Read "Fascism" by Madeleine Albright online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
LATE IN 1997, THE MAYOR OF ISTANBUL TRAVELED TO SIIRT, IN southern Turkey, to visit his wife's family home and sample the charm of a city known for its colorful handwoven blankets and a cherished nine-hundred-year-old mosque. While delivering a speech, he quoted from a well-known nationalist poem: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers."
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's words would have attracted little attention had they not been uttered in what was, for his country, a nervous moment. An insecure government-looking for a fight-arrested him on the charge of inciting religious hatred. He was convicted, forced to resign his position, and barred from public office for five years. The authorities clearly hoped to end the popular mayor's career, but their strategy backfired. The incident gave Erdoğan an aura of notoriety and, in the eyes of some, made him a hero. A two-thousand-car caravan accompanied his journey to prison, and a coterie of admirers returned four months later to greet him upon his release.