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What just happened Istanbul's rerun elections is a huge, huge deal. Headline: authoritarian populism just got defeated by a political strategy called Radical Love - and it was astonishing to behold.
Background: Erdogan's AKP narrowly lost to the CHP party in Istanbul back in March - first time they'd lost Istanbul in 25 years, after Erdogan had said "whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey". But then - shamefully - the result got annulled after AKP alleged irregularities.
CHP supporters were *furious*. But ousted Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu told them: "They want conflict from us. But we, the people who do not want this nation to fight, we will insist upon embracing each other." theatlantic.com/international/…
Turns out he meant this literally. "Find a neighbour who doesn't think like you, and just give them a hug." Which is just what he proceeded to do, all through the rerun election campaign
The whole gameplan was to subvert polarisation by refusing to be polarised. CHP did *not* retreat into their secular base. Instead İmamoğlu toured mosques to show respect for AKP's religious voters. "We are showing that walls can be torn down with love.”
All this was pulled together in an *extraordinary* campaign playbook called "Radical Love". Key principle: 👉"Ignore Erdoğan, but love those who love him."👈 BOOM. It's available in English here: dijitalmecmua.chp.org.tr/CHPRadikal%20S…
At its heart was the responsibility each of us has to manage our mental and emotional state, and embrace the struggle to love each other even under the most challenging conditions. "We saw that we cannot change Erdoğan, so we fight by changing ourselves.”
As sociology prof. Arlie Hochschild puts it, the approach is about "mastering a temporary suspension of self—not ... of moral commitment, but of self—in order to surrender to the deep act of curiosity about others... a form of ‘emotion work’ that is hugely important in politics.”
So for instance, Radical Love tells CHP supporters: "A young man who you would normally get along with may come to your party kiosk and provoke you. What to do in this situation? Should we get into a fight as he wants us to, or should we let love win like we want it to?"
There's nothing woolly here. The pamphlet says again and again how hard this strategy is, how much patience and self-mastery it requires. It's fundamentally about having the self-awareness to *choose* how to react rather than sliding into fight-or-flight responses.
There's also very clear-eyed recognition of how in the past CHP and its supporters have belittled and looked down on often rural AKP supporters: "Some arrogant people ... even called the hardworking workers and villagers of Anatolia “belly scratching men”."
And there's *huge* emphasis on focusing on what we have in common (e.g. economic issues) instead of what divides us. "We may speak Turkish, Kurdish, Laz, Georgian, Arabic or English, but the most important thing is to speak the “humanist language”."
The result of all of this: what was a narrow win back in March became a landslide victory for CHP in last night's re-run vote. 🥳
There is *so much* to learn here on how to beat populism and polarisation: above all that we have to build bridges, not just fire up our base (something @paulmasonnews and I disagreed on in our presentations to a recent retreat for NGO CEOs oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/how-shoul…)
For the bad guys to win, they only need to get us to see ourselves as part of a them and us or an atomised 'I'. For us to win, the bar is much higher: we have to see ourselves - and help others to see themselves - as part of a Larger Us. CHP just showed us how it's done. ❤️
(ICYMI: here's our report A Larger Us which came out earlier this month and is *all* about this stuff: collectivepsychology.org/wp-content/upl…)
