Ece Temelkuran on How To Lose Your Country in 7 Simple Steps

Ece Temelkuran is a Turkish journalist and author. She was a columnist for Milliyet (2000–2009) and Habertürk (2009 – January 2012), and a presenter on Habertürk TV (2010–2011). She was fired from Habertürk after writing articles critical of the government, especially its handling of the December 2011 Uludere massacre. She was twice named Turkey's "most read political columnist". Her columns have also been published in international media such as The Guardian and Le Monde Diplomatique. A graduate of Ankara University's Faculty of Law, she has published 12 books, including two published in English (Deep Mountain, Across the Turkish-Armenian Divide, Verso 2010, and Book of the Edge, BOA Editions 2010). In 2008 she was a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, during which time she wrote Deep Mountain, Across the Turkish-Armenian Divide. Her books include Ne Anlatayım Ben Sana! ("What am I Going to Tell You!", Everest, 2006), on hunger strikes by Turkish political prisoners. She was awarded the Human Rights Association of Turkey's Ayşe Zarakolu Freedom of Thought Award in 2008.

Her first novel, Muz Sesleri ("Banana Sounds"), was published in 2010 and has been translated into Arabic and Polish. In 2019, she published a nonfiction book How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship, about the rise of right-wing populism and how it operates.

LYRICS:



Beware of movements that arise

Painting heaven in the skies

Telling you that they alone have the solution

On the right, on the left

Many roads lead to theft

And they're one of the ways to lose your country



Beware of the new rationale

That boosts popular morale

And schizophrenic logic terrorises

There's a distorted narrative

Where the truth will never live

It's just one of the ways to lose your country



Beware of brazen shamelessness

It's a nasty business    

When people are acting up with immorality

Not humble or humane

Then chaos is soon to rein

And it's one of the ways to lose your country



Beware of appointments and dilutions

And attacks on institutions

When the judiciaries replaced with their own followers

A superfluous state

Will sign and seal fate

Another  of the ways to lose your country



Beware of model citizens

Who are anointed as the ones

To follow and emulate cos they are perfect

While the rest of us are left

To feel second class at best

It's just one of the ways to lose your country



Beware of laughter in the streets

As they mock their new elites

The only self-defence left is their humour

Some say it's just sequential

And at best inconsequential

But it's one of the ways to lose your country

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