're declared too big to fail. They cannot be regulated as this example in Berlin and in Turkey and everywhere shows. And this lack of regulation means that they endanger all of us through their practices. Thank you. Thank you. You did. Eric, Eric Edmund, our political director who was in Turkey a couple of weeks ago, for yours. Cheers, Mehran. Yes, indeed I was in Turkey a couple of weeks ago as part of an international delegation investigating. We were on a fact-finding mission on human rights violations in Turkish prisons, especially around the case of Abdullah Ötzelan, the leader of the PKK and founder of the PKK, but also how his particular case is essentially being used as an inhuman laboratory from where all sorts of human rights violations store against prisoners of being tried and then exported to other prisons around the country. And of course, a big part of our visit was talking to people from Kurdistan, from Turkish Kurdistan, from the HDP party and so on. So one of the things that I kind of looked into when this earthquake happened was how it affected specifically the Kurdish minorities in the places heard and hit the worst by the earthquake and also some cities that are indeed Kurdish minority and majority cities as well, further to the east. We talked a lot about corruption and ineptitude, but also Erdogan has not failed to use a national, a physical or environmental catastrophe to his benefit politically. He always tries to weaponize them by turning the state into a state of emergency, which is something that he's repeatedly done in the past in order to allow for extreme measures to be used towards essentially political opponents. So in this case, there's been a number of journalists who have been detained, both international journalists, but also people from the Kurdish minority. There have been Kurdish emergency workers who have had to work incognito, essentially in the areas affected because if it was found out that they came from the Kurdish Red Crescent, for example, they could be detained for a variety of reasons. And in general, mayors of the ruling AKP party, so Erdogan's party were prioritized in their cities were prioritized both in terms of information sharing during the crisis, but also in terms of aid and cities where there were bigger Kurdish minorities, there were cases where those areas where those minorities lived were left in a second or third rate of reaction from the limited reaction of the state as we've already discussed. So there's also this, how it's being weaponized against the Kurdish minority in general to promote Erdogan's political agenda. But I also'd like to talk about Europe's role in all of this because like Yanis also said, the way Erdogan's behaved in all of this is nothing new. Indeed, Turkey is now suffering the deeply rooted corruption and heavily set disintegration of the state after all these years of corruption and ineptitude. And this is a regime that our Europe has been supporting for the last decade, at least. And some would argue has never really truly opposed. If you look at the abhorrent Europe-Turkey deal which shovels over millions of euros to support Erdogan's dwindling economy in return for him incarcerating economic and war refugees in Turkey on our behalf, that's money that's being used by Erdogan, obviously not for the welfare of these people. We know that they are the only prisoners in Turkey in worse state than Kurdish political prisoners. So this is essentially a regime that Europe has been supporting exactly because we are terrified of our own far right we've ended up pretending to fight them to adopt it. A lot of their policies when it comes to refugees and migration and supporting Erdogan's regime is one of those. Sweden and Finland as part of their bid to join NATO are essentially bending a knee to Erdogan and are trying to please him in his political agenda in return for him allowing their ascendancy to the NATO alliance. Europe is entirely complicit in the state that Turkey is in and in solidifying Erdogan's power base and allowing him to remain in power for as long as he has. One last thing might sound as a bit of a technicality but the Council of Europe has had a case pending it's the longest pending case in its history of its committee against torture, CPT committee it's called on whether or not Turkey's regime under Erdogan has been violating prisoners human rights and they're dragging them feet about releasing the results of this report exactly because of political reasons aforementioned political reasons. Europe is pandering to Erdogan in his regime so this idea that we sit here and criticizing when essentially we are supporting him in his power base is really abhorrent. And I completely agree with what Yanni said the true allies that European Democrats have are the people on the ground in Turkey who are doing their best in order to not simply get rid of Erdogan but replace him with a truly democratic and just Turkish government. Thank you Eric. Just so you guys know there's a link in the chat at the top of the chat for anyone that would like to donate for humanitarian relief. We've gathered together a list of NGOs and if you click on the link you'll be able to see to donate directly. Two questions from the chat, a very specific one and a more general one first from Deniz. I believe this earthquake will bring a regime change but how can Turkey and already bankrupt country recover from this financially? By raising external debt the new regime will borrow more and from Nadia, our liberal democracies really neoliberal democracies actually distinguishable from illiberal democracies anymore. Okay, next Amir. Amir Kiayi, our Policy Coordinator, Flores Jules. Thank you Mehran. A lot has been said tonight and I just wanted to quickly frame this discussion slightly in terms of the enormous grief and anger that is being felt right now in Turkey and in Syria. And we can't imagine the heart-wrenching that is going on now every night when people are saying goodnight to each other not knowing the next morning if they will see their loved ones again. So it's quite a difficult time and this level of emotional, national grief especially linked to housing as a basic psychological need of course and the fact that Erdogan just a few months ago had promised half a million new houses to be built and the public's anger of course is very clear and this loss of public support will ordinarily mean that Erdogan and his party will lose their elections if it's held in a free and fair conditions. But of course we can see the track record of Turkish states in the past 20 years under Erdogan and any attempts all attempts we've made to hold on to power. So this creates a very worrisome situation that can also be instrumentalized if you like by the West and Turkey firmly into their camp seeing that the war in Ukraine is continuing to heat up and there's very little talk of peace or any encouragement towards those steps. So since the Turkey is so far withstanding pressure to join the sanctions regime and the Western powers we will see that this could also be instrumentalized in that direction, this grief and anger. This of course any regime change in that direction might also mean rapid accession of the Nordic countries into NATO and so on. So again as echoing what was said earlier on we have to keep our eyes open and hold the movements and encourage progressive voices to say no to either oligarchies and non-alignment position which we've been talking about as of quite a bit. Thank you Amir. Daphne, let's bring you back in Daphne Delcara. I just want to agree and disagree with Yanis and also underline what Judith said which is I think incredibly important because he has pleased like this Orientalizing narratives are useless. I think we are learning this by now and this we are a warning dear friends in Europe you know and Eastern Europe has been also an example of this as Yanis already said you know the Orbons the Ardons these people who came after austerity and gave crumbs and gained extreme amount of confidence from the public while the non-populous status quo establishment centrist parties were blind and deaf to the realities underground. So this is extremely true but there's something even a second as time goes on which is what happened to Ardons regime and which I'm in doubt I think what will also happen in Poland and Hungary is that although Ardons regime has started more was less hawkish than the Kemalist one at the beginning at 2016 after the massacre of the due to the ISIS bombing of peace activists in Ankara that killed over 200 people Ardons came to power can only hold down to power by entering into coalition with the ultramanationalist mHP party okay so let us remember that although in some ways these right-wing populist parties would first present themselves as moderates to more appeal to the things when their power is threatened they will have no second thoughts about aligning with these fascist forces I mean the mHP party is the gray wolves it's the party that used to kill communists and socialists in Turkey and now there's even a more right-wing party that is outflanking them this coalition to the right and caused a lot of problems in the multi-ethnic regions during the aid efforts with their hate speech discourses and as Italy has shown us it is you go right there's always something right that's going to come this capital continues to protect the status quo with all its intelligentsia and all that that right-wing drag continues this is, yeah, thank you I just want to add that I was muted, very bad of me I was saying, let me please bring Yanis back in just respond to Daphne and then we'll come to you Giulia Yanis the whole of the political spectrum is shifting to the right but that's everywhere it's happening in France, it's happening in Britain, it's happening in Greece and yes, Erdogan when he needed to form a coalition government to shore up his power he chose the Nazis, the fascists the people who burned communists the people who were available, very long tradition in Turkey supporting the military dictatorship and so on, it's completely right however, from this side of the GNC let me remind everyone that the Kemalist republicans were the ones that started wars or nearly started wars against us here in Greece in 1974, when we had the fascist dictatorship here in Greece which incited the Cyprus inferno by staging a coup against Macarius and Cyprus but nevertheless, in Turkey remember who was in government? Mr. Egevit Mr. Egevit was the social democrat and he's the one that ordered to get the Americans, of course the Turkish army, navy and air force to attack Cyprus and to start a war a war that still hasn't ended in Cyprus with a divided island with constant aggression 1996, in the middle of the night our two countries nearly came to blows nearly came to full blown out war under one of those republican social democratic governments a bit further back I should have said that before talking about 1987, that in the summer we nearly had a hot war in the middle of the Aegean when the Kemalist social democratic by Erdogan standards progressive government nearly began a war against the Greek Pasok socialist government so when I said definitely that I fear what will happen after Erdogan falls when the the heirs and successors of the Egevit social democratic centrist powers take over this on a very strong historical precedent those who present themselves as a bulwark against the fascists that joined Erdogan who have a strong tradition of falling back on a Kemalist secular army tradition they are just as much enemies of the Turkish people and enemies of peace in the area as Erdogan is this is why we need him this is why we need him because the establishment two choices are not really choices thank you Yanis a comment from the chat from Padre Liz this earthquake won't shake Erdogan to the con on the contrary the Turkish society's fatalistic culture and its view of Erdogan as the father will guarantee that nothing will change internally that we were denouncing earlier this is a kind of bullshit orientalist hodgepodge the fatalism of the Near East of the Orient of people who are subservient to the dear leader to the dear father that pure racist claptrap no place for that on a dim call tell us in Turkey who are resisting Erdogan who are resisting the father figure who are being tortured and who are fighting left right and center day and night against that regime tell them that they are fatalistic subservient acquiescent and opened to the abuses of the big father figure in the name of Erdogan rubbish good point Yanis why do you've got the floor would you like to respond to the economic question of how Turkey could recover from this financially considering its state of its finances already look I have some views on this which will shock some of you firstly earthquakes are fantastic for capitalism they are godsend they are aggregate demand in Keynesian terms because once the bodies have been buried and the voices of dissent have been silenced then it's going to be rebuilding nothing is a greater gift to the building companies to the Erdogan's developers than the fury of rebuilding that's going to happen this is capitalism folks remember you go around town and you break down you just smash every window in your city GDP will go up demand will go up employment will increase capitalism needs disasters and if it doesn't have them from nature it causes them through war in order to revive its flagging animal spirits let's point out one that's generally this is not just for Turkey if it's for everywhere this is why capitalism had its best era the golden age of capitalism was after the Second World War nothing like a genocide in order to revive capitalism concentrates the mind but now the second view that that point of view that I will offer you which goes against the grain of traditional narratives about the Turkish economy well Turkey is being discussed as a basket case here in Greece in Europe in the United States or you know the economy is collapsing the economy is a disaster it isn't it is a hugely successful capitalist economy that doesn't mean that the people of Turkey are not suffering but who said that success for capitalism means prosperity for the people it does never did anywhere not in Turkey not anywhere somebody was saying about who's you know how's Turkey going to repay its bills and borrow money and you know wants the regime borrow more Turkey has no debt problem 45% of GDP I wish we had 45% of GDP increase we have 200% of GDP the United States has 110% of GDP Turkey has amongst the lowest levels of public debt certainly around Europe and indeed around the world Turkish industry is extremely strong and very well connected to the rest of the capitalist world both to the west in the European Union and to the east China you have massive production of washing machines refrigerators air conditioners cars it is a major industrial power there is more than 300 billion euros invested of German and French capital in Turkey Turkey is not Greece it is a far richer and more productive economy than what we have here or indeed of most European countries is the only garkic nature of the regime which creates such poverty and such hardship especially due to inflation inflation is hitting the masses in Turkey but the well to do are doing fine because then let's not forget that they don't deal in Turkish lira they deal in dollars and euros in gold there is enormous wealth in Turkey and even if you look one of the if you are not an economist and you want to piece of advice as to the one statistic you should look at in order to find out how viable an economist a capitalist economist look at the look at the balance of payments it all to be more precise the current account of a country I was looking at it last week I'm sure it hasn't changed much since last week I was looking at Turkey's current account during the height of its economic crisis 20 years ago Turkey had a minus 10% deficit in its current account in other words the country both private and public sector the state and privateers were borrowing 10% of the GDP from the rest of the world in order to make ends meet to date it's 1.7 minus 1.7 it's a very modest current account deficit the very controversial and to me unacceptable policies of very low interest rates that Erdogan is imposing upon his central bankers and if they don't agree he simply changes them is a high problematic policy but at least when it comes to debt and indebtedness what it means it makes Turkish exports to the rest of the world exceptionally cheap including Turkish tourism and it makes imports very expensive so effectively Turkey has balanced its collective books in ways that make the Turkish economy highly sustainable what is not sustainable is Turkish society and its costs are being blundered by the very few but comrades is the United States much different? No. Thank you for that Yanis and thank you all for that initial exchange on Turkey will be continuing our discussions on Turkey internally and of course on the YouTube comments after this is posted we'll close it there again our solidarity with the victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria and if you'd like to help please click on the link that's posted at the pinned in the chat and there's a list of NGOs and charities that you can donate to and if you'd like to be part of the action and join DM25 rather than just watching us talk then please go to dm25.org in a couple of minutes thank you again for watching and see you at the same time same place two weeks from now take care and stay safe