The New York Review of Books: Erdoğan’s Flights of Fancy

This week, planes began landing at Istanbul’s new airport. At least the guessing game over its name is complete—as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared “Istanbul Airport” open—since this is more than can be said for the airport itself: the additional terminal buildings and runways will not be finished until 2028. Then, finally, the airport’s planned capacity of 200 million passengers per year and its size (7,594 hectares) will make it the world’s largest airport, just as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan desired. It will be far ahead of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta (103 million passengers, 1,902 hectares), Beijing Capital (95 million passengers, 1,480 hectares), Dubai (88 million passengers, 2,900 hectares), and Tokyo Haneda (85 million passengers, 1,214 hectares). A report from Turkey’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation borrows from literature to ennoble the visionary nature of Erdoğan’s signature project: “Terminal buildings resemble vertical towns similar to those imaginary towns which Italo Calvino describes in his unforgettable work Invisible Cities.” Istanbul’s new airport is thus to embody its own Invisible City.[...]

Erdoğan’s recent sharp turns in economic policy have baffled observers. He advocates lowering interest rates as an antidote to inflation, while economists say he misunderstands how interest rates work. He pushes for unassailable control over monetary policy, which analysts say undermines the independence of Turkey’s Central Bank. This summer, as Turkey’s currency value fell dramatically during a dispute with President Trump over an American pastor imprisoned in Turkey, Erdoğan commissioned a new, lakeside presidential summer palace.[...]

Over the past year, the government initiated a media campaign to allay public concern about the airport. The state-run news agency Anadolu published a video filmed at the construction site that featured laborers enjoying a game of snooker, playing musical instruments and dancing, buying coffee at a well-supplied market. But when 537 laborers protesting working conditions inside the airport were detained by police in September 2018, the news agency didn’t report the story. Subsequently, an Istanbul court ordered twenty-four construction workers and union leaders detained during the raid to be held until their trial, a measure Amnesty International called “a blatant attempt by the authorities to silence legitimate protest.” According to Human Rights Watch, at least thirty-eight workers have died in “preventable work-related accidents” at the airport site, “and many more have been badly injured.” *

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Al Jazeera: Bolsonaro, 'gender ideology' and hegemonic masculinity in Brazil

In Brazil, the legal recognition of same-sex unions by the Supreme Court in 2011, was the turning point for "anti-gender crusaders". It was in the aftermath of this groundbreaking decision that the hysteria around "gender ideology" gained momentum and visibility.

Since then the evangelical parliamentary bloc, a key force behind Bolsonaro's successful candidacy, has systematically tried to undermine the expansion of sexual rights, including same-sex marriage and reproductive rights, and particularly the right to abortion. They have regularly submitted proposed legislation, including draft laws to recognise the "rights" of an unborn child, to define the family as a unit consisting of a man, a woman and their children, and to criminalise abortion even in the case of rape.[...]

Bolsonaro's own career as an "anti-gender crusader" also started back in 2011. Then and now, Brazil has been dealing with alarming rates of violent deaths related to homophobia. In 2017, reports registered at least 445 LGBTQI deaths, a 30 percent increase from 2016. In this context, in 2011 then Education Minister Fernando Haddad (now Bolsonaro's former election opponent), launched an initiative to distribute educational materials aimed at combating homophobia and discrimination in schools.[...]

Then in 2018 during his election campaign, Bolsonaro not only embodied and praised this hegemonic form of masculinity but also actively projected himself as a crusader against "gender ideology". "Anti-gender" rhetoric was also generously used even in the fake news campaign aimed at smearing his opponent. One fake story distributed on WhatsApp claimed Haddad supplied schools with erotic baby bottles in public child care centres. Another claimed his running mate, Manuela D'Avila, was an atheist who defiled religious symbols.

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The Guardian: Don't judge Poland by what has happened here since 2015

For many, including successive generations of Polish leaders after 1989, this meant anchoring the country in western political and security institutions and adopting the liberal democratic values that underpinned them. But others, who regard godless liberal rationalism as little more than a variant of Soviet social engineering, harboured the delusion that the west represented a kind of pre-Enlightenment medieval Christendom. As they have become disabused of this fantasy, so many are creeping towards the conclusion that they are stuck within a value system they do not believe in. Membership of the European Union meant money and respect, but little attention was given to the nature of the transformation of the Polish economy and society – and the ensuing obligations – that would accompany it.

In retrospect, it seems a miracle that liberal democracy took hold in Poland in recent decades in the way that it did. Contrary to national myth, which often confuses the long-held desire for national liberation with a genuine collective commitment to democratic values, the democratic tradition was never very deeply embedded in Polish society. Liberal democratic values in Poland have long had to contend not only with the legacy of communism but also with that of a peculiarly Polish brand of national Catholicism that shares with communism a commitment to hierarchy, dogma and ritual, and the associated authoritarian vices of ignorance, passivity and paranoia that have come to the fore in recent years.[...]

For some Europeans, the fact that the Polish crisis has reached this point constitutes proof that the country should never have been allowed to join the EU in the first place. This is deeply unfair – Poland should be judged on the achievements of the last 30 years, not the events of the last three. But it does serve as a reminder that it was never Poland’s “destiny” to be so deeply embedded in the west. It was a choice, and it is a choice that must be renewed by each successive generation if it is to be sustained. As the British are finding out at the moment, the decision to pursue a European future can be “unmade” more easily than you think.  

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The Atlantic: Photos: The 15 Tallest Statues in the World

With the unveiling of the Statue of Unity in India today, there is a new name topping the list of the tallest statues in the world. The new monument to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel stands 597 feet (182 meters) tall, overtaking the previous record holder, the 420-foot (128-meter) Spring Temple Buddha, in China’s Lushan County. Using Wikipedia’s standard of measuring to “the highest part of the human (or animal) figure, but excluding the height of any pedestal,” we present images below of the 15 tallest statues in the world as of today, plus five bonus photos of some more famous—if smaller—colossal monuments.

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Politico: Spain’s 40-year itch

The 1978 constitution marked the end of Francoism and the country’s first steps on the road to democracy. But a series of institutional crises, driven by political corruption and Catalan nationalism, has spurred a growing sense that the country is ripe for another upheaval.[...]

If there’s one point on which defenders and critics of the “transition” agree, it’s that the constitution’s success depended on a remarkable degree of consensus. Former members of the right-wing Franco regime worked together with moderates and leftists — some of whom had been in jail or exile during the dictatorship.[...]

But the last decade has corroded Spain’s self-perception of a model democratic state. Dozens of corruption scandals rocked the Socialist Workers’ Party and the conservative Popular Party, the two major political parties that have dominated national politics since the transition. Coming in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis that left millions of Spaniards out of work and impoverished, it left the country dispirited and distrustful.[...]

Although 70 percent of Spaniards want constitutional reform of some sort, according to a recent poll by the Center for Sociological Research (CIS), the question is how — and how far.

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Politico: Why Europe still needs Merkel

Just as for Germany, Merkel’s departure would mark a watershed for the EU. No leader has dominated European affairs to the extent she has over the past 13 years for at least a generation, if not longer. Others may have built Europe, but it was Merkel who had the arguably more difficult task of holding it together. Whatever mistakes she made in handling the eurocrisis or migration, her moniker as the “Queen of Europe” is only half in jest.[...]

“She commands respect, even from those who disagree with her,” said one veteran center-right prime minister who has observed Merkel at innumerable summits over the years. “There’s a different atmosphere in the room when she’s not there. Once she’s gone, [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán takes over.”[...]

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, another critic of Merkel’s approach to migration, expressed a similar sentiment. “For us it is crucial that she will stay as German [chancellor] for next three years,” he said. “Germany is our most important economic partner and the chancellor herself deserves credit for being a reliable friend of the Czech Republic.”[...]

When it comes to more fundamental, longer-term questions, though, such as how to handle Central Europe’s increasingly illiberal governments or reforming the eurozone, the outlook is less clear. Poland’s endorsement for Merkel notwithstanding, Warsaw has every incentive now to play for time and see what emerges — especially if Merkel hardens her tone on the controversial question of the ruling Law and Justice party’s judicial reforms.

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