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What do you think life will be like when the interest rate is five percent higher? Ten? You will be wiped out. It won’t take years. It will just take months.It will happen with stunning, vicious, disbelieving speed. People become homeless. And jobless. And broke. And hungry. And sick. Is this sounding catastrophic enough to you yet? Do you think I’m kidding around? Can you pick any holes in the logic above? Go ahead and try. Don’t you think I would already know? This is the real deal, my friends, bona fide self-inflicted catastrophe, without parallel in modern history

shortages have devastating second and third order effects, like stagflation, depression, and collapse

People, now having to focus on bitter self-preservation, do something paradoxical and foolish — they swing harder and harder to the right. Think Weimar Germany becoming Nazi Germany. Am I saying Britain’s going to go full fascist? Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. I am saying that where the economic effect of even a soft Brexit will be economic catastrophe, the political effect of the economic effect will be a vicious circle, a feedback loop of ruin.

To undo sudden falls into poverty, a society needs to invest in itself — build hospitals, roads, schools, even just dig ditches. But a society of people focused on self-preservation doesn’t choose that often. It chooses to “tighten its belt” at the precise moment everyone should agree to just shower everyone else with money (it’s imaginary, remember?). In this, the economic effect of Brexit will be devastating, middle class implosion, working class immiseration — but the political effect will be even more lethal: it will produce a loop of austerity.

What happens when a society chooses austerity — apart from the fact that it gets even poorer, so it chooses more austerity, so it gets poorer, like America? What are the sociocultural consequences of austerity? Just look at America — the canonical example. A culture of intelligence, grace, wisdom, and truth becomes a loutish, brutish thing. People are turning on one another economically — now they do so culturally. Racism and hate all rise. But so do ignorance, folly, greed, and spite — because people are living much, much harder lives. You can’t get insulin — remember? Who’s fault is it? Maybe it’s that nasty Jew’s fault. Maybe it’s that dirty Muslim’s fault.

About half of Britain’s medicine comes from the EU. Half of its medicine. Like food, medicine is perishable. Like food, it must be transported with care. But now even the most minimal checks will disrupt the process — even under a soft Brexit. Wham! A nation goes short of medicine. How badly so? Well, consider for a moment that Britain imports all its insulin. What happens when even 20% of that insulin spoils? 30%? 50%? Where will it come from, exactly? Who will pay for it?

all the most lethal maladies of the body social — authoritarianism, extremism, oligarchy, kleptocracy

Remember all those shortages of food and medicine? See those American hedge funds, hungry for more profit? It’s a marriage made in hell. Brits will have to import American food, medicine, and so forth. But it’s a rip-off. It comes with broken systems attached to it — deficient healthcare, jobs that aren’t, pay that never rises, savings that are spent desperately buying it, because it costs an exploitatively huge amount in the end

Brits will be harvested for more and more profit every year — just like Americans have been, by their banks, corporations, hedge funds, all their institutions. There will be more NHS, no more BBC, no more M&S — there will be HMOs and Fox News and Walmart. There will be engines of exploitation and abuse more vicious than Brits really understand still exist

 isn’t all that…being colonized?

Brexit is the bitter, stubborn, stupid last stand of the colonial empire-builder — the one who imagines, shaking a fist, sneering at this world in which he is no longer on top, that he is still the master his great-grandfather was.

That is the dead end of the road Brexit goes nowhere to — one’s own self-colonization. Destroying one’s own society — in the name of power, control, dominance. So one can climb over the jagged, jumbled ruins and cry, “But see! I am still the master! Here is my dominion!!” Never mind it is is just a wasteland now — at least you are in charge of it all again.

Only the colonized can tell you what it is like to be colonized. When you are, stupidly, astonishingly, colonizing yourself. How you are. That you are. But it is at that precise moment the fallen colonizer, dreaming desperately of empire, haunted by its ghost, is least likely to know anything but the insatiable need for power and control at all.

There was no other reason for having such a referendum; it was purely an internal Tory party affair

The circumstances of the 2016 referendum, its nature, and its consequences, have multiple causes that jointly led to the stupefying mess in the country and its political and constitutional order that we are now in. The Eurosceptics made good use of these other factors

the policy from 2010 of austerity and the resulting large and rapid increase in inequality, which affected some areas of the country and economy much more drastically than others

a series of bad mistakes and misjudgements by David Cameron and Ed Miliband, the leaders of the two main parties

the quality of MPs after decades in the EU. Membership of the EU brought a degree of general consistency and equilibrium to the economies and states of the member nations, even taking into account the misguided austerity policies after 2010 in the UK itself. This has lessened the temperature of political debate in the UK, premised as it is (unlike most other EU countries) on a deeply adversarial style of politics. Before joining the EEC the UK was a theatre of intense struggles between left and right, socialism and capitalism, managements and unions, a pervasive 'us and them' mentality infecting every major decision.That moderated, with a more temperate tone entering politics in the period between the end of Thatcher and the post-2010 coalition. But as a result, politics became somewhat less attractive to energetic, clever and ambitious people, with the result that - with some extremely honourable exceptions - the general quality of MPs is not nearly what it was.

Banal careerism, the unchallenged sway of the party whips, unthinking sound-bite ideas as the staple of political discourse, the fact that literally hundreds of MPs in the Tory party can support a profoundly unfit person such as Boris Johnson in the office of prime minister - this is a mark of serious decline in quality of those elected to the legislature.

the innate fragility and dysfunction of the UK's outdated and ramshackle constitutional order. The uncodified constitution - 'a series of understandings that no-one understands' - is very convenient for any party that commands a majority in the House of Commons, because they can do whatever they like, always getting their agenda enacted and controlling the business of the House of Commons itself.

no separation of powers between the legislature (parliament) and executive (the government - meaning, the cabinet and prime minister)

Instead of holding the government to account, therefore, parliament is in effect the creature of the government, and does what the government wants.

"elective tyranny"

The clique controls the executive, the executive controls parliament, parliament is absolute in its powers: The clique is the tail that wags the entire dog.

when people of lower quality, less integrity, less intelligence and less honour populate these offices of state, danger looms. And that danger has burst upon us in the form of Brexit.

One of the major scandals of the 2016 referendum is that its outcome has never been debated in parliament. The question, 'Shall we take the advice of 37% of the electorate to take an enormous, uncosted, unplanned and unpredictable step?' has never been debated and voted upon in our sovereign state body.

our hopelessly undemocratic first past the post electoral system lies at the rotten core of these arrangements. It disenfranchises the majority of voters, turning them off politics. It puts majorities into the House of Commons on minorities of the popular vote. It entrenches two-party politics, in which elections produce one-party government by turns - with the foregoing 'elective tyranny' resulting. It is a mess, and reform is urgently needed.

there is a huge clean-up operation required in our political and constitutional order, in addition to addressing the serious inequalities and injustices in our economy and society

We in the UK have skated on very thin political and constitutional ice for a long time; the wealth and prestige of empire, the nostalgic dream it left behind, the self-deceptions and illusions of those who could not see how good a future was developing for us as a leading nation in Europe, made us unaware of the danger. We have fallen through that ice, and the bitterly cold waters we now flounder in must at last wake us up.

There is this assumption, particularly among the British middle and upper classes, that things exist to serve the individual. The shop better have the thing they want or they’re going to go sicko mode, hospitality workers are punching bags for a bad day, coastal Wales exists exclusively as a holiday destination. There is a lack of real connection to anything, which imbues society with an austere and passionless vibe.

At some point we’ll need to put the mindset that globalisation has instilled – one that dangles £18 flights to Italy in front of our noses while rapidly eroding the quality of life we have at home – into reverse gear, if only for a reason to get up in the morning. Many countries across Europe and the world are experiencing similar socio-economic problems following the 2007 financial crash, but when you can’t even have a decent sandwich about it… well, that is very sad.

Shareholders and CEOs are provided with ‘protection’ or ‘compensation’ rather than being made to face the downsides of the risk supposedly inherent in investment.

bailouts without structural change keep us on the path of ever-increasing losses for the public just to sustain the basics of life, while maintaining a failed market system which is not only generating crises but limiting responses to them

Amidst the polarization of the Erdoğan era, what is striking in this book is the authors’ efforts to weave together the conflicting strands of Turkish political history into a coherent narrative. Illustrating Ernst Renan’s argument about the role of forgetting in nation-building, this account glosses over the depth of the divisions and hostility between rival historical actors, presenting them as all working side by side toward a common national goal

The book places added emphasis on the harsh terms imposed on Germany at Versailles. Prefiguring the later treatment of Al Qaeda terrorism, the intention appears not so much to justify Nazism, but rather to present injustice as the causal force behind violence and cruelty in world politics.

the Holocaust instead appears here as one among several examples of Western barbarity

The foundation of the UN is immediately followed by a discussion of Israel under the heading “Imperial Powers in the Remaking of the Middle East.” (80-81) The Palestine problem, students learn, is the principal cause of conflict in the region. It began when the Ottoman Empire, “the biggest obstacle to the foundation of a Jewish state,” grew weak, leading to the creation of Israel.

Next comes a discussion of the post-war financial order and the International Monetary Fund. Students learn that “the IMF’s standard formula, which recommends austerity policies for countries in economic crises, generally results in failure, chaos and social unrest.” (81-83) An excerpt, which students are then asked to discuss, explains how the IMF prescribes different policies for developed and developing countries.

only in the context of the Cold War origins of the EU does the book engage in any explicitly religious clash-of-civilizations style rhetoric. The idea of European unity is traced back to the Crusades, while a quote about the centrality of Christianity to European identity appears under a dramatic picture of Pope Francis standing with European leaders. (112) The next page states that the EU’s treatment of Turkey’s candidacy, coupled with the fact that “all the countries within it were Christian” had “raised questions” about the EU’s identity.

Early Cold War era decolonization also provides an opportunity to celebrate Atatürk’s role as an anti-imperialist hero for Muslims and the entire Third World. (122-123) “Turkey’s national struggle against imperialism in Anatolia struck the first great blow against imperialism in the 20th century,” the authors write. “Mustafa Kemal, with his role in the War of Independence and his political, economic, social and cultural revolutions after it, served as an example for underdeveloped and colonized nations.” Atatürk himself is quoted as saying, in 1922, that “what we are defending is the cause of all Eastern nations, of all oppressed nations.” Thus, the book explains that “the success of the national struggle brought joy to the entire colonized Islamic world, and served as a source of inspiration to members of other faiths.” The section ends with quotes from leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and Habib Bourguiba about how Atatürk inspired them in their own anti-imperial struggles or was simply, in Nehru’s words, “my hero.” An accompanying graphic shows Atatürk’s image superimposed over a map with arrows pointing to all the countries, from Algeria to Indonesia, whose revolutions were supposedly influenced by Turkey’s War of Independence.

The authors also offer a balanced treatment of the fraught domestic politics during the period from 1945 to 1960 when Turkey held its first democratic election and experienced its first coup. (138-142, 144-146) They focus their criticism on the negative impact of U.S. aid, arguing that Washington intentionally sought to make Turkey economically and politically dependent, then sponsored a coup when these efforts were threatened.

Selçuk Bayraktar, the architect of Turkey’s drone program, said that as a student “I was obsessed with Noam Chomsky.” [16] During the 1980s and 90s, America sold Ankara F-16 jets and Sikorsky helicopters that were used to wage a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in southeast Anatolia. No one was more critical of this than left-wing scholars like Chomsky.[17] Now, Ankara is selling Bayraktar drones to Ethiopia, where they are being used to kill civilians and destroy schools in another violent civil war.

The narrative of national independence also helps smooth over Turkey’s Cold War domestic divides. Students are introduced to the ‘68 Generation and left-wing leaders likes Deniz Gezmiş as anti-imperialists protesting against the U.S. Sixth Fleet in support of a fully independent Turkey. (185-186)[9] In this context, Baskin Oran’s work is again cited, this time quoting Uğur Mumcu on the role of “dark forces,” presumably the CIA, in laying the groundwork for Turkey’s 1971 coup.

The book also offers a relatively neutral treatment of political activism during the ensuing decade, suggesting that rival ideological movements were all good faith responses to the country’s challenges. On this, the authors quote Kemal Karpat: “Both right and left wing ideologies sought to develop an explanation for social phenomena and a perspective on the future. A person’s choice of one of these ideologies was generally the result of chance or circumstance.” (202) Thus the authors imply that while foreign powers provoked or exploited these movements, the individual citizens who participated in them can be given the benefit of the doubt. Interestingly, the book takes a similar approach in discussing the 2013 Gezi protests: “If various financial interests and foreign intelligence agencies had a role in the Gezi Park events, a majority of the activists were unaware of it and joined these protests of their own will.”

Turkey’s real struggle in the 21st century, as in the 20th, is against dependence on foreign technology

a book which begins with a portrait of Atatürk ends with a photo of the Bayraktar TB2.

the book’s biases are less in the realm of wild distortion and more reminiscent of those that plague ideologically infused nationalistic history education in all too many countries

its exaggerated critique of European imperialism may be no more misleading than the whitewashing still found in some European textbooks

At moments, Contemporary Turkish and World History is better aligned with recent left-leaning scholarship than the patriotic accounts many Americans grew up reading as well

Throughout the 20th century, America defined itself as the world’s premier anti-imperialist power, all while gradually reproducing many of the elements that had defined previous empires.[11] Today, it often seems that Turkey’s aspirations for great power status reflect the facets of 20th century American power it has condemned most vigorously

Turkey’s marriage of power projection and anti-colonial critique have been particularly visible – and effective – in Africa. Ankara has presented itself as an “emancipatory actor,” while providing humanitarian aid, establishing military bases, selling weapons across the continent.[13] In doing so, Turkish leaders have faced some of the same contradictions as previous emancipatory actors. In August 2020, for example, members of Mali’s military overthrew a president with whom Erdoğan enjoyed good relations. Ankara expressed its “sorrow” and “deep concern.”[14] Then, a month later, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu became the first foreign official to meet with the country’s new military leaders. “Like a brother,” he “sincerely shared” his hopes for a smooth “transition process” back to democracy

Among the 1930s cultural and intellectual figures given place of pride are Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and John Steinbeck. Guernica is reproduced in an inset about Picasso, illustrating the artist’s hatred of war. (47) A lengthy excerpt from the Grapes of Wrath concludes with Steinbeck’s denunciation of depression-era America: “And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.”

certain themes dominate Contemporary Turkish and World History. At the center of its narrative is the struggle for global hegemony, in military, economic, technological and artistic terms