Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung

International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies

“Russia is giving carte blanche to the far right”

A year ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a war against Ukraine on the pretext of „denazification“. A year after the outbreak of war, IRGAC member Alexander Tushkin from Russia spoke to Sergey Movchan, left-wing activist and participant in the Marker project which tracks far-right violence in Ukraine, about Ukrainian nationalism, the far right and antifascists in the Ukrainian army, and how the war has affected their position in society.

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Sergey Movchan is a left-wing activist and participant in the Marker project, which tracks far-right violence in Ukraine.

How to Achieve Transnational Solidarity in the Age of Neoliberal Authoritarianism and Border Securitization?

In this essay, I want to address the complications stemming from the political economy of transnational solidarity networks and the power asymmetry in them, mainly through discussing the Turkish case. Neoliberal globalization and its political geography built upon colonial divisions have become the framework for cross-national solidarity as well as the recent authoritarian turn, while at the same time bringing in structural setbacks to the former. Furthermore, the recent migration “crises”, that are caused by imperialist interventions, have been met with heightened border securitization in the Global North, limiting the field for international human rights activism. This introduces a serious additional challenge to the conception and practice of transnational solidarity.

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“We'll come united - Demonstration/Parade Hamburg 29.09.2018” Source: Flickr photo by Rasande Tyskar

“We don’t keep quiet, we are not afraid, we don’t obey”

Femicides stand out as one of the biggest social problems in Turkey today causing a widespread and pronounced public reaction. The femicide cases are frequently on the news exploited by mainstream media with graphic coverage. The names of murdered women and pleas for retribution regularly become trending topic on Twitter. The outrage against femicides is expressive of the liberalizing worldviews and gender ideology in Turkish society while also conveying the popular contention against the government’s overall authoritarian politics along with its efforts for the recomposition of patriarchy.

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Demonstration of We Will Stop Femicides Platform for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, 22 November 2020, Istanbul. Photo by Ülker Sözen

Introduction | Authoritarianism, Crisis, and Solidarity in the Time of COVID-19: Global Perspectives from the South

Even though the current crisis astonished most of us, it also came as no surprise. During the last decade, we have witnessed a densification of what Alex Demirovic calls “crises of denormalization”, i.e. crises that profoundly undermine the hegemonic neoliberal security dispositive. From the financial crisis in 2008–9, through to Europe´s so-called “migrant crisis” (in fact, a momentary collapse of Europe´s inhumane border regime), up to the climate crisis, world capitalism seems ever more prone to destroying its economic, social, and natural basis, and less and less capable of dealing with the consequences.

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Fragmentary Governance of the COVID-19 Crisis in Turkey and Contradictions of the AKP Regime

Turkey has been experiencing difficult times in the last several years. On the one hand, after the failed coup attempt in 2016, authoritarian politics have intensified at the hands of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government that has been in power since 2002. On the other, the economy entered into a currency and debt crisis in 2018 and suffers under excessive current account deficits and household indebtedness. Correspondingly, social polarization and the erosion of democratic norms have been growing in tandem with financial fragility and high unemployment rates.

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