Ece Temelkuran - How to Lose a Country

Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction: What Can I Do for You? 1 Create a Movement 2 Disrupt Rationale/Terrorise Language 3 Remove the Shame: Immorality is ‘Hot’ in the Post-Truth World 4 Dismantle Judicial and Political Mechanisms 5 Design Your Own Citizen 6 Let Them Laugh at the Horror 7 Build Your Own Country Acknowledgements About the Publisher

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thestate.co.uk

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate 2019

Copyright © Ece Temelkuran 2019

Ece Temelkuran asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008294045

Ebook Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008294021

Version: 2020-01-02

For Umut.

His name means ‘hope’ in my mother tongue.

Cover Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction: What Can I Do for You? 1 Create a Movement 2 Disrupt Rationale/Terrorise Language 3 Remove the Shame: Immorality is ‘Hot’ in the Post-Truth World 4 Dismantle Judicial and Political Mechanisms 5 Design Your Own Citizen 6 Let Them Laugh at the Horror 7 Build Your Own Country Acknowledgements About the Publisher

Title Page Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction: What Can I Do for You? 1 Create a Movement 2 Disrupt Rationale/Terrorise Language 3 Remove the Shame: Immorality is ‘Hot’ in the Post-Truth World 4 Dismantle Judicial and Political Mechanisms 5 Design Your Own Citizen 6 Let Them Laugh at the Horror 7 Build Your Own Country Acknowledgements About the Publisher

Copyright Copyright Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction: What Can I Do for You? 1 Create a Movement 2 Disrupt Rationale/Terrorise Language 3 Remove the Shame: Immorality is ‘Hot’ in the Post-Truth World 4 Dismantle Judicial and Political Mechanisms 5 Design Your Own Citizen 6 Let Them Laugh at the Horror 7 Build Your Own Country Acknowledgements About the Publisher 4th Estate An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.4thestate.co.uk This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate 2019 Copyright © Ece Temelkuran 2019 Ece Temelkuran asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008294045 Ebook Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008294021 Version: 2020-01-02

Dedication Dedication Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction: What Can I Do for You? 1 Create a Movement 2 Disrupt Rationale/Terrorise Language 3 Remove the Shame: Immorality is ‘Hot’ in the Post-Truth World 4 Dismantle Judicial and Political Mechanisms 5 Design Your Own Citizen 6 Let Them Laugh at the Horror 7 Build Your Own Country Acknowledgements About the Publisher For Umut. His name means ‘hope’ in my mother tongue.

Introduction: What Can I Do for You? INTRODUCTION

1 Create a Movement ONE

2 Disrupt Rationale/Terrorise Language

3 Remove the Shame: Immorality is ‘Hot’ in the Post-Truth World

4 Dismantle Judicial and Political Mechanisms

5 Design Your Own Citizen

6 Let Them Laugh at the Horror

7 Build Your Own Country

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

The fighter jets are breaking the dark sky into giant geometric pieces as if the air were a solid object. It’s 15 July 2016; the night of the attempted coup in Turkey. I am piling pillows up against the trembling windows. I guess they’ve just dropped a bomb on the bridge, but I can’t see any fire. People are talking on social media about the bombardment of the Parliament Building. ‘Is this it?’ I ask myself. ‘Is tonight the Reichstag fire for what remains of Turkish democracy and my country?’

On TV, a few dozen soldiers are barricading the Bosporus bridge, shouting at the startled civilians: ‘Go home! This is a military takeover!’

Despite their huge guns, some of the soldiers are clearly terrified, and all of them look lost. The TV says it’s a military takeover, but this is not a coup as we know it. Coups usually wear a poker face – there’s no hustling or negotiating, and certainly no hesitation when it comes to using the heavy weaponry. The absurdity of the situation sees sarcasm kick in on social media. This kind of humour is not necessarily aiming for laughter; it’s more of a contest in bitter irony, which seems normal only to those engaged in it. The jokes mostly concern the idea that this is a staged act to legitimise the presidential system – rather than the parliamentary one – that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has long been asking for, a change that would hand him even more power than he already has as the de facto sole ruler of the country.

The dark humour disappears as the skies over Istanbul and Ankara become busy hives of fighter jets. We are learning the language of war in real time. What I’d thought was a bomb was actually a sonic boom – the blast-like sound fighter jets make when they break the sound barrier. This is the proper terminology for the air breaking into giant pieces and raining down on us as fear: fear of realising that before the sun rises we might lose our country.

People in the capital city of Ankara are now trying to differentiate between sonic booms and the sound of real bombs hitting Parliament and the intelligence service headquarters. The catastrophe unfolding in front of our eyes is constantly blurred by the absurdity of the news reports on our screens. Live on air, MPs are running around Parliament trying to find the long-forgotten air-raid shelter, and when they finally do locate it, nobody can find the keys, while outside in the streets people dressed in their pyjamas are kicking tanks, cigarettes in their mouths, and shouting at the jets.