/ world today news/ Turkey and its recent presidential elections may once again show the world that something is wrong with democracy. That is, the Turks can open a new era when everyone will finally notice: the very idea of democracy cannot withstand a collision with modern reality.
And here’s the thing: again the voters of Istanbul, Ankara and several other big cities voted for one candidate (Kemal Kulçdaroğlu) and the rest of the country voted for Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And the forces were almost equal. We see decade after decade a fairly strong and stable division of the country’s population roughly in half – into two different lifestyles, two different sets of beliefs.
There is nothing unique here, it is typical of today’s world. Two weeks before, elections were held in Thailand. The point is not in their results (they have not yet been officially announced), but in the fact that in this country the political divide runs in the same place as in Turkey: between the capital and the rest of the country, and with roughly equal strength. Does anyone remember anything like a civil war in this country until 2014, when the military took power and “froze” the fury on both sides, which at one point led to barricade fights in Bangkok? The confrontation also goes along the lines of “the capital – the rest of the country” and this situation has not changed.
And it’s been the same in the US for over a decade. Democrats are big city dwellers, Republicans are the rest of the country, roughly even. In Russia… Here we somehow notice that in the two or three largest cities there are quite a few people who have different ideas than outside the city limits. Our difference with the US (or Turkey and others) is only in the numbers: we don’t have that hanging “50 for 50”. Fortunately for us. But bifurcations happen more and more often in modern economies, where the service sector involves more people than manufacturing.
There is a question: is this normal? Is it good when in this or that nation the struggle continues for years along the line “capital – the rest of the country”?
There is nothing good or even normal in such a prolonged battle. Remember the obvious: we are talking about an organism – a country needs a commercial metropolis both because it helps it sell the goods it produces, and because people of education, science and culture are concentrated there, without which production loses competitiveness. And turning these two parts of the body into real enemies happens when the votes in the election reach exactly that “50 to 50”. And then one side, with its ideas about the right way of life and values, again and again gets a chance with the help of a conditional vote to impose its tastes and ideas on the other side – through laws and not only. But he is deathly afraid of loss.
Is it possible to do without such a confrontation? It’s been that way for centuries. Megacities have existed since before our era and have always been inhabited by different people than those outside them. People with special professions, people familiar with the outside world, and just foreigners in the crowd. And it seems normal to everyone that in your country other people live according to their own laws and rules, have different tastes, religions and ideas. For this there was city self-government, that is, special laws for citizens.
Of course, there are situations when there is no time for a variety of tastes. Recall what the status of a citizen meant in the ancient world – a person who defended his country in war and for this he had the right to vote and many other rights and advantages. This status (and the right to vote) is far from enjoyed by everyone living in the city.
And then comes the era of democracy with the general idea that all men are equal. But the original meaning of this beautiful idea of equality is that a small group of aristocrats should not dictate their will to the majority. And not at all that half of the population imposes its way of life and ideas on the other half.
Why should democracy actually mean that all the inhabitants of the country are equal in rights and in every sense? And if the rest of the country imposes its tastes and style of behavior on the capital, how is this better than the reverse process? Some with disgust bring the light of enlightenment to the wild masses, others demand the dispersal of such artistic elites and the triumph of the chanson, and fear is behind this mutual bitterness. The fear that the other half of the country through the mechanism of “50 percent plus one vote” will force your half to adopt foreign tastes and behavior.
One way or another, the idea of universal violent democracy is being corrected. In the US, for example, territories populated by Democrats and Republicans increasingly live under different laws – but is this the collapse of the state or a way to save it? New York, run by the Democrats, as of 2020 has been abandoned by about half a million people who are fleeing to the Republicans, the same with other big cities: they are fleeing there. And the more countries there are in the world with this perpetual 50-50 split, the more often they will say that not all problems can be solved by universal suffrage.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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