Interwar Europe had a whole bunch of extremely nationalist, corporatist, autarkist authoritarian governments. In fact, it’s probably easier to count the interwar European governments that weren’t described by those adjectives than the ones that were.

For the bigger picture, the relevant question for interwar authoritarian governments is probably “Invaded neighbors? Y/N” as the question “Repressed minorities Y/N” is answered Y in every case that comes to mind. Degrees varied of course.

cult of personality of the leader - this still survives today. Ataturk is basically the benevolent god of the state of Turkey. His bust is in every school, his portrait is on every wall, and his house is a pilgrimage site for worshippers.

extreme nationalism - Turkish nationalism is intense and was deliberately fostered by the state to draw a clean break with the Ottoman past. The language was reengineered to make it more “Turkish”, and we don’t really need to go deeply into the intense Kemalist hostility to minority ethnic groups in Turkey, which has seen the Christian ones killed and expelled, and the Muslim ones merely killed and ethnically cleansed to different parts of the country.

corporatist, autarkist economics - strong feature in all fascist and proto-fascist government and definitely present in Turkey.

There are too many similarities for it to be an accident. There was definitely meme-passing going around.

I could hardly agree more Mr. Muir! Something which has always infuriated me is the paucity of reports in the American and European media on Turkey’s genocidal war against the northern Kurds, or for that matter anything on Turkey’s ongoing efforts to erase the memory of the Armenian Holocaust (which EU and US tax money helps support no less). Coverage of Turkey’s illegal occupation of northern Cyprus is also either nonexistant or totally false.

In all my years I’ve rarely seen one hard-hitting (i.e. non-travelogue puff piece) report on Turkey. We desperately need better journalism here in the West vis-a-vis Turkey.

DSW

No, well quite. I think this is simply an example of the loose use of the term fascist to cover any authoritarian military regime you don’t like. My guess is he is referring to the military coup of the 80s. The old constitution was adopted in 1982:

http://www.oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl/tu00000_.html

By this token the Greece of the Colonels was also ‘fascist era’.

The FT article was a little fuzzy on some details. It also has a couple of odd factoids (”fascist-era constitution”? Turkey never had a fascist government) that make me wonder just how well informed the journalist is.

There’s a surprising lot of bad journalism about Turkey. I remember an article in the Guardian where the reporter expressed surprise that there were bicycle racks there. Turks can ride bicycles, who knew?

Anyhow, thanks for the update. I’d love to see a report on the proceedings of that conference! Anyone?

Doug M.