Cover artwork: Katinka Reinke

Our Septemer/October issue on the new ideological front line in domestic and international politics is out now – available at Google Play

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Here’s the table of contents:

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Source: YouGov; polls conducted July 20-27, 2016

Europe’s relationship with Turkey has certainly not been easy over the past few years. As the Turkish government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has drifted further and further away from liberal, secular democracy, it has become harder to cooperate on matters of regional security and economic policy without appearing to endorse policies that run counter to fundamental values of the European Union. Meanwhile, from Turkey’s point of view, the EU has been a capricious and unreliable partner, its interest in the country’s eventual accession seeming to wax and wane according to its needs.

A series of recent spats – including the Jan Böhmermann affair, in which the Turkish president pressed legal charges against a German satirist over a lurid parody poem – have strained the relationship even further, and domestic developments within Turkey, especially the 2013 Gezi Park protests and the recent coup attempt and its aftermath, have called the country’s internal stability into serious question. And of course, all of this is happening at a time when the EU needs Turkey more than it has in decades: the continuing civil war in Syria and the resulting refugee crisis, along with the threat posed by the so-called Islamic State, have made Turkey Europe’s indispensable partner, a state of affairs Erdogan has used to push for greater economic integration and relaxed visa requirements for Turkish citizens.

When, back in 2007, the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Trends poll asked whether Turkey’s becoming a member of the EU was likely or unlikely and what effect it would have on the union, a majority of Europeans said it was likely to happen, while a plurality said it would be neither good nor bad. In Turkey, on the other hand, a large plurality said accession would be good thing, but an even larger majority said it was unlikely to happen. Europeans were convinced they would have to accept a new member state, like it or not – and Turkey, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, just wanted into the club that wouldn’t have it as a member.

Since then, Europeans’ enthusiasm for Turkish accession has diminished considerably. A poll conducted by YouGov in late July showed overwhelming majorities in every state surveyed, from 67 percent in Britain to 86 percent in Germany, against Turkey joining the EU. Eight percent in Britain and France were in favor of Turkish accession, while in other EU member states the number was even lower.

This may be due in part to simple expansion fatigue – with the eurocrisis still not entirely over, Europeans may want a breather before attempting to absorb another economy into an already fractured and heterogeneous common market. To a certain extend the poll data bears this out: in Britain, 67 percent said Turkey should not join the EU, but 61 percent said the same of Israel and 60 percent said the same of Morocco. In France, where 74 percent were against Turkish accession, equal numbers were against Israel and Morocco joining, and two-thirds were against membership for Albania and Kazakhstan. In fact, of all the accession prospects investigated, including Croatia, Serbia, and Ukraine, the only one that enjoyed broad support was Iceland.

Germans, however, seemed particularly hostile to the idea of Turkish EU membership – which may come as a surprise, as Germany is home to the largest community of Turks outside of Turkey itself, with estimates of the total population ranging from 2.5 to 4 million.

That familiarity may be the problem. In an increasingly tense security environment, many Germans are beginning to wonder about the Turkish community’s loyalties, and discussions of the proper response to Islamist terror attacks have, as elsewhere, begun to converge with discussions of immigration and integration. A recently leaked German government report accuses President Erdogan of supporting radical Islamist groups and sees Turkey as a staging ground for extremist groups; and Chancellor Merkel has come under fire for calling on Germans of Turkish origin to “develop a high degree of loyalty” to Germany, a statement other politicians felt was unnecessarily divisive.

According to a July ARD-DeutschlandTREND survey, 90 percent of Germans feel that Turkey is not a trustworthy partner, compared to 72 percent who feel that way about Russia; majorities said they could trust France, Great Britain, and even the United States, chlorinated chicken and the NSA be damned.

If Europe is going to continue working closely with Turkey, work needs to be done to rebuild this trust. Turkish accession to the EU may be a moot point at the moment, but its membership in the European community – small C – remains essential.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – September/October 2016 issue.

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Faced with economic and social instability, countries are beginning to wind back the globalization clock. However, the international framework built after 1945 may well endure if policymakers take the right steps.

© REUTERS/Neil Hall

This year may be remembered as a turning point. The world appears to be pivoting away from a process of ever deepening integration and toward one characterized more by fragmentation and confrontation, both between and within states. We may even be witnessing a return to the anarchic society of nation states that followed their rise to prominence on the European continent in the 18th and 19th centuries. If so, the international institutions that provided the framework for “win-win” international relations after World War II will have proven only marginally more durable than their predecessors, which failed the tests of the 1930s.

A key question, therefore, is how the profound changes of the past half century – from advances in technology and communications to rising global wage levels and widespread urbanization – will interact with the re-emergence of these nationalist pressures.

Is the benign period of Western-led economic globalization coming to an end? What is driving the new era of populist, identity-led politics? How might these dynamics affect geopolitics? Finally, are existing international institutions capable of preventing a return to the violence and zero-sum thinking of the past – and if not, what are the alternatives?

The Global Economy: End of the Rope?

In the fifty years after 1945, citizens of the Western world grew accustomed to a slow but gradual improvement in their welfare and prosperity. The process began after the United States emerged as a victor from World War II and chose to extend a security umbrella under which its allies were able to rebuild their economies in a safe and rules-based environment. With US protection, all signed up to the notion that opening markets to trade and foreign investment was generally preferable to protection under state control.

This process of market opening has continued ever since. Multilateral trade rounds were shadowed by deeper regional initiatives, the most advanced being the EU’s 1992 single market, which removed regulatory barriers to trade. There are exceptions: agricultural markets remain highly protected, and all states retain sectoral restrictions on foreign direct investment. But overall, free markets became the norm.

After 1992 the European Union began its process of enlargement to the east, bringing workers with GDPs per capita far lower than those of their Western European counterparts into the EU. Investment flowed east, while workers from Central Europe traveled west. In Latin America, governments overcame their historical suspicions and sought opportunities to integrate with the US – Mexico joined the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) in 1994. Most significantly, China decided to open up its manufacturing markets to foreign trade and investment as a central lever to modernize its domestic economy. Its entry into the WTO in 2001, with US support, brought several hundred million well-educated, efficient, and low-paid Chinese workers into the global labor market.

The impact of these developments has been dramatic. The size of the global economy and, gradually, the global middle class grew. Cheap imports from China and other developing economies eased price inflationary pressures and helped raise living standards in the West.

But they also undercut the competitive dominance of many of their Western counterparts. This process was exacerbated by the high social costs of the Western welfare state, which had been affordable so long as Western countries were at the top of the value-added chain of global production, but looked increasingly unsustainable as these societies aged and others countries made the same products – or better – at far cheaper prices.

This decline in relative wealth across much of the West was disguised by a growing reliance on credit in the 1990s and early 2000s, as individuals borrowed against rising property prices and governments built up debt rather than reform welfare systems or raise taxes. In the end, this approach proved unsustainable, and collapsed in the global financial crisis of 2008. The good news was that governments in the West had learned the lessons of the 1930s and provided financial stimulus to ease the impacts of the crisis rather than raising protectionist barriers. But while economies stabilized, the political damage to the Western model that has served as the anchor of international prosperity and stability was immense.

The Rise of Identity Politics

When combined with the bad decisions and failed policies of the Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya interventions, and the lack of preparedness for subsequent waves of migrants and refugees, levels of popular trust in governments and elites across the West have plummeted in the past five years. Established political parties had already gravitated away from their ideological roots on the right and left toward the technocratic center in an effort to cope with the pressures of globalization. They have since proven themselves incapable of providing a convincing narrative that offers hope for the future or can explain how to cope with these challenges to large segments of their societies.

As was the case in times of previous major socio-economic disruptions, identity politics are stepping into the vacuum. The evidence is ubiquitous, with the rise of populist and nationalist parties in both the relatively wealthy North and more economically stressed South of Europe, as well as a virulent brand of populism among supporters of US presidential candidate Donald Trump. Each leader evokes the nostalgia of a more stable past, appealing to popular fears about an increasingly uncertain future. The Brexit victory in the United Kingdom’s referendum on EU membership was won by voters who wanted both to “take back control” of their national destiny and protest against the destructive personal impacts of globalization, including the ways that immigration appeared to be capping earning power while stressing public services.

The West has witnessed major socio-economic disruptions in the past, especially during the oil shock recessions of the 1970s. Are current generations being overly pessimistic when they now expect their children to be worse off in the future? There are two principal reasons for concern.

First, digital innovation appears to be on the brink of a new acceleration which could have a major disruptive impact on the employment prospects of the millions working in domestic service sectors and in white collar clerical work, people who were not affected by the changes in manufacturing employment brought about by the rise of industrial robotics and global supply chains.

Second, emerging economies appear to be struggling to transition from export-dependent, high investment, manufacturing-led economies to service-led, middle income economies. From China to Brazil and Indonesia to Turkey, the recent decline in growth rates may presage a politically disruptive period, especially as inequalities of wealth and opportunity widen. And emerging markets may not have the political resilience of the developed world.

There are two additional sources of concern. People across the world are now gathered in ever-growing urban agglomerations, many with the increased expectations of urban middle classes, others living on the edge of destitution. Both groups have ready access to information, making the work of governments in managing expectations far harder. Similarly, sub-Saharan and North African countries may not be able to cope with their enormous demographic youth bulges, leading to large new waves of migrants.

Under these pressures, the risk is that the leaders of emerging powers will nurture their own brands of identity politics, as Narendra Modi in India and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey already have.

The Return of Geopolitics

Despite the deep changes that have taken place in the global economy over the past 70 years, the building blocks of geopolitics are remarkably unchanged. States remain the dominant actors in the international system, and the same three states – the United States, Russia, and China – sit at the top of the geopolitical order. The UK and France remain in their roles as the principal reserve military powers, given their capabilities and positions as permanent members of the UN Security Council. Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan have become key players in their regions, but not yet at an international level.

The principal global institutions mirror this remarkable continuity. The permanent membership of the UN Security Council appears impervious to change, as does its governance structure. The roles of the IMF and World Bank have been called into question, and – with the arrival of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank – challenged regionally, but there are as yet no challengers to their primacy at a global level. NATO and the EU continue to represent the interests of the West in and around Europe, while Russia now seeks to re-assert its sphere of influence around its neighborhood. Other regional organizations, from ASEAN to the Gulf Cooperation Council, continue to operate on an intergovernmental basis, more as forums for debate and coordination than for action.

The question is whether this continuity is now deceptive, and whether the political and geo-economic disruption described above is feeding into a more turbulent period geopolitically. The signs certainly seem to be pointing toward growing disconnection between the dynamics of 21st century economic integration and the persistence of 20th century geopolitics. As the disruptive aspects of global economic integration come to the fore, domestic identity politics are starting to morph into identity-based international politics. If expectations cannot be met domestically, leaders around the world will return to the tried and tested approach of finding distractions and enemies abroad. The positive dimension of identity politics is that it can be a unifying and motivating impulse domestically; but it generally means identifying yourself divisively against an “other”.

The most visible sign of this phenomenon is the re-emergence of “strongmen” leaders who express their determination to make their countries “great again.” Trump has been most explicit in his arguments, seeking to link the decline in living standards of working class Americans with the perceived decline in the status of the United States as a world power. But America’s return to “greatness” would be meaningless without a nation against which to measure the reversal of this perceived decline. Thus, Trump rails against China for undercutting the American worker, while making more positive comments about Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin, who embodies the sort of zero-sum outlook that his identity politics encourage.

For Putin, however, the US is both the principal obstacle to and greatest argument for Russia’s becoming great again. Creating a sphere of influence around Russia’s borders has the double benefit of insulating Putin’s domestic political power from external intrusion, while underpinning that power with a popular political pride, despite Russia’s continuing economic decline. As a number of Russia analysts have recently noted, Putin is slowly shifting his population into a defensive mobilization mentality that will make their integration into the global economy even more difficult.

The evolving situation in China is no less worrying. President Xi Jinping is in the midst of a drive to centralize political power, the scale of which has not been seen since the Mao era. There are many reasons for this drive, but high among them is the fear that the current difficult domestic economic transition will leave the Chinese Communist Party vulnerable to internal challenge and external pressure. One way for Xi to justify this process of centralization has been to launch a widespread, public campaign to root out “Western” influences in China, alongside a protracted anti-corruption purge. Escalating tensions with the US in the South China Sea have provided another impetus for solidifying popular support around the Party.

Even in Europe, domestic identity politics are blending with external considerations. Implicit in the UK Brexit campaign was the idea of escaping the cold embrace of the EU in order to make Britain great again on the world stage. And a subtext to the strongmen leadership styles of Viktor Orban in Hungary and Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland has been a need for these once great countries to stand up to the German leadership of the EU.

Finding Forces of Stability

Governments across the world are struggling to cope with the dizzyingly fast pace of economic, social, and technological change. Over the past sixty to seventy years, they have been able to turn to the institutions they built after the World War II and their successors – from the UN and IMF to the EU, WTO, and G20 – to help manage economic disruption and leverage positive change to create “absolute gains.”

Today, however, multilateral political and economic institutions appear to be incapable of managing the end of a period of historically unprecedented global economic growth. The problem is that the global economic integration of the past decades has led to changes in the balance of political power (including a decline in the acceptability of US leadership without a corresponding rise in the willingness of others to lead) that are not reflected in existing multilateral institutions. Reforming those institutions, absent a major global crisis like World War II, seems to be a forlorn hope.

Two positive avenues lie ahead as alternatives to a drift into greater instability. One is to reinforce those existing security institutions that can best play a deterrent role against the possible rise of conflict over the next decade. In Europe, the deterrent role of NATO against conflict escalation is once again central. US bilateral security alliances in Asia and the Middle East may also be of increasing importance. Equal effort must be put into reinforcing institutions such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which, however anachronistic its governance structure, at least provides a framework for controlling the spread of nuclear weapons.

The second, more difficult avenue is for governments across the world to focus on improving the quality of their own national governance. Administrative excellence, including effective tax collection, the use of e-government, and a focus on anticorruption; the modernization and disaggregation of energy infrastructure; preventing growing divergences between rural and urban development; investing in education and work apprenticeships; universal access to healthcare; better partnerships with business and civil society organizations – these should all be critical objectives today for developed, emerging, and developing countries alike. Trends that could pose disruptive risks could, with good governance, just as easily become parts of the solution. Building digitally-integrated urban areas, for example, could help manage mass populations, generate jobs, and sustain welfare systems for aged and young alike far more efficiently than today.

Delivering quality national governance will be essential if political leaders are to cope with the disruptive pace of change in the 21st century and avoid a return to the identity-led conflicts of the recent past. But to do so, popular majorities must demand professionalism from their leaders, rather than indulging in the short-term panacea of identity politics that so many of their leaders are peddling today.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – September/October 2016 issue.

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Populist is an inadequate term to describe Europe’s surging breed of politician who believes that everything would be better again if borders regained their old strength. Here’s how they could be tackled.

© REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

The use of the word “populist” to define and characterize the new boogeymen of European politics clearly shows that there is something wrong with how they are discussed. The term implies that they are merely listening to the will of the people – and what could be wrong with politicians and parties listening to the people? Nothing, of course. What is disturbing and shocking about today’s populists is not that they listen to the general populace (which they often do not actually do); the problem lies in the fact that they do not offer viable solutions to political problems. …

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – September/October 2016 issue.

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In the wake of Brexit, crowing right-wing populists throughout the continent are calling for the further dismantling of the European project. But they are contending with very different domestic audiences.

© REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo

France: Fists Are Flying

There was celebration among both right- and left-wing populists when the results of the Brexit referendum were announced. But while the Front de Gauche still hopes for a remodeling of the EU, the Front National is already preparing France’s exit.

Two fists circled by the stars of the EU flag are freeing themselves from their chains – a quickly understood image, accompanied by the caption: “Brexit, and now France!” The result of the British referendum has barely been announced, and the Front National is already presenting its new poster repeating its demand for an exit referendum in its own country.

No wonder: in that far-right party, British refutation of the EU is cause for celebration. Party leader Marine Le Pen triumphantly spoke of a “victory of freedom.” In the week following the referendum, she celebrated in a press marathon, the result of which is supposed to pave the way for a “free and sovereign” France.

No other party followed the campaign as closely as Front National. If Le Pen were to become president, she would want to organize a referendum on France’s EU membership within the first six months of her mandate. She would use the interim to negotiate the country’s retrieval of complete sovereignty from Brussels. In the ideal world of the far-right, France would regain control over its borders and currency – meaning it would leave both Schengen and the eurozone. Moreover, it would reduce its net contribution to the EU budget to zero, and have a free hand in matters of economic policy so that it can engage in “smart protectionism.” National rights would have precedence over community rights. A newly created “Ministry for Sovereignties” would be responsible for the coordination of such negotiations.

It is difficult to assess whether Front National would follow this hard line if it won the national elections. The debate within the party is more divided than it may seem, but the representatives of other policies – such as those advocating remaining in the eurozone – are completely marginalized.

The Front National’s stance on Europe does not yet have majority appeal. According to a study conducted shortly after the British referendum, 45 percent of the French are in favor of remaining in the EU, while 33 percent would like to leave. But even if the supporters of a “Frexit” are still a minority, they are nonetheless a consequential bloc, one which will influence political discussion in the coming months. And as the population remains unenthusiastic about the future of the European project, political parties will utilize these doubts and fears all the more.

When asked about the ideal reaction to Brexit, a clear majority of the French call for the member states to be more independent from the EU; only a quarter of the sampled population wishes for new steps toward further integration. – BY CLAIRE DEMESMAY

The Netherlands: Wilders’ West

The Brexit decision was grist for the Dutch far-right populists’ mill. Is “Nexit” looming? Even if there is at present no legal basis for a referendum, holding one could unleash an uncontrollable political dynamic.

Geert Wilders enjoyed June 24. The far-right Dutch populist tweeted, “Now it’s our turn” right after the results of the British referendum were released to the public; he then repeated his longstanding demand for such a referendum in his own country.

Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) has been the most popular party in Dutch polls for almost a year. A majority of the increasingly euroskeptic Netherlands would like to vote on a potential exit from the EU. Right now, 48 percent of Netherlanders would vote for a “Nexit”, 43 percent against.

This does not mean that anything is pre-determined. The legal basis for Nexit is lacking, for one thing. Referendums can only be held on new laws and contracts – though some are already wondering whether Nexit would not count as a contract modification, which would allow a referendum.

But it is unlikely that Wilders would want to support such a tricky move. What looks more promising is the prospect of a corrective referendum, which would allow the country to address the question of EU membership directly. This possibility is stuck in parliament – the necessary change in the constitution would require a two-thirds majority that the first chamber does not have.

But majorities could change, as there are new legislative elections in March. Most of the campaign will revolve around the country’s relationship with Europe. And the more the British government succeeds in mitigating the direst economic consequences of Brexit, the stronger Wilders’ position will be in the upcoming elections.

Moreover, the central parties are not only under fire from the right: when it comes to Europe, the PVV has an eager comrade-in-arms in the similarly euroskeptic and often populist Socialist Party (SP). Even though the left is not demanding a complete exit from the EU, it does call for a significantly downgraded EU membership.

Neither the SP nor the PVV has made it into either national or local office so far. In 2010 Wilders came rather close to obtaining power, playing a minority role in a coalition of right-wing liberals and Christian Democrats under the current Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Wilders helped Rutte reach a majority, but the structure fell apart in 2012 when an MP left the PVV, saying he could no longer suffer Wilders’ “dictatorial leadership style.” Wilders cut the experiment short, recognizing correctly that he is better in opposition than in government. He has since become even more radical in his assertions.

Politically, a Nexit vote would put the Netherlands in a difficult situation. A pro-European cabinet like the one currently in power could not bring about an exit; it would inevitably crumble. And if he wanted to avoid sizeable economic damage, a Prime Minister Wilders would have to put together a constructive hybrid solution for his country, which could prove challenging.

He claims to have a plan for this, based mostly on reports he ordered from two British institutes. According to these studies, there would be short-term risks, but Nexit would be beneficial in the long run, bringing each Netherlander €9,800 more per year.

The institutes admittedly assumed that the Netherlands would easily succeed in securing advantageous trade deals with the rest of the world, including the EU – even Wilders acknowledges that retaining access to the single market is essential.

Under Wilders’ plan, however, Poland and Romania would maintain freedom of movement, and the Netherlands would still be on the hook for relatively high contributions to the EU. The Hague would have to accept EU laws almost entirely, without the ability to shape them in Brussels. If the guilder were re-introduced as an independent currency, it would, according to Wilders, entail costs for two years but then settle down; but he also thinks it would be possible to “follow the euro,” meaning the guilder would become a pseudo-euro. In terms of security policy, Wilders’ motto is “Out of Schengen, thick borders.” Muslims would stay out of the country. Police and law enforcement officers would cooperate outside the framework of the EU.

Does this look like a promising future for the Netherlands? The other parties will band together to prevent Wilders from becoming prime minister. The question is whether that will be enough: an EU referendum, even one lost in advance, could trigger a dynamic beyond control. – BY THOMAS KIRCHNER

Northern Europe: Playing with Fire, Using a Small Flame

Precautionary Brexit tourism among the Finns, disunity within the Danish People’s Party, a clearer anti-Europe course for the Swedish Democrats. As soon as the populists of Northern Europe are in power, they fall apart on EU questions.

Resistance against the EU rescue fund, along with criticism of the common currency and Brussels in general, have helped the Perussuomalaiset party (the Finns, formerly known as the True Finns) grow.

They first made it into government in the elections of April 2015, winning almost 18 percent of the vote. But only a few months passed before the party abandoned one of its main demands and voted for a new aid package for Greece in the summer 2015 for the sake of peace within the coalition.

The Finns have had to learn how to build voter support when they are shaping policies from within government rather than rejecting policies from outside. In the meantime, the party’s approval ratings have fallen drastically; at the moment, only 8 percent of voters say that they would vote for them.

In fact, many Northern European right-wing populists seem willing to compromise as soon as they reach power. After the Brexit vote, calls for EU exit referenda were understandably muted – it is one thing when such demands come from the opposition, and another entirely when they stand a realistic chance of success.

For a long time now, Scandinavia has been a paragon of social democracy. Those times are over. It is now the Northern European countries – with the exception of Iceland –where right-wing populists are enjoying some of their most dramatic victories, often earlier than in other countries.

In (non-EU) Norway, the right – the Fremskrittspartiet, or Progress Party – has shown itself willing to negotiate on some of its core issues: now it takes the stance that the country’s robust financial cushion should be tapped only conservatively to avoid destabilizing the economy. In Denmark, the Danish People’s Party (DF) was not ready to take on the responsibility of leading the government, even though it has represented the second strongest faction in parliament since June 2015. Instead, it has attempted to steer the ruling conservative government under Lars Lokke Rasmussen.

Morten Messerschmidt is one of the DF’s most important representatives on EU questions. For seven years now he has pulled off a tricky balancing act: he has simultaneously been a part of the EU system as a parliamentary representative, while also one of its greatest – and most popular – critics. He received over 465,000 votes in the European elections two years ago, more than any Danish candidate had ever achieved.

This means that Messerschmidt’s voice has a particular weight when it comes to deciding whether the Danes should demand a referendum following the British example. Yet Messerschmidt originally expressed a wish that the British majority would vote against Brexit; now he merely advises to “keep calm.” Conversely, the EU political speaker of the party – the far less influential Kenneth Kristensen Berth – has already declared that he would like a referendum to take place in Denmark if Britain succeeds in securing a good deal with the EU.

In Sweden, the Left Party (Vänsterpartiet), which barely attained 6 percent of the vote in the 2014 elections, demands that Sweden’s EU membership put up for debate again; and the right Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna, 13 percent) want an exit referendum. Both are part of the opposition; a red-green minority government is in power.

The Sweden Democrats reject EU membership, but they have never made European questions a major topic; they have instead traditionally focused more on policies toward foreigners and domestic security. In Sweden, there is a clear majority in favor of remaining in the EU – unlike in Finland, Norway, and Denmark, working with the right-wing populists on the national level is currently unthinkable. The probability that the Sweden Democrats would have to shift away from anti-European discourse to reach power is thus remarkably low. – BY CLEMENS BOMSDORF

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – September/October 2016 issue.

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With his own political movement – En Marche, or “Forward” – France’s recently resigned minister of the economy is preparing the ground for a stab at the presidency. But in the biggest tease in French politics, he has still left open whether he will run in 2017.

© Artwork: Dominik Herrmann

Philosophy major, graduate of the elite National School of Administration (ENA), investment banker: Emmanuel Macron’s resume does not fit that of a typical French politician. It should thus come as no surprise that the 38-year-old chooses to follow his own path in politics, scandalizing both the leftist government and the conservative opposition. When he resigned the post of minister of the economy, industry, and digital affairs on August 30, 2016 he gave a typically provocative reason, saying “I have run against the limits of the political system.”

His appointment in August 2014 was in itself a provocation to the Socialist Party’s left wing. Of all people, it was this avowed economic liberal who took the place of Arnaud Montebourg after the left-wing minister was tossed out for insubordination. Excitement over the smart politician, who in contrast with the other ministers has no Socialist political chops, has never cooled – in fact, quite the opposite. And Macron and his shy smile are doing everything they can to stir up the French political scene even further.

In April he launched his own coalition – En Marche, or “Forward” – in his northern hometown of Amiens in the hope of breaking up the hardened structures of government. His movement is “neither right nor left,” and is already more than 40,000 members strong according to its young star. The move, almost exactly one year before the first round of presidential elections, was quickly seen as a base for Macron’s own candidacy. Until that point, he had always shied away from throwing his own hat in the ring and becoming a competitor to his political mentor François Hollande. The president positioned the career changer at the head of the ministry of the economy despite the fact that Macron had never held political office before.

Steep Career Trajectory

It was another high point of a steep career trajectory, one which began at Paris’ elite Henri IV high school, continued at the policy university Sciences Po and the civil servant training academy ENA, and was ultimately rewarded with a post as inspector of finances. At 31, this doctors’ son switched to the private sector, where he became partner as an investment banker at Rothschild & Cie Banque in just four years. In 2010 he engineered a €9 billion deal: a Nestlé takeover of Pfizer’s baby formula business.

But politics enticed the successful banker, even while working at Rothschild. After rejecting a 2007 offer from conservative presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, Macron was an early supporter of Socialist Hollande. Following the latter’s election in 2012, he rewarded Macron with the post of economic and financial adviser, serving directly in the Élysée. Macron readily admits that this was a period of only minor successes. “At the beginning [of the financial crisis], we needed to have reacted more quickly and with greater daring, and as the president’s adviser I carry my part of the blame,” he said in an interview with Le Monde in January.

Above all, not enough was done with regards to employment. As a minister Macron began to sense just how difficult it can be to achieve change in France this past year while working to pass a law intended to stimulate the economy – a law which would bear his name. Macron spent nearly two hundred hours in the National Assembly promoting his agenda, which was ultimately adopted without even so much as a vote because the left wing of the Socialist Party had threatened to veto it, fearing a further relaxation of workers’ rights. A year after the law’s ratification, Le Monde said that it “sent a political signal to economic and financial actors while at the same time strengthening divisions within the political left.”

Closer to Owners Than Workers

From the very beginning, Macron was seen as a man whose interests were aligned more with business owners than with their employees. At last year’s annual summer meeting of France’s largest employer federation, MEDEF – with whose president Pierre Gattaz he is on a first-name basis – Macron even attacked the Socialists’ holy 35-hour work week. It is wrong to believe that France is doing better when it works less, said the department head. For this, the conservative newspaper Figaro named him “the best right-leaning bourgeois minister of the economy the left has ever had.”

Macron also angered the Socialists with his January 2015 statement, “We need young French people who want to be billionaires.” The dynamic politician – who is a millionaire himself following the Pfizer deal – has been focussing his attention on start-ups. He seems to feel especially at home in Silicon Valley, where his entrée is eased by his fluent American English. He also encourages students to take risks back home, saying in one speech at the Telecom ParisTech engineering school in April, “Take risks, even when they could result in total failure.”

The slogan is one he lives himself: the self-proclaimed beacon of hope could soon declare himself a contender for presidency in 2017. The young politician is popular enough, with poll ratings most recently around the 50 percent mark. The founding of En Marche while in government, however, made him unpopular among his cabinet colleagues. The other ministers accused him of placing his own interests above that of the government. “More than anything, Macron is hype,” criticized Finance Minister and friend of Hollande Michel Sapin, who has now taken over Macronʼs portfolio. Head of the opinion research institute ViaVoice François Miquet-Marty speaks instead of a “Macron phenomenon,” one that functions in large part through rejection of the existing, dominant political offerings.

The president threatened his longtime mentee point-blank with expulsion in his televised interview on Bastille Day. “Respecting the rules means staying in the government, and not respecting them means leaving.” The head of state was reacting to Macron’s first appearance in front of his followers on July 12 in Paris – a meeting reminiscent of the US party conventions occurring at the same time. In a dark suit and unbuttoned white shirt, “EM” walked back and forth among his nearly four thousand listeners and elucidated his view of things. “Freedom, equality, and solidarity” are the values he evoked. Despite fervent applause, his speech was never concrete – for example, he did not use the word “unemployment” even once.

“Changing the System”?

The man who one BBC journalist compared to a young Tony Blair also failed to announce his expected candidacy. That may be on hold until December, when the unpopular Hollande will decide whether he will run again in 2017. Yet Macron gave his followers a sliver of hope: “No one can stop this movement. We will continue it until 2017, until our victory.” He presents himself as renovator of a political landscape that is on its last legs. “Our system is exhausted. It must be changed.” This is just one controversial statement from a politician known for his straight talk. “One cannot criticize a supposed system and yield to the Sirens of populism when one is oneself the product of the republic’s elite,” sharply countered Prime Minister Manuel Valls. The prime minister, who sees himself in the role of the modernizer, became Macron’s chief adversary within a matter of months.

His opponents accuse him above all of one fact: he has never run for office. “He was an adviser in the Élysée, then parachuted into the government without ever being active on the local level. This model is not the new way of politicking, but rather the opposite – a symbol of politics’ collapse,” criticized Laurent Wauquiez, vice president of the conservative Republicans Party, in an interview with France’s Journal du Dimanche.

Before resigning, Macron had been engaged in a kind of standings battle with Hollande for months. He may be loyal, but he is no presidential “conscript,” he reported in an April interview. At the En Marche meeting, the political neophyte may have officially pledged himself to the president, but did not spare veiled criticism. “Our country is threadbare from failed promises” was one such barb against the head of state, who has been promising to decrease the record levels of unemployment without any such result since taking office. Hollande responded with the comment that Macron was a political “fresh convert. … Yet politics are not a mere excursion.”

His minister is nowhere near as inexperienced as Hollande paints him – at least not in media matters. Macron and his wife have twice graced the cover of the popular tabloid Paris Match this year alone. “Together on the Rise to Power,” read the headline next to a photo of the couple on the red carpet in front of the Élysée Palace in April. Macron and his wife are especially poised for such people stories, even if they make an unusual team. Brigitte Trogneux was in fact Emmanuel’s French teacher, back when he was a top student winning awards for, among many things, his fine piano skills. For her he moved from Amiens to Paris even before completing his high school studies. Twenty years his senior, Trogneux was at the time married to a banker and the mother of three children. Yet she divorced her first husband and married Macron in 2007 – a job for which she gave up her teaching career. During this summer’s vacation in Biarritz, she and her husband were photographed holding hands on the beach. “A summer of reflection. I read, I write, I ponder,” he told Paris Match, in response to questions over his long public disappearance following the Nice attack.

Moving Forward

Yet the ambitious 38-year-old keeps moving forward: in the fall he hopes to present a kind of program for En Marche forged via numerous conversations. For two months, volunteers went from door to door, collecting 25,000 surveys to measure France’s current pulse. The initiative – another thing Macron copied from the US election – bears the slogan “Politics another way.” It is intended to help him hone his profile in areas besides economics. Thus, the ex-minister is also planning to deliver a speech on Muslims in France, who form the second largest religious group in the country and who have come into greater focus since the attacks. Further, he is working on another speech on the educational system which he believes does not offer children equality of opportunity. His grandmother, director of a middle school, is according to Macron the source of his socialist beliefs – even if he dropped his party membership in 2009. Since then he has considered himself a leftist and distanced himself from the Socialist Party. “Honesty requires me to tell you that I am not a Socialist,” Macron admitted to journalists in August.

Equality is one of his three dreams for French identity, he revealed in an interview with Revue des deux mondes last year. The other two are industrial development and Europe. He showed just how close the European project is to his heart at a debate at his alma mater Sciences Po following the positive Brexit vote. “It is absolute bullshit to say that we could hold our ground even better against Chinese dumping without Europe,” he shrewdly responded to the right-populist National Front’s address.

The French love his blunt style. More than 50 percent found him “nice,” “competent,” and “brave” in the June 8 survey of the opinion survey institute lfop. His ability to lead the country out of the crisis, however, was endorsed by just 26 percent of participants. And only 33 percent believed that he closely understood the concerns of the population. This is another reason why the minister promised in his latest En Marche video, published before the summer break, “I will submerge myself in this country.” Now outside the government he should enough time on his hands to do just that.

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Sahra Wagenknecht, parliamentary leader of the Left Party, was roundly criticized for referring to “antidemocratic” forces in Brussels. But she is by no means the only German politician undermining EU institutions.

© REUTERS/Stefanie Loos

In Germany, one principle has united the established political parties for decades: ever-deeper European integration is in Germanyʼs national interests and should be encouraged. German politicians like to think of themselves as the “good Europeans,” combating excessive nationalism and encouraging closer cooperation and shared economic growth. The bad guys, on the other hand, are right-wing populists in the EU Parliament – the British nationalists leading the charge for Brexit and the nationalist conservative Eastern Europeans in Poland and Hungary – and the left-wing populists in Greece, Italy, Spain, and France, who reject the fundamental rules of the EU and eurozone. …

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Turkey’s drift away from the West has not been one-sided, says commentator SINAN ÜLGEN – Europe and the United States share the blame. The aftermath of the recent coup attempt could be an opportunity to reconcile.

© REUTERS/Handout/Kayhan Ozer

After the failed coup, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is more unpopular than ever in the West – but reconciled with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Are we witnessing a Turkish strategic pivot? No, I do not read it as such; otherwise we would be in a very different world. Despite everything that has happened, Turkey remains anchored in the West – in political, security, and economic terms. The establishment of a strategic partnership with Russia is somewhat far-fetched. Realistically, there is little that Moscow could offer Turkey to replace its relationship with the West, whether economically or viewed from a security perspective. So there really is a limit as to how strong, how potent this message of rapprochement with Russia can be.
However, it is useful for Ankara to be able to demonstrate to the West that Turkey could potentially have other options ­– as at the recent St. Petersburg summit between Erdogan and Putin.
And it’s noteworthy for a different reason, too. Putin is the second head of state Erdogan met with after the failed coup; the first one was the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. This underlines the stark reality that there has been a total lack of sympathy and empathy in the West after the attempted coup in Turkey. The Erdogan-Putin meeting was mostly about pragmatic topics of bilateral cooperation, the lifting of Russian sanctions, tourism, and so on.

The tension between Russia and Turkey after a Russian fighter jet was shot down worried NATO greatly, and a rapprochement is to be welcomed in that sense. But you think the West should have done more to reassure Erdogan? It is not just about Erdogan. I think the West should do more to reassure Turkey that it is part of the Western camp. Itʼs one thing to assure Erdogan. But the more important message is to Turkey, because at the end of the day, Turkey is much bigger than Erdogan. This is where the gap is; even people who are not necessarily pro-government believe that the West has not done enough to demonstrate that Turkey has and should continue to have a Western orientation.

Indeed, there haven’t been that many Western visits to Ankara lately … US Vice President Joe Biden visited at the end of August. Before that there’s been one visit by a junior UK minister and one by the state secretary of the German Foreign Office, Markus Ederer – not quite the level expected by Ankara. I think the West would be in a more credible position had it not only supported the government, but also parliament. If European leaders do not want to be seen with Erdogan, at least they could have sent parliamentary delegations.

Is it too late for that now? No, not at all. Parliamentary delegations would go beyond the government and embrace parliament, which was bombed on the night of the coup. It shouldnʼt be too difficult to organize these trips in support of parliamentary democracy in Turkey. In fact, it would be politically relatively easy for Western politicians. And if the West wants to remain credible and retain the moral high ground in order to be able to criticize some of the governmentʼs post-coup measures, it can only do so if it also clearly takes a principled position and is critical of the coup attempt. If it does not do so, then the criticism will continue to fall on deaf ears because then the West will be – legitimately, I believe – considered hypocritical. If you don’t stand for a rightfully elected government, then whatever you say after that tends to be weakened.

NATO has sometimes been more able to cooperate with Turkey than the EU. Does this also apply in this post-failed coup situation? You are absolutely right: Turkey is in a different place in NATO by virtue of the fact that it is a NATO member. But the NATO relationship is quite difficult right now because of the souring of the relationship with the US. There is a widespread belief in Turkey, and that goes far beyond the government, that the US was behind the coup, or at least the US knew about it in advance and didnʼt tell the Turkish government. This has implications also for NATO. Then there is the fact that almost half of all Turkish generals have already been sacked, and some of these people had NATO positions. The head of the Third Army Corps, which is part of the NATO Rapid Response Corps, has been implicated in the coup. So obviously there is quite a bit of volatility around the NATO relationship today. What that means longterm is difficult to say right now.
The reluctance of the West to engage with Turkey right now of course has to do with the way Erdogan has been fighting the coup and the measures he has put in place in the aftermath. And there is skepticism regarding the alleged role of the Gülen movement; Ankara’s accusations sound a bit overdone to Western ears. You’re right. One of the difficulties today is this wide perception gap inside Turkey and outside about the role, the power, the influence of the Gülen movement. Today in Turkey many people believe that the Gülenists were behind the coup. Every day you have a former Gülenist appearing on TV, explaining to the Turkish public how he and his fellows infiltrated state institutions and military …

… which reminds one of the Stalinist show trials, when the accused had to declare that yes, they had been part of a huge conspiracy … Yes, but it is a fact that this is the atmosphere that Turkish people get exposed to every day in the media. It is also something that the government firmly believes, especially Erdogan. In that sense there is quite a gap between how Turkey views the Gülen movement and how the rest of the world views it. And this is already creating complications, in terms of Turkeyʼs relationship with the rest of the world, particularly the US where Gülen resides. Ankara has already started the process to have him extradited to Turkey. But it wonʼt stop there, because this movement is present, I think, in around 160 countries in the world, which means that Turkey will now have to make an effort to essentially press those governments to go after the Gülenistsʼ infrastructure in all of those countries, which includes schools, fundraising front organizations, and so on. This will be a long-term, complicated, and, in a way, unwelcome burden on Turkeyʼs foreign policy.

Gülen and Erdogan were very close allies once … That’s absolutely right. After the failed coup President Erdogan issued an apology for having failed to understand the true nature of this movement. But of course, in any normal country, this wouldn’t suffice to explain and justify a political alliance that lasted a decade. I doubt more will happen in the case of Turkey, but the apology was certainly a start.

How likely is it that the coup has basically been remote-controlled by the Gülen movement in the US? I think it is still quite likely, and I base this on the timing of the coup. Because the only explanation for the timing of the coup that makes sense is that most of the Gülenists in the military were going to be purged in August at the military council. Thatʼs the only explanation in terms of the timing of the coup. So I think it certainly was very much a Gülen-led coup.

What do you expect to happen next? Will Erdogan take this chance to establish himself as an autocratic ruler? Right now we are living through extraordinary times: a state of emergency has been declared, and therefore some of the measures the government is taking are not subject to the usual checks and balances. The government said it wants to end the state of emergency in three months, so that will be a critical test of how soon Turkey will normalize – if they are able to lift the state of emergency within three months, then that means that the checks and balances will return, which would work against further infringements of rights. So for the time being, I am reserving judgment as to how things will unfold.

How could the gap you describe be narrowed, especially with the EU? The Turkish government’s strong anti-Western rhetoric has become a real obstacle to its efforts to get its message across in the West at a time when this is urgently needed. I think the Turkish government is making legitimate arguments, for instance against the teaching of Gülenist thought in schools, but because of its past combative, non-cooperative rhetoric toward the West it has difficulty now convincing the West about the nature of its arguments. Now the government is trying to find a middle road to get this message across.

What has to happen on the Western side? The West should start with reassuring Turkey. Then it can build a moral platform to criticize some of the developments, but it has to start with reassurance.

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The extent of political purges in Turkey after the failed coup confronts the EU with thorny questions. Brussels should use the current tenuous signs of social reconciliation to re-engage with the reform process.

“Just in: Erdogan fired everyone in Turkey,” wrote the Lebanese-Iraqi blogger Karl Sharro jokingly a few days after Turkey’s failed coup attempt on July 15. Since then, however, Sharro’s joke has become a bitter reality for thousands of Turkish civil servants. Nearly 150 generals and admirals and 6,000 soldiers were arrested in the days following the attempted coup on allegations of involvement. Subsequently, thousands of judges and public prosecutors were fired, and more than 8,000 state officials were suspended – among them at least eighty governors and inspectors.

The media and educational institutions were not spared, either: the broadcasting licenses of 24 radio and TV stations were revoked, and 21,000 private school teachers and over 1,500 university deans were suspended with immediate effect. These political purges in the state apparatus are not merely a direct reaction to the coup: they coincide with previous attempts on the part of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) to centralize power. Many observers are now crying foul, charging the government with using the coup to weaken or eliminate the political opposition.

Erdogan’s purges are a challenge for the EU, which now faces with the same questions in Turkey that it has in Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Egypt: How far can divergences about a once shared, agreed, and ordered set of values be accepted without undermining the order itself? What are the consequences of unifying just for the sake of unity – and striking dirty deals instead of cooperation based on shared values?

A Carte Blanche to Persecute?

President Erdogan’s declaration of a three-month state of emergency not only allows him to rule by decree, but also confers onto him the power to impose curfews, forbid demonstrations, and massively reduce the freedom of the press.
Already, the time a suspect can be held in custody without charge has been extended from four to thirty days. This has raised concerns, but alone does not constitute an end the rule of law in Turkey – the declaration of a state of emergency is clearly regulated in article 120 of the constitution. The true cause for concern lies in the wide scope the Turkish constitution leaves for interpretation when it comes to executive power. Potential justifications for a state of emergency include, according to the constitution, “widespread acts of violence aimed at the destruction of the free democratic order” and a “serious deterioration of public order because of acts of violence.” What is problematic is that it is President Erdogan himself who decides when such conditions are met. As a result he has it within his power to continue the state of emergency until he has destroyed the challenge posed to him by his adversary Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen’s movement. This raises concerns that the government had been handed a carte blanche to go also after dissidents without any connections to Gülen.

Worryingly, Turkish authorities have so far been vague about how long the state of emergency will last. They have also not provided a convincing justification of the necessity to compromise the separation of powers, though temporarily, to the extent that the state of emergency does. The interpretation of when the threat to “democracy, rule of law, and rights and freedom of the population” identified by Erdogan has been resolved is still up to the president himself. Indeed, Erdogan already announced that the state of emergency might have to be prolonged the day after it was declared.

The expected reform of the security forces may also further centralize power in the hands of the president. Billed as a means of coup-proofing the military, the reform will significantly increase civilian control. The military police, police, and coast guard will be subordinate to the minister of the interior, and the land, air, and naval forces to the defense minister. The chief of staff will no longer report to the prime minister, but rather directly to the president.

These reforms have long been pushed by the EU. Unfortunately, in today’s post-coup context, they are unlikely to have their intended democratizing impact. Instead, their effect will likely be to guarantee the submission of Turkey’s security institutions through a “divide and rule” system that would pit different security agencies against each other. Indeed, it is difficult not to suspect that the actual aim of the reform is for Erdogan to simply acquire more personal power – and a further step to secure his long-lasting gains for a constitutional change towards an executive presidency.

A Fragile Civil Peace

Erdogan’s rhetoric against the putschists and their alleged supporters abroad has been unmistakably aggressive. At the same time, however, there have also been gestures of reconciliation between the government and the parliamentary opposition. Indeed, following the coup attempt, all opposition parties condemned it in a joint declaration, and then decided unanimously to establish a commission of inquiry.

This unprecedented unity among the ranks of the opposition springs from their common opposition to the Gülen movement, which is much stronger than their opposition to the AKP. This is particularly true of the pro-Kurd Peoplesʼ Democratic Party (HDP), whose leaders explicitly blamed Gülen and his followers in the judiciary and military for sabotaging the peace process between the government and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Before the coup attempt, the Turkish parliament had voted to strip HDP MPs of their legal immunity; now the issue has been moved to the back burner, the judicial officers and magistrates involved in this reform have been removed from office, and several generals entrusted with army operations against the Kurdistan Workersʼ Party (PKK), including Adem Huduti, were among those arrested.

When the leaders of the opposition parties Republican Peopleʼs Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) visited Erdogan’s palace together for consultations for the first time, it was a clear sign of reconciliation. In return, Erdogan withdrew his charges against them, authorized their supporters to hold demonstrations in Taksim Square for the first time since 2013, and showed notable restraint on the topic of constitutional change. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, he stressed that Turkey “will remain inside a democratic parliamentary system, we will never step back from it.”

The reactivation of retired Kemalist generals, furthermore, could be explained by sheer need for experienced staff within the military, which has been under enormous strain because of the detentions. Together with a new, comparably soft approach to critical – but not pro-Gülen – media, however, the move is more evidence that the government’s focus on Gülen as enemy number one it creating space for a rapprochement with conservative-nationalistic and secular forces.

Few observers, however, share the hope that the current civil peace will translate into a durable political and social reconciliation. The mistrust between different political and ethnic groups runs deep. Lynching incidents, violent attacks against members of the Alevi minority, and allegations of torture have contributed to this. Among the Kurdish population in the southwest of the country, there are increasing concerns that arbitrary restrictions might return under the aegis of the state of emergency. Further, many saw the role played by the mosques in mobilizing popular support for the government during and after the coup attempt as one more worrisome sign that religion and politics are growing more closely interlinked under Erdogan.

People linked to the Gülen movement – whether by fact or rumor – are expecting particularly dark days ahead. For a few years the government has been working to massively roll back the influence of the movement in the media and educational institutions, going so far as to close and expropriate institutions including the Zaman daily newspaper and the Fatih University in Istanbul. Even the internationally known think tank International Strategic Research Organization (USAK) was recently closed by decree because of its alleged link to Gülen – an accusation that the institute’s leadership forcefully denies. Future careers in government or elsewhere could well be closed off for graduates and employees of these institutions, as was the case after the military coup of 1997. A wave of migration abroad is to be expected; the same goes for many young secular-liberal Turks, as they consider the alliance among the conservatives – be they Kemalist, religious, or nationalist – as hardly promising for their future.

Up Against the Wall

For the moment, the question of whether President Erdogan will share political power in Turkey – and with whom – is impossible to answer. What is clear is that the attempted coup and the reaction to it have triggered the most difficult crisis so far between Turkey and its Western allies just as Turkey has become one of the most strategically important NATO allies, as well as an EU partner that behaved “more European than many EU member states” during the refugee crisis in the words of Peter Altmaier, chief of staff at the German chancellery.

Turkey’s location between the Black and the Mediterranean Seas makes it a key state in two ways. Turkey’s air and naval forces are active in the fight against terrorism along with piracy and arms and human trafficking in the Mediterranean. And Turkish soldiers are helping train Iraqi security forces for operations against ISIS and participating in numerous NATO- and UN-led missions – at present, over 500 are deployed in Afghanistan as part of the “Resolute Support” mission to train and support Afghan security forces.

Amid the thaw in Russian-Turkish relations and domestic security needs, Ankara might also pursue a more open policy when it comes to both Damascus and Bagdad. Turkey’s current rapprochement with Moscow, however, coincides with reshuffles within the security establishment in favor of those more inclined to nonaligned and Eurasian perspectives – and Ankara’s rapid loss of trust in Washington.

High-level US representatives have repeatedly and sharply criticized the direction in which Turkey’s domestic affairs are developing. President Barack Obama recently even refused to meet Erdogan personally during the Warsaw NATO summit. For his part, Erdogan has condemned the reticence of most Western states during the Egyptian coup that brought the military to power in 2013. And the fact that until now Turkey’s NATO allies have never publicly condemned any of the four sometimes brutal phases of military rule in Turkey since the country’s 1952 NATO accession has done little to build Erdogan’s trust in its allies commitment to Turkish democracy. If Erdogan is looking like the main winner from the coup attempt at home, the foreign party that has gained the most is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Not only was Putin the first to call Erdogan the night of the coup, he was also the first to invite him to a personal meeting afterwards.

On the European side, the aftermath of the coup has not led to a boost in solidarity between the EU and Turkey against the threat of military rule, but rather to vehement finger pointing and sanction threats. The vast majority of the political elites of Western Europe see Turkey today as a democracy in name only, one that superficially fulfils the Copenhagen criteria while in fact constantly undermining them, especially where freedom of opinion and separation of powers are concerned.

For the EU, the coup attempt came at the worst possible time, not least because it gives Ankara a strong moral position to politicize some of the EU accession criteria without formally withdrawing its application to join. In Turkey, for example, it is now heard that the EU cannot forbid Turkey from re-instituting the death penalty while at the same time pursuing a free trade deal with the US, which has failed to outlaw it. This argument might not attract followers in Brussels, but it certainly does find support in significant segments of Turkish society. From this point of view, what stands in the way of a Turkish accession is not Ankara’s demolition of the rule of law, but rather the allegedly racist and anti-Islamic reservations of Europeans. The EU’s ambivalent response to the coup attempt only helped these assumptions gain traction.

No one can have any interest in a formal breakdown of the accession negotiations – with the exception of a few countries with which NATO and the EU have had problematic relations for some time, and anti-Western and antiliberal movements in both Turkey and Europe. The negative effects of such a breakdown would include enormous political costs, among them a significant reduction in the desirability of EU membership for both current and potential future member states. This would hit especially hard coming immediately after Britain’s vote to leave the union, and in the middle of a still-heated debate about how to share the burden of the refugee crisis.

One might argue that the EU’s major failure in its handling of Turkey was its abandonment of its own ambition to use the accession process as an instrument for democracy promotion and transformation after 2004 – though it is now often forgotten in Turkey that it was the EU that pressed the military to withdraw from politics at the end of the 1990s, and that since 2002 the EU has encouraged several steps the AKP has taken to ensure civilian control over the armed forces. In March 2013, former Speaker of the Parliament Bülent Arinc stated that, in the eyes of the AKP, the EU’s assistance in taming the military was an important incentive for supporting the accession process.

With that goal attained, however, neither side seems to have much enthusiasm for further integration. EU members signal little interest in a deeper relationship with Turkey outside of border control, refugee resettlement, and combating terrorism; Ankara, meanwhile, is mostly interested in securing foreign investment, opening markets for energy transport, and attracting tourism. Politicians from both camps are continuously stressing their mutual need – but the fact that the relationship is no longer one of deliberate choice is clear in calls from Western politicians to reduce EU pre-accession assistance at the very moment when a state of emergency threatens to dramatically roll back pro-European civil society.

Rather than pursue a head-in-the-sand strategy, it would be much more productive for EU member states to separate the discussion of pressing themes, such as European border security and the fight against terrorism, from the debate on what the Turkish accession process can still achieve from an EU perspective – is it a farce, a pledge, or a long-term goal? In order for the latter to succeed, however, it is above all necessary to take the current signs of societal reconciliation – tenuous though they may be – seriously and see them as an opportunity to actively tune in to Turkey’s transformation process once again

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Whether describing Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin or Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau – media around the world is in love with a word that entered dictionaries only five years ago. High time to retire it.

Artwork: © Dominik Herrmann

Love is a funny thing, especially when it’s between two men who wield great power and influence. For lack of a better word to describe the man hugs and compliments exchanged by the presumptive masters of the universe, American journalists are increasingly adopting a humorous appellation for male friendships once reserved for skateboarders and surfers: the bromance.

“The Trump-Putin Bromance Is Getting Even Shadier,” New York magazine declared as US media picked up on the mutual admiration between Donald, the Republican presidential candidate, and Vladimir, the third-term Russian president. In recent months, mainstream news organizations such as The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Newsweek have all used “bromance” in headlines to describe the unlikeliest twist in the troubled US-Russian relationship.

In mid-August, Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, resigned following revelations about his earlier work for Putin’s client in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovy­ch. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign responded with a statement saying that “you can get rid of Manafort, but that doesn’t end the odd bromance Trump has with Putin.”

It’s fair to say that bromance inflation is eating away at political speech in the United States. Like most pranks, the first time it was funny, the second time absurd, and all subsequent instances totally gratuitous. Now every time two male politicians show the slightest inclination for each other, their relationship is dubbed a bromance, whatever that actually means.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary added bromance to its 2011 edition, along with cougar (“a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man”), tweet (as in Twitter), and crowdsourcing. Merriam-Webster defines a bromance as “a close nonsexual friendship between men.”

Empowered with such a sweeping definition, headline writers in recent years have unearthed Putin’s budding bromances with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The idea of a Putin-Erdogan lovefest is especially nonsensical considering that before their rapprochement this summer, they were slinging insults at each other over a Russian warplane downed by the Turkish air force. Their awkward July meeting in St. Petersburg was reminiscent of the 1939 British cartoon, by David Low, showing Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, then still allies, bowing politely to each on the battlefield. “The scum of the earth, I believe?” the Nazi dictator says as the Soviet tyrant replies: “The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?” The title of the cartoon is “Rendezvous,” but it could have been “The Hitler-Stalin Bromance.”

Of course today’s bromances aren’t observable only among strongmen and tough guys. After US President Barack Obama visited Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa in June, the White House officially commented on their selfie with the words “true bromance.” It’s possible the term then made its debut in French via the Montreal newspaper Le Devoir.

According to Wired, Obama also has a bromance with his vice president, Joe Biden, and with rapper Jay Z, as revealed by MTV in 2012. In fact, that report “on the most high-profile bromance between a commander-in-chief and a hip-hop figure” may have been the moment when the word jumped from the lingo of pop culture to politics.

The Oxford English Dictionary, which followed Merriam-Webster in acknowledging bromance as worthy of definition, made an online appeal in early 2013 to fathom the expression’s origins. It turns out the earliest known publication of the word was in the April 2001 issue of TransWorld Surf magazine.

The word bro is much, much older. Originally a short form of “brother,” bro then passed into Black English before taking on the present meaning of “a conventional guy’s guy who spends a lot of time partying with other young men like himself,” according to the OxfordWords blog. Bromance is only one word in a growing subset of expressions based on bro, such as brogrammer (“loutish male computer programmer”) or brobituary (“an ex-bro who abandoned the fold and got married”). And then there are the Bernie bros – supporters of Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders who became notorious for their sexist attacks against now-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

A word as preposterous as bromance deserves no obituary. More women leaders may be the surest way of ensuring its quick and painless demise. When German Chancellor Angela Merkel met British Prime Minister Theresa May for the first time in July, they held good old-fashioned talks with no bros, no romance, and no nonsense.

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