Author: Barbara

Since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a child, everyone has called him “Bibi.” Though he is now age 73. they still do.  In fact, he refers to himself by that name – his recent autobiography is titled, Bibi: My Story.

Despite Netanyahu’s being as controversial a figure in the United States as he is in Israel, American reviewers were generally kind. The Wall Street Journal, for example, called Bibi “compelling” and “fascinating.” Which, if exaggerated, generally is true. Netanyahu tells his story with vigor and conviction – though obviously, maybe necessarily given he is still a working politician, he is strongly opinionated and even jaundiced. His book reflects his passions and proclivities, his preferences and biases, his formidable strengths, and his many, many weaknesses.

Netanyahu is the most successful elected official in Israeli history. He has easily dominated the country’s politics for the last quarter century, and he currently serves, again, as its prime minister. (To date his longest tenure was between 2009 and 2021.) But notwithstanding his remarkable political successes and economic accomplishments, for many Israelis he has long been an object of contempt. There was never any doubt of his intelligence and talent. But his enemies have long thought him narrow-minded and hard-headed; dogmatic and autocratic; and corrupt. Even his allies have conceded he is argumentative and arrogant; excessively assertive and sometimes dangerously aggressive. Withal, in December, Netanyahu managed to forge a right-wing coalition, form a government, and become prime minister the third time over.

To read Bibi is to be reminded of how he got to be who he is. His father, Benzion, was an historian and political activist of prominence and eminence. And his brother, Yoni, who died leading the legendary raid at Entebbe, is one of Israel’s most revered heroes. No wonder Benzion’s son and Yoni’s brother has been so driven. So driven he has finally come perilously close to driving himself – and his country – into the ground.

For ten weeks have been massive protests in Israel, primarily (though not exclusively) against the government’s plan to overhaul, effectively to gravely weaken, the Israeli judiciary. This weekend it was estimated that some half million Israelis took to the streets to demonstrate – this in a country whose total population is about nine million.

The last few months have so seriously strained the national fabric of Israel that talk has been of civil war. But even short of civil war, Netanyahu has presided over a state now so bitterly divided that closing the chasm will be, certainly in the short term, impossible. Impossible given that trust in their leader among huge swaths of his followers can now never be restored.

It was, however, one thing for Netanyahu to govern a state that was newly threatened from within. Now it’s quite another – for it turns out he simultaneously governed a state that is newly threatened from without. The recently announced rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia that was brokered by, of all countries, China, came out of left field. Who knows what Bibi knew? But for the rest of us this freshly crafted détente came out of left field.

We cannot know how this will all play out over the long term. But in the short term the détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a severe blow to Netanyahu’s personal and political prestige, and to his cherished reputation for keeping Israel safe. Iran is Israeli’s most unrepentant enemy. And Saudi Arabia’s effective ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin-Salman, is a man with whom Netanyahu long thought, apparently erroneously, he could do business.

It’s a tragedy. Israel, specifically Israel’s demoracy, is vulnerable as it has never been before. Vulnerable to unmitigated strife from within – now not only between Israelis and Palestinians but between Israelis and Israelis. And vulnerable to unmitigated hostility from without – now not only from Iran but, potentially, from a shifting balance of power  in the Middle East.

Bibi concluded Bibi as follows:

The rebirth of Israel is a miracle of faith and history. The book of Samuel says, “The eternity of Israel will not falter.” Throughout our journey, including in the tempests and upheavals of modern times, this has held true.

The people of Israel live!       

How deeply sad that Bibi’s insatiable lust for power – which explains his deal with right-wing extremists, to become prime minister yet again – has sundered the Israeli people, threatened the Israeli state, and fractured his claim to greatness.

Larry Fink is the Chief Executive Officer of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, with some $10 trillion under its management. The son of a shoe store owner, Fink is somewhat bookish looking and, for a leader of his enormous accomplishment and great power, mild in manner and unprepossessing in demeanor.   

For at least five years Fink has been a leader not only in financial services but of a corporate movement. In 2018 he put his considerable heft behind ESG – the idea that in addition to corporate leaders having purely corporate responsibilities, they have larger ones as well. To the Environment. To Society. And to good Governance. Fink has been particularly associated with climate change, specifically with the push to cut carbon emissions.   

For several years Fink was widely admired – not in all circles, but in many – for staking out his position, especially on the environment, with such clarity and temerity. Moreover, there was no doubt that on ESG more generally Fink was at the forefront of a movement that had a significant impact. As the New York Times summarized it late last year, “Investing with consideration for climate change, diversity, gender and pay equity, the welfare of employees, and the impact of technology on society – broadly lumped under the ESG banner – has become a big focus in recent years, with BlackRock leading the charge.”

However, as leaders are wont to do, they get punished not so much for being out front as for being too far out front. Which is precisely what happened to Larry Fink. As America’s political discourse has continued to coarsen, Fink has become a whipping boy for naysayers. Those on the left fault him for not doing enough. Those on the right accuse him of badly neglecting his fiscal responsibilities in the interest of his other goals, specifically those that are social and environmental. In response to the charges from the right, Fink has backtracked, somewhat. He has denied that BlackRock is ideologically driven, affirming that it does not intend to divest from fossil fuel investments and that it isn’t pressuring any of its clients to do so.  

The complexities of what Fink is trying to accomplish have become clear. What exactly constitutes ESG investing invariably is up for debate, sometimes nasty debate. There can however be little doubt that Fink is well intentioned. That he is, or maybe he was, simply saying that business leaders have responsibilities that extend well beyond the businesses they lead.

Still, the attacks on him get ever uglier, reflecting the bitter cultural and political divide that afflicts America more generally.  At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, Fink went out of his way to say that BlackRock was trying to address the misconceptions of ESG investing. But he went on to add that for the first time in his professional career the attacks on him were “personal.”  His opponents, he said, were “trying to demonize the issue” by creating a narrative that was “ugly.”

My best guess is that Larry Fink’s leadership trajectory will ultimately be in three seperate and distinct phases. First, his astonishing level of professional success. Second, his arguably noble but still highly controversial effort to translate his professional wins into ones that are political, social, and even cultural. Third and last his legacy in history which, I believe, will judge him not only as well-intended, but as far-sighted.     

For some time now I’ve been interested in the question of why – for all our efforts over the last three decades or so – there are still so few women, relatively, at the highest rungs of the leadership ladder.

It’s not for lack of trying. Enormous amounts of ink of been spilled and enormous efforts have been made attempting to ameliorate the situation. Sponsors and mentors; explicit bias and implicit bias; parttime and flextime; remote work and hybrid work; diversity and inclusion – each refers to initiatives taken with the best of intentions trying to fix what’s broke. Or what’s ostensibly broke – too few women at the top.

Obviously, there are many more women near the top and even at the top than there used to be. But in comparison with men the numbers are still puny. There has not been a single woman president of the United States or France. There has never been a president or Communist Party chair or prime minister of Russia or China or Japan who was a woman. The percent of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies who are women finally climbed out of the single digits – for the first time ever, this year, it’s just over 10%. In top U.S. law firms, the percent of women equity partners remains under a quarter. And while more women serve in the U.S. Congress than ever before, the total figure is similar, just over 25 percent.  

So… is progress toward gender equity being made? Yes. Is this progress after all this time sufficient? No – certainly not ideally.

What then is the problem? Well, it’s not really a “problem.” It’s a truism. Women and men are different. Women and men are physically, psychologically, and sociobiologically not one and the same. The differences between them necessarily have an impact on gender and leadership. Moreover, the differences between (among) them are greatest when pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and childcare are involved.  

For a book that was published in 2019 titled Women’s Leadership Journeys (edited by Sherylle Tan and Lisa DeFrank-Cole), I wrote a chapter titled “Leadership and Lactation.” My thesis was simple: “that the evolutionary origins of gender divisions explain to a considerable extent the meager numbers of women leaders.”

Remember… humans are primates. This explains why a section of my chapter discussed being a primate parent. I observed that among the commonalities of being a primate parent is a level of attachment between mother and child that nearly always far exceeds that between father and child. This impacts on women and leadership. Specifically, woman have a far harder time leaving their child behind while they go off to work – while they go off to lead – than do men. In Sweden, for example, men and women are both given the same amount of time off for parental leave. However, men return to full time work far faster than do women. 

At the time I pointed out that scientists were only starting to get serious about studying the similarities between human and nonhuman primates. I further suggested the similarities would someday prove consequential – they would include “many psychological and social mechanisms underlying parenting.”

As it turned out, scientists did pursue this line of research. And they did find the impact of pregnancy and parenting on women – as on any other primate – was considerable. This was nicely summarized in a recent article in the Washington Post that read in part: “Neuroscience, which has long studied the effect of pregnancy on animal brains, has finally turned its attention to the effect on the human brain – and the results are challenging commonly held assumptions about women’s intellectual abilities during and after pregnancy.”*

The article makes clear the following:

• When a human mother is pregnant and then gives birth her brain changes. It undergoes “an extraordinary period of reorganization known as neuroplasticity.”
• These changes have some effects some of the time that are negative, such as “mental fogginess.”
• These changes have some effects some of the time that are positive, such as improved multitasking and stress endurance.
• Though the article does not explicitly say, its content makes clear that some of the time some of the changes are likely to have an impact on women and leadership. This includes the wish to, the will to, the determination to, the capacity to, lead. To, that is, prioritize leading over time with, and energy on family.  

Of course, not all women are mothers. But about 86% of women in the U.S. between the ages of 40 and 44 have given birth to at least one child. Moreover, 25% of all American mothers are raising their children on their own.  Finally, not only do women who are pregnant have to deal with changing bodies, once they deliver their babies they have to deal with changing expectations. According to the Pew Research Center (in a report published in 2019) “the public sees vastly different pressure points for women and men in today’s society.” Roughly 77 percent of responders say women face a lot of pressure to be an involved parent. A significantly smaller share, 49 percent, say the same about men.

Implicit in my theory about the importance of the differences between men and women as they pertain to becoming, or to being, a leader is that these differences will endure and that they will have an enduring impact on the numbers. This is not to say that equity between men and women in top leadership roles is not a goal we should continue to pursue. Rather it is to understand more clearly and fully what exactly we are dealing with – gender differences not entirely amenable to social engineering.

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2023/02/23/mommy-brain-symptoms-benefits/

It does not diminish the accomplishments of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to point out that he is at the mercy of leaders far, far more powerful than he. What Zelensky can do, and cannot do, and what happens, and does not happen to the Ukrainian people, depends largely on three other men whose power and personality dominate the stage on which they stride.

They are the three 800-Pound Gorillas: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping, and United States President Joe Biden.

I posted at length about Vladimir Putin in January, when I named him “Leader of the Year.” As I made clear at the time, in 2022 he was the world’s most impactful leader – an 800-pound gorilla who forced others to react to his cruel and brutal attack on a neighbor. Putin led not only his followers, the Russian people, into war. He led other leaders, pushed other leaders, to respond to the war, specifically leaders of countries and companies all over the world who felt they had to react to Putin’s primal aggression. None of this is obviously to say that Putin was a “good” leader. He was not. He certainly was not ethical. Nor was he effective. In fact, in the United States is a cottage industry of Russia-watchers who list his many mistakes and miscalculations. Still, given Putin launched a war of aggression, in the heart of East Europe, and given he remains ruler of a state that has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, when he makes a move attention is paid.  

President Xi has perhaps seemed a marginal actor during the year of Putin’s War. But not for a moment did he distance himself from the conflict. To the contrary. Just a few weeks before Russia’s invasion, Putin and Xi signed a sweeping long-term agreement that declared the friendship between their two states “had no limits.” It was a direct and deliberate swipe at the United States and NATO, and at liberal democracy. Though Xi had his hands full during 2022 and into 2023, above all with Covid, he never backed down even an inch either from his alliance with Putin or from his support of Russia in its war against Ukraine. As I write the Biden administration’s concern over China’s alliance with Russia continues. Just a few days ago Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Beijing that if it provides lethal aid to Russia it will pay a price. Xi though will not easily be cowed. The war in Ukraine is in his interest. It costs the West, and it distracts the West. Therefore, so long as the price he has to pay for its continuation, maybe even for its escalation is not too high, he will continue in some way to meddle.

However awful the war in Europe, and however uncertain still its outcome, history will credit Joe Biden with meeting the moment. With seizing the occasion to reaffirm American values, to reassert American power, and to revive the Western alliance. Biden’s advanced age has some obvious disadvantages. But when Putin invaded Ukraine, Biden’s long history as a public servant, his deep expertise in foreign affairs (he was a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), and his considerable knowledge of the Soviet Union and then Russia were to his, to the Ukrainians, and to the West’s great benefit.

Biden first entered the Senate in 1973. It was the height of the Cold War, and Leonid Brezhnev was leader of the Soviet Union. The president has therefore dealt with the Russians directly and indirectly for fifty years! Moreover, Biden has for the moment no overseas Western competition. After the start of Putin’s War, France’s leader Emmanuel Macron tried but so far has failed to get his Russian counterpart to negotiate. Britain’s leader Rishi Sunak is new to the job and remains in consequence inexperienced and untested. And Germany’s leader, Olaf Scholz, has yet to prove he can even begin to fill his predecessor’s (Angela Merkel’s) ample shoes.

So, Biden stands alone – the best 800-pound gorilla, really the only 800-pound gorilla, the West has to offer. But on this issue, on Putin’s War, the American president has proven himself a tough opponent who, though visibly old, is still fit for a fight. A fight against his foreign foes, and a fight if necessary against his domestic ones. President Zelensky is weathering a damnably difficult and dreadful storm. But at least he has President Biden in his corner.  

In a recent article in The New Yorker, historian Jill Lepore criticized the January 6^th Report (issued by the House January 6^th Committee) for making it seem as if “Donald Trump acted alone and came out of nowhere.” As if “the rest of the country doesn’t even exist.”

My complaint precisely. Blame for the ridiculous reductionism lies, of course, not just at the doorstep of the January 6^th Committee. It also rests with commentators, even experts, who typically find it comforting and convenient to blame a particular single individual for whatever went wrong during his four years in the White House.

This ahistoricism came to mind again this week when it came out – no surprise, of course – that everyone who was anyone at Fox News knew they were lying when they insisted for months and then years on end that the 2020 presidential election had been won not by Joe Biden but by Trump. (Their bald-faced lies became hard evidence this week through a suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News.)

Why did Fox persist in its fabrications? Essentially for two reasons. Those at the network did not want to end on Donald Trump’s enemies list.  And they did not want to alienate their viewers, who happened to be one and the same as Trump’s base. Put differently, the leading players at Fox, both those on the air and in C-suites, lied and lied and then lied some more primarily for money. They were voraciously greedy.

In my book The Enablers I made clear that what happened during the Trump presidency was just not his doing. It was in consequence of many different players, followers, some of whom were so slavishly loyal to the president they were enablers. These included the folks at Fox about whom I wrote: “The relationship between Donald Trump and Fox News was as it had always been – symbiotic. Or reciprocal, or transactional, take your pick…. President Trump stood to gain politically from his access to Fox News. Fox News stood to gain financially from its access to Donald Trump.”   

So, this week’s big news about Fox was old news. It confirmed what we already knew – that the folks at Fox, the followers at Fox, were in Trump’s hip pocket to further line their own.

About twenty years ago, at the Harvard Kennedy School, Warren Bennis, David Gergen, and I co-taught a course titled “Leadership and Art.” Though for various reasons we offered it only once, I recall it as a wonderful experiment, equally enjoyed by faculty and students.

The course came to mind again yesterday when I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see a current exhibit, “Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art.” It reminded me again – if I needed reminding, which I did not – of how leadership and art are frequently, deeply, entwined. For so much art – visual, literary, auditory; from film to fiction; historical or contemporaneous – mirrors our own infinitely more mundane obsession with power.    

The Maya art now on display at the Met was crafted (A.D. 250-900) by master artists who, presumably, were ordered to depict the power of power. Their work weaves together the sacred and the secular in visualizations that, most memorably, are horrifying. In fact, this exhibit was an intellectual as well as visceral reminder of how “bad leadership,” in this case leadership intended to intimidate, is as old as the human condition.

Maya artists seemed to fixate on and excel at depicting gods and goddesses who had aggressive, warlike personalities. To be sure, the beautiful and benevolent are also in evidence, especially as they relate to fertility and fecundity. Moreover, sometimes the younger and weaker, followers, overcome the older and stronger, leaders.

But in the main, this Met show is a superbly imagined advertisement for the exercise of unabashed, unmitigated power. Power, if necessary, through the exercise of force. Power, if necessary, through human sacrifice: “ritualistic, dominion-fortifying public torture and killing, usually of political prisoners.”*

Lest this all seem dated, relevant to the distant past but not to the immediate present, it is not. It was only yesterday that Vice President Kamala Harris publicly accused Russia of committing “crimes against humanity” in Ukraine. So much for art, including ancient art, consigned to the side.  

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Within a few hours of me posting my previous piece, “Women Leaders Leaving,” Susan Wojcicki, announced that she was stepping down as chief executive officer of Youtube, a job she’s held for nine years.  

Of itself this would not be especially worthy of comment. But given the announcement of her retirement was in the immediate wake of Nicola Sturgeon’s, and given women leaders are being depleted in Silicon Valley, it’s worth noting.    

Even setting aside the special case of Elizabeth Holmes, the onetime CEO of the onetime Theranos, who crashed in a crash of her own making, in recent years, among others Sheryl Sandberg left her top role at Meta; Meg Whitman left hers at Hewlett-Packard; and Ginni Rometty hers at IBM. As the New York Times summarized it, in the recent past the tech industry “has lost a raft of women leaders who broke barriers, with few obvious female successors in sight.” Which again raises the question: given all the efforts made to change the equation, to fix the situation, why. Why are women leaders so stubbornly few in number?

Though we continue to refuse to acknowledge it, the answer seems to me to be clear. It’s not for lack of trying – trying to remedy the imbalance by doing everything from deliberately mentoring and sponsoring to deliberately socializing, modifying, and diversifying. Rather it’s because the higher women climb on the leadership ladder the more apparent become the physiological and psychological differences between them and men. Unless and until these differences are acknowledged and addressed, there will be progress, more women leaders than there were before. But progress will continue painfully, and puzzlingly, slow.        

I have long maintained that women and men are physiologically and psychologically different. And that these differences necessarily have an impact on why so few women are still, even now, at the top of the leadership ladder.

This is not to say the more conventional explanations, such as explicit or implicit bias, are irrelevant or unimportant. It is to point out that if women are in important ways irretrievably different from men, it’s inconceivable the distinctions have no implications.

This came to mind again yesterday, when Nicola Sturgeon announced that she would resign as First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party. The speech in which she announced her decision bore strong resemblance to Jacinda Ardern’s when she made a similarly surprising announcement only a month ago. In Ardern’s case she said that within weeks she intended to resign as Prime Minister of New Zealand.    

Both women are embedded in complex political situations which clearly influenced their decision to get out of politics, at least for now. Still, there is a more telling similarity between them – the freeness and frankness with which they spoke of the personal price paid by political leaders.

Ardern (in part):

I’m leaving because with such a privileged role comes responsibility – the responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and when you are not. I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It’s that simple.   

Sturgeon (in part):

Only very recently, I think, have I started to comprehend, let along process, the physical and mental impact of [this job] on me…. If the question is, can I give this job everything it demands and deserves for another year, let alone for the remainder of this parliamentary term – give it every ounce of energy that it needs, in the way that I have strived to do every day for the past eight years, the answer, honestly, is [no].  

The numbers of variables here are high. So direct comparisons between the two women, and between the two women and two men similarly highly placed, are impossible. Still – whether for reasons of nature or nurture – both Ardern and Sturgeon had no qualms about saying that leading was utterly exhausting. And that they were, therefore, completely depleted. Their surprisingly similar admissons/conclusions could just be coincidence. But I am presuming not. I am presuming it’s related to why, after all these years of working the problem, the number of women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, while higher than ever, remains still at a paltry, puny, ten percent.  

Postscript on an opposite note: This week, Senator Dianne Feinstein, age 89, finally announced her retirement (in two years, at the end of her term) from the Senate. Feinstein, a woman leader who was a path breaker, should have left in a blaze of glory. Instead, because she clung to her post too long, into her dotage, and into senility, her departure will simply be sad.        

Followers as I define them have little or no power, authority, or influence. This in contrast to leaders who have visibly more power, authority and, or, influence.

This definition of “follower” has several advantages, one of which is to make apparent that while people with no power, authority, or influence usually follow their leaders, they do not always follow their leaders. Sometimes followers defy their leaders, refusing to go along with what they want and intend. It’s why followers matter. They matter because leaders cannot count on them, always, automatically, to follow.

Examples of what I mean: The first is of followers who are following their leader. The second is of followers who are not following their leader – they are refusing to go along.

Follower Fodder  

I use the term “follower fodder” quite literally – for these followers are cannon fodder. They are Putin’s soldiers, men who by all accounts are being used by the Russian military as “storm troops.” As targets deliberately intended to draw fire to identify where the enemy, Ukrainian soldiers, is located. In other words, on the orders of their superiors these troops are throwing themselves deliberately and directly into harm’s way.

Given Russia lacks the hardware necessary to guarantee a victory over Ukraine, Putin is relying on overwhelming manpower to accomplish his war aims. Most of Russia’s conscripts are inexperienced, poorly trained, and ill equipped. Many are former convicts, sprung from prisons and recruited from penal colonies. It is their numbers, though, their sheer numbers, that tell the story. Russia has already deployed about 320,000 soldiers in Ukraine. Moreover, an additional 150,000 men are preparing to enter battle, and there are another half million waiting, ready if necessary to join the offensive. Already some 200,000 Russians have been killed or wounded in the war – a number likely to escalate exponentially.      

Do soldiers such as these – followers such as these – have a choice? A choice other than to do what they are told to do? Other than to obey orders given by their superiors?

This post is not intended to address questions like these. It is intended only to point out that some followers follow to the death. Including their own.

Follower Power  

Other followers refuse to follow. To be clear: I am not for a second equating the well over one hundred thousand Israelis who just took to the streets to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to revamp the Israeli judiciary with Russian soldiers. The overarching context is entirely different, as are the specific situations within which these two sets of followers find themselves. The former, Russian soldiers, are by no stretch of the imagination free agents. The latter, Israelis in opposition to the current government, are.

Still, the mass opposition rally in Israel earlier this week was composed of those who can broadly be described as ordinary people. They had been organized by a coalition of civil society groups, and heartened by prominent individuals at home and abroad who have spoken out forcefully against what the government was intending to do to the courts. Finally, Israel is still a democracy, so it still matters that public opinion is clearly against Netanyahu and his allies in parliament.

Given the extreme differences between Putin’s Russia and Netanyahu’s Israel, why even discuss Putin’s pliable, pitiable soldiers and Netanyahu’s resistant, recalcitrant protesters in a single post? Because it is precisely these contextual or situational differences that remind us of the similarities.

• History always matters.
• Ideology always matters.
• Technology always matters.
• Culture always matters.
• Education always matters.
• Organization always matters.
• Socialization always matters.
• Connection always matters.

The history of the Holocaust is stamped onto the fabric of Israeli society. Many Jews – not only in Israel but the world over – equate the famous phrase “Never Again” with never again allowing anyone anywhere to push them around. Ergo, they are quick to protest, strongly and unremittingly, against an idea, an individual, or an institution they believe is wrong.

Russians have no analogous history. In this sense, they are the opposite of Israelis. In their DNA is obedience to authority – whether in Tsarist Russia, Stalin’s Soviet Union or, now, Putin’s Russia. Russians have no significant experience with democracy, no relevant ideology, and no political culture to encourage anyone anywhere in the country to stand up and speak out. Moreover those that dare to do so – Alexei Navalny is the most famous and certainly among the most tragic examples – are severely punished. This explains the obvious: soldiers as follower fodder. It also explains the less obvious: why while many Russians have fled their country in the last year, the overwhelming majority have accommodated themselves to an unjust, unnecessary war that their president started and is hellbent on continuing. Notwithstanding the copious amounts of blood already shed on what he claims is his soil.

Last July l posted this piece about Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan:

Since then, while Turkey’s economy had been in decline, not much of significance was different. Erdogan remained the same chameleon-like leader I earlier described – neither at home nor abroad was he changing his now autocratic ways. He had been, after all, leader of Turkey for two decades. So why should he mess with what long had been an inconsistent but nevertheless proven formula for political success – notwithstanding an uncertain presidential election upcoming in May?

Then things changed. Not everything changed. Not the leader, Erdogan. Not his followers, much if not most of the Turkish electorate. It was the context that changed. The context within which the leader and his followers were situated changed in an instant – from being one thing to being something else entirely. To being a nation stricken. There can be no more vivid example of the importance of context than Turkey now. Turkey’s political climate and economic prospects are entirely different six days after the earthquake – in which some 25,000 Turks died and another tens of thousands were injured – than they were before tragedy struck.*

Erdogan was likely to win reelection in May, though it was not certain. After all his years in power, whatever was once his halo had long ago faded and his political enemies were purportedly intent on joining forces finally to defeat him. But Erdogan is a tough, seasoned autocrat – he would have been hard to unseat.   

Now, though, anger against Erdogan for what seems his dereliction of duty continues to mount – anger that by May will be difficult though not impossible to mute. There are three charges against him. First, that in the quake’s immediate aftermath help was slow to come and woefully inadequate. Second, that for many years preparations for another seismic event – which, given Turkey’s multiple quake hot spots, had long been predicted – were poor to nonexistent. And third, related to the second, was corruption. That much of the money allocated to quake mitigation went not into enforcing and re-enforcing Turkey’s building codes and infrastructure, but into lining the pockets of corrupt officials.    

Autocratic leaders hog credit when things go right. But their level of control is not total. So, when things go wrong, especially when they go horribly wrong, they cannot escape all blame.

But Erdogan is nothing if not wily – and he has friends or at least allies in high places, in the East and in the West.  Moreover, the presidential elections are not now. They are in May – or, at least, they were originally scheduled to be held in May. Who knows what will happen between now and then? Which is why, notwithstanding Turkey’s mood of the moment – full of anger, replete with grief – Erdogan’s political opponents still have their work cut out for them.       

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*The earthquake also struck areas of Syria. Those in affected areas are suffering especially cruelly, given the malevolent dispositions of their leader, Bashar al-Assad.