The basis of democracy

It is called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and just in the days following the papal trip to Kazakhstan, its 22nd summit was held in Samarkand in Uzbekistan, another ex-Soviet and Turkic-speaking Republic. This organization, virtually unknown to the general Western public, was founded in 2001 between Russia, China and four former Soviet republics of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In 2016, the organization further expanded to include India and Pakistan. In 2021 it was Iran's turn to join the alliance (joining formalized at the last summit in Samarkand).

Originally, the organization was created for regional economic and security reasons and, only secondarily, for cultural reasons. In recent days, China and Russia have made it the showcase of their partnership (despite a thousand tensions due to opposing interests, especially from an energy point of view), which serves as an instrument of opposition to the presence of the United States in Asia. And this is precisely the point, the Russian leader has unleashed the Ukrainian invasion, in the hope of redesigning the world balance: an alternative world order to the American-driven one. Russia, even if it is coming out with broken bones from this dirty war, being no longer able to resurrect a new Warsaw Pact, has nevertheless managed to globalize its fight against the West. The vision is planetary and it is no coincidence that it involves the new Asian geographical powers, which are very useful in particular for the propaganda of China (which, moreover, is increasingly cautious on the front of the Ukrainian conflict), a driving force in the global economic competition it wants, precisely for this reason , also avoid the free-for-all chaos that would harm global affairs. But the current concern of Tsar Vladimir is Turkey which, for some time, has been China's major economic contender, especially on the African continent.

Despite the shattered economy, with 80% inflation and an out-of-control currency, making him a low-ranking leader in the country he governs, President Erdoğan was among the most applauded at the summit of Samarkand, where he was the guest of honour. The Turkish president embodies, to the nth degree, the cynicism of a policy that can play on different tables, with different and sometimes opposing partners (when not in open war with each other), as if nothing had happened and, above all, apparently without the need for the consensus of a popular base which, in the meantime, is paying the dramatic price for this unscrupulousness in power. If it was thought that effective communication allowed political actors to significantly increase their ability to create consensus "out of nothing", here it almost seems that the insult itself to the voter does not shift the balance that much.

It seems that the classic components of consensus have also been swept away: authenticity ("I can be trusted"), ordinariness (the perceived leader “like me”), which has actually never really been in fashion in a hierarchical and paternalistic culture like the Turkish one, and extraordinary (the leader endowed with special and non-ordinary abilities). As if to say, the "king is naked" but the hope of a credible alternative that could change the irreversible decline of the "losers of history" also seems fatalistically extinct. After all, wasn't that already a dramatic warning from a certain Orban who had the audacity to qualify Hungary as an "illiberal democracy"? The funeral of that people has been held for some time, the necessary basis of true democracy, which cares about the form of government, the permanence of a rule of law and, above all, truly dialogic and solidarity positions, which imply consideration of human otherness and social. Current populisms challenge an "anonymous crowd" and disenchanted: a mass of individuals who are content to have their say on the web, to disclose themselves in images, deluding themselves that they can count!


Claudio Monge
NP October 2022