Turkiye: Democracy and Secularism in Crisis?
Speaker: Shri Kamal Malhotra, Non-resident Senior Fellow, Global Economic Governance Initiative, Boston University Global Development Policy Center, USA; former U.N. Secretary General’s Representative and Head of the U.N. in Malaysia, Turkey and Vietnam (2008-2021). Shri Malhotra received the President of Vietnam’s ‘Order of Friendship’ in 2021
Chair: Dr. Harish Khare, political scientist, senior journalist and public commentator
The Republic of Turkiye sits at the geographic and geo-political crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and West Asia, and is both a regional power and a global middle power. For more than two decades since 2002, President Erdogan has attempted to reshape it politically, economically, socially and in terms of its foreign policy which has sought to assert Turkiye as the leader of the Muslim, especially the Sunni Muslim, world.
The talk will explore the results over the last two decades in all these dimensions, both in terms of their policy and institutional impacts as well as more broadly for Turkiye's democracy and for its
secularism, a hallmark of the preceding Kemal Ataturk era. It will also seek to provide some pointers to the future of both democracy and secularism in Turkiye.
