Delivered. The qualifier of “illiberal”, Viktor Orban, the Hungarian nationalist prime minister, proudly claimed it during a speech in Switzerland in 2014. Among the European populist leaders, he was the first to dare the word. Even if this type of regime had already been a reality for years in certain countries of central and eastern Europe, starting with Hungary, and especially on the fringes of the European Union in the Russia of Vladimir Poutine or the Turkey of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“These regimes have in common to present themselves as a national, anti-universalist, virile and warlike response to the democratic system. “cosmopolitan”, “effeminate” and “corrupt” “, notes Hamit Bozarslan. The historian and sociologist of political fact prefers to speak of“Anti-democracy” to define these authoritarian or semi-authoritarian systems in which the population votes, but where the balance of powers and the rule of law no longer exist. These “Unidentified political objects”, as the author designates them, have in common to think of themselves as “A national and radical response to liberal democracy, guilty of having destroyed the nation as an organic entity”.
Authoritarian modernizations
The comparison between Iran, Russia and Turkey is stimulating. The differences are obvious, but so are the commonalities. “Despite their specificities, these regimes appear to be “ideal types” frustrated anti-democracies ”, writes Hamit Bozarslan. This Middle Eastern specialist also makes no secret of what this book has personal as putting his past commitments into perspective. And those of a whole fascinated generation “By liberticidal powers” : communism with Russian or Chinese sauce, then for some of them the Iranian revolution. “We learned, then, that a revolution could be both deeply conservative and extraordinarily radical”, acknowledges the author, for whom this essay and the questions it asks involve as much “A hot engagement than a cold analytical distance”.
Geographically bordering, Russia, Turkey and Iran have intertwined histories, and not only through their countless mutual wars. At the beginning of the XXe century, these three countries have known in very different forms authoritarian modernizations. These regimes have in common, today, a desire for revenge vis-à-vis the West, and to regain their place in history. Both Russia and Turkey are nostalgic for their past empires, Ottoman and Soviet, dreaming of reconstituting their area of influence. For this too, their aggressive foreign policy and their repressive domestic policy merge.
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