When travel was more difficult, autocrats didn’t have so many problems facing them – such as so many of the best leaving as quickly as possible. reports for AL Monitor on the escape of the brightest Turks from Turkey:
Speaking at an Istanbul fair Sept. 13, Turkish Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank — a long-time chief adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before joining the Cabinet after the June elections — lamented that the country was “unfortunately losing its qualified human resources through brain drain.” It was a rather remarkable statement, for such admissions are rare in Turkish government quarters.
Varank’s statement is backed by newly released official statistics that speak of an accelerating, dramatic brain drain that is stripping Turkey of its well-educated youth — the sole strategic asset the country has for any quest of global competitiveness and prosperity. According to migration data released Sept. 6 by the Turkish Statistical Institute, the number of Turks emigrating due to “economic, political, social and cultural” reasons increased 42.5% to reach 253,640 in 2017. More than 42% of those emigrants were aged 25-34, and 57% were from big cities such as Istanbul, Ankara, Antalya, Bursa and Izmir. In other words, roughly half of the those leaving Turkey are young urban people.
The staggering 42.5% increase in emigration last year stems from the political watersheds in 2016 and 2017.
And those were the failed coup in Turkey, followed by the referendum which, barely, gave President Erdogan much greater executive powers. Gursel talks to one of those emigres. Gezi is a reference to the anti-government protests of 2013 that took place in and near Gezi Park in Istanbul:
Sercan Celebi, a leading founder of Vote and Beyond — a Gezi-inspired civic initiative dedicated to election integrity — described a sense of despair among the Gezi generation. “Those who took to the streets with various motivations during the Gezi protests are now leaving the country because they are left with no other democratic channel to display their indignation. Since the street is no longer an alternative, abroad has become ‘the street,’” Celebi told Al-Monitor.
He added, “This is a productive generation that has truly equipped itself with science and technology and is capable of preparing the country for a new future and providing added value. They have lost hope in both the government and the opposition. Their dreams hardly mesh with the dream the [current] decision-makers have for the country, which is a totalitarian and isolationist dream that says ‘I want everything for myself, even if I settle for less.’”
For those Trump supporters who believe our future lies with alliances with “strong leader” countries such as Turkey and The Philippines, it’s worth noting that the flip side of emigre is immigrant. People leave home for a variety of reasons, not just war or famine, but key to the immigration issue is a happy home country – it resolves a host of reasons. Thus, my upset with Colbert a few weeks ago.
And for those “strong leaders,” they may be backed by large numbers of their citizens- but it’s a rare educated person who’s going to stick around waiting for the noose that may come for them. Autocrats have a finely tuned sense for those who internally threaten them, and move quickly to neutralize them – regardless of their status. Wise people leave before the blade falls – or strike first.
Finally, it’s hard to look at the American millenials and not see the same disappointment as the Gezi generation appears to be experiencing – the disappointment at the power struggles, the disillusionment. In both cases, the element of religion and its separation (I shan’t say divorce, as that has the wrong implications) may be one of the hidden keys to the disappointment. Here is a time series from Gallup on the American view of the centrality of religion in their lives. It covers about half a generation, I suppose.
Unfortunately, Gallup neglected to offer the entire graph, despite having the data – see the link, it’s about a 1/3rd of the way down the page. In 1993, Fairly Important was 29%, and Not Very Important was 12%; the respective values in 2017 are 23% and 25%. I think this is a significant movement, even accounting for those folks who think of themselves as ‘spiritual.’[1]
But is the future of this graph to show an upswing in religious sentiment, or will the current downswing continue? Gallup offers no demographic breakdown, so, at least from this data source, there’s no answer. However, the Pew Research Center has some useful graphs from … it doesn’t say.
Clearly, the younger you are, the less certain you are that someone’s looking out for you – but odds are still over 50%.
And it’s importance becomes lesser as you are younger. It’d be interesting to see data on these questions for Turkey as well. I don’t personally see religion holding answers for a world that is becoming pathologically overcrowded; my experience with American Christianity ranges from a cautious semi-realism to complete denial. Given that the entire range’s foundation is a mythology grounded in a completely different context, it’s difficult to have confidence even in the semi-realists.
1 Which I’ve found is such a nebulous concept that, despite having it explained to me several times, I still find completely forgettable. I speculate that the concept already has another name for me, perhaps less creditable, which lets me sweep the entire affair under the rug.
