Natalie Portman and the Plight of Polarization

Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman, famous for her roles in the Star Wars prequels and Black Swan, is under fire for her refusal to attend a ceremony in Israel to receive the Genesis Prize, an American award which recognizes Jewish people for their substantial contributions to their respective fields.

The ceremony was quickly cancelled after her announcement.

Portman claims her reason for not attending is because of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plans to attend. Portman, who has kept her Israeli roots close, has been critical of Netanyahu and was "...very, very upset and disappointed” when he won re-election in 2015. She has also said she "find[s] his racist comments horrific,”

Portman was quick to clarify, however, that her refusal to attend the event was not meant to appear as a general boycott of Israel, merely the Israeli Prime Minister and his political platform.

Unfortunately, her personal protest was immediately twisted by both sides to fit their own respective narratives. Israel's Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz claimed her decision bordered on anti-Semitism, and according to Ha'aretz, "On Friday, Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev said: “I was sorry to hear that Natalie Portman has fallen like ripe fruit into the hands of supporters of BDS.""  Knesset member Oren Hazan, also from Likud and currently serving a suspension, suggested the actress should have her Israeli citizenship revoked.

On the other hand, members of the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) were overjoyed at Portman's protest. An article in Forward proudly proclaims "Actually, Natalie, you ARE practicing BDS". The article claims that "I understand your hesitation to “boycott the entire nation. But this is not what BDS is. Individuals are not the target of boycott efforts — the state is. These things can and should be separated."

Both claims are unfair to Mrs. Portman.

Accusing an actress who has strong ties to Israel and who has expressed her admiration for Israeli culture and her Jewish faith on multiple occasions of "bordering on anti-Semitism" is ridiculous and facetious. Not only is it inaccurate to accuse Portman of anti-Semitism, it furthers the stereotype that Israelis become overly defensive at criticism directed at their country and revert to accusing their critics of anti-Semitism even if they harbor no ill sentiment towards Israelis or Jews in general. Anti-Semitism is unfortunately still alive and well and even growing in some areas with the rise of the nationalist, populist right. Natalie Portman is not part of that nasty rising tide.

These sentiments reflect a sour turn towards right-wing populism in Israel. When former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided to protest police brutality and lingering institutional racism by kneeling during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner before football games, he was personally vilified and insulted by U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters as being disrespectful and unpatriotic. However, nonviolent protest is part of the right to constitutional freedom of speech and assembly that Americans are explicitly given in the First Amendment. While one does not have to agree with Kaepernick’s protest or motives, it is unfair to jump to the conclusion that he is unpatriotic; many would argue his dissent was a patriotic demonstration as it showed a desire for the US to fix lingering problems in its justice system. Kaepernick and Portman are both engaging in civil disobedience, a form of non-violent protest, a right which is integral in any free society. It is extremely important that those claiming to be democratic remember that their elected representatives are not above criticism, scrutiny or protest.

On the other hand, it’s condescending, opportunistic and flippant to commandeer Portman’s protest of Netanyahu, a Prime Minister whose party only received 23.4% of the votes in the last General Election, into an implicit or unintended support for the BDS movement. It is especially insolent when she publicly and explicitly claims her personal views do not equate to support for the movement.
The author of the aforementioned article which claims Portman is actually practicing BDS, claims that BDS is not about boycotting the “entire nation”, but the “state”. True, “nation” and “state”, while often used interchangeably, do not have the same meaning. “Nation” generally refers to the people of a country, “state” to the government of that country. These terms, however, are most certainly intertwined. When a country is predominantly ethnically and/or religiously homogenous, and Israel could be considered as such when it calls itself as a Jewish, democratic state, it is referred to as a “nation-state”.  Israel is about 75% Jewish, 21% Arab (mostly Muslim, some Christian) and 4% other (Druze, for instance).

The problem with this distinction is that it is murky at best. BDS often claims its roots in the South African anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. South Africa’s venomously racist apartheid government, in place from 1948 until it was significantly weakened in 1990 and fully dismantled by 1994, was put under serious international sanctions in the 1980s. The economy was put under considerable strain and many claim that the economic hardship was an instrumental part of the South African government’s repeal of the apartheid laws under President F.W. De Klerk.

Sanctions, while a peaceful method of protest used by many different governments, have often been criticized as disproportionately affecting ordinary people while those in power feel little if any pressure. This was an oft-repeated line when Fmr. President Obama desired to strike a nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran and a thaw with Cuba. Supporters of these foreign policy objectives claimed that ordinary Iranians and Cubans, whether supporters of their respective governments or not, were the ones to hurt most from sanctions. If a general boycott of the Israeli government was enforced, there is a possibility that it would have the same effect: economic strain on the working man who has little direct involvement with the government’s policies, little if any pressure on those in power. How exactly does BDS plan to boycott Israel and not have that affect the ordinary Israeli?

BDS, like most political protest organizations, has a method and a message. Its method, in theory, borrows from long-utilized methods of nonviolent protest. Boycotting, divesting, and sanctioning are all legitimate forms of peaceful protest. In theory, these are seemingly sound methods of getting a message out even if the message may come across as disagreeable.

In practice, however, BDS often engages in posturing which can alienate people who may be willing to criticize specific policies enacted by the Israeli government, but who are not supportive of a wholesale boycott. The smash hit superheroine movie Wonder Woman was met with ire and calls for boycott from BDS as the protagonist is played by Israeli actress Gal Gadot. When faced with criticism, some supporters claimed their desire for a boycott was due to the fact that Mrs. Gadot was a soldier in the Israeli Defence Forces, where she served two years of mandatory conscription and had voiced support for on social media. But considering Gadot's service in the IDF was mandatory, she did not see combat, and she does not enact policy, many saw the boycott as prejudiced rather than specifically critical of a Israeli government policy platform. Is a former conscript wrong to express patriotic feelings for the army and country she served?

Portman is well within her rights to criticize and express her disagreements with Prime Minister Netanyahu. It is unfortunate that her plain, direct explanation of her decision has been co-opted by those on both sides of this hopelessly complicated, tangled conflict. 

Lessons to Learn from Kemerovo

You probably haven't heard of Kemerovo. It's understandable if you haven't, it isn't exactly Paris or London.

Keremovo is a city in Russia located 255 km (158 mi) from Novosibirsk, the biggest city in Siberia and Russia's third largest behind Moscow and St. Petersburg. Slightly over 500,000 live in the industrial city of Kemerovo.

On March 25, 2018, a fire ripped through the "Winter Cherry" mall and theatre complex in the city. According to the BBC, the fire started somewhere on an upper floor in the mall, during school holidays. The complex, which had multiple movie theatres, a bar, cafe, and a bowling alley, was packed and bustling.

While the cause of the fire isn't known yet for sure, two speculative answers are floating around.

"Senior regional official Vladimir Chernov was quoted as saying the fire probably began in the children's trampoline room on the top floor of the four-storey building.

"The preliminary suspicion is that a child had a cigarette lighter which ignited foam rubber in this trampoline room, and it erupted like gunpowder," he said.\

However, Rossiya 24 TV, a national broadcaster, said an electrical fault was the most likely cause - as in most previous deadly fires in Russia."

President Vladimir Putin visited Kemerovo and blamed "criminal negligence and sloppiness" for the disaster.

The scenes were heartbreaking. A Russian man spoke to a crowd of indignant protesters in the city center on the 27th of March, which had been declared a day of mourning. He detailed the last words he spoke to his daughter before she fell victim to the blaze. His last words to the crowd were interrupted by his own tears. The protesters called for an investigation into the disaster and for local officials to resign.

Rumors are swirling around. Official numbers claim 64 people died and that 27 are still missing, but some are adamant that the death toll is much higher, perhaps as high as 300. Despite the history of deceit and propaganda which has come from authorities and the state media in Russia, this has not yet been confirmed. In fact, Meduza, a Russian and English paper based in Riga which is generally quite critical of the Kremlin and President Putin, lays out a comprehensive list of reasons why the rumors of the death toll being much higher than reported may not be true.

In fact, according to The Moscow Times, another fairly liberal publication, a Ukrainian blogger who called is now being investigated for intentionally spreading the rumor of around 300 dead.

"In an online video posted by Volnov on the day of the tragedy, the blogger is heard posing as an emergency services official in a prank phone call to a morgue in Kemerovo.

He asks the bewildered medical worker on the line if there is space for at least 300 dead bodies.

In comments to the RBC business portal, Volnov confirmed that he was the author of the recordings and said that 300 was an estimate based on the number of seats in the shopping mall's cinema complex."

Even if the official figures are not found to be entirely accurate, there is still a problem to be discussed among the Russian people in the wake of this horrific disaster.

The disaster in Kemerovo is a symptom of two much larger and much more grim problems than a simple building fire. First, corruption in Russia is a rampant epidemic. Transparency International ranks Russia 135th out of 180 in its corruption index, on par with countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, and Bangladesh. While corruption is arguably not as bad as it was in Russia under former President Boris Yeltsin, the issue is still a common scapegoat for Russia's internal issues or inefficiencies.

Yet little ever seems to be accomplished regarding corruption. The current government, while occasionally offering words of encouragement to anti-corruption efforts, does not seem particularly interested in resolving the issue on a national scale. "Not as bad as it was under President Yeltsin" is a low expectation to set and an even lower one to declare the status quo.

Corruption has been a problem in the Kremlin long before Vladimir Putin ever considered running for office. It started to rear its ugly head on a nationwide scale under hardliner Premier Leonid Brezhnev in the 1970s. The planned economy, still being heralded as the superior system to the perceived excesses and hedonism of capitalism, had become rife with redundancies, waste and an endless bureaucracy. It had started to stagnate and rot from within. Reformist Premier Mikhail Gorbachov tried to right the ship, but his reforms largely backfired and contributed to mounting instability which eventually became a major reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union. It only grew and spread under Yeltsin as his ineffective and wildly unpopular government fruitlessly attempted to reform the Russian economy from the smoldering ashes of the collapsed planned economy.

And here we are, in Vladimir Putin's eighteenth year of power. While rushing to blame Putin as if he was the one to personally start the fire is excessive, it may be time to seriously address a different, intangible problem that is related to the stubborn corruption present in Russia: apathy.

Russians and their Eastern European counterparts are often stereotyped as stoic peoples who grimly go about their lives, rarely smiling unless something unexpectedly wonderful happens or they've had a few drinks. Unfortunately, this stereotype can sometimes translate to the political arena. Russians are generally supportive of democracy in theory, but the brain drain, poverty, crime and lost identity that came to define the 1990s soured many Russians' opinions on the new system of government. Political apathy, while found everywhere, is especially recognizable and tangible in today's Russia.

While Russia in the 1990s was more democratic than it is now or was under communism, "more" is a relative, and in this case, marginal term. When people are represented by a government which struggles to complete even basic functions, the power and freedom that democracy is supposed to extend to the people  of a sovereign state are difficult to realize.

This was a problem in the United States before its constitution was written as well. Between the end of the American Revolution in 1783 and the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the United States was governed by the Articles of Confederation, a sort of proto-type constitution that decentralized government to an extreme degree. While life was freer under the Articles than it was under the British Crown, the new government was so ineffective that it proved difficult to realize and celebrate these freedoms.

Eighteen years after Vladimir Putin swept his way into power, he remains the ever-dominant figure in Russian politics. While the Russian economy surged between 2000 and 2007, it has been sluggish or in serious recession since then. President Putin is starting to be compared to Leonid Brezhnev, as while life is generally stable and steady, corruption and apathy are rampant in a sluggish, stagnant state.

That's where the Russian people can come in and make a difference.

While one can argue that Putin did preside over a substantial rebound for Russia in the 2000s, he needs to be judged on more than his accomplishments (or outside factors which he took credit for) in his first seven years of power.

The Kemerovo Disaster was a horrific disaster which could have been prevented. It's easy to lay the blame at those directly involved, and they are right to be reprimanded. There is no excuse for the alleged negligence of those in the direct vicinity: the security who failed to pull or fix the fire alarm, those who decided to lock the theater doors, and the bogus inspection of the building's procedures and preparedness for an emergency.

These livid protesters are calling for accountability, a basic tenet of representative government. For years the Kremlin has failed to deliver that. It's not healthy to fall back into the complacency that life is stable and quiet-society requires an active and invested populace. Another reason for Kemerovo's disaster was the under-funded fire department: Russia's wealth unfortunately is mostly focused in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Proposed investments in the smaller cities are slow to come if ever.

Russia does not necessarily need photogenic pictures of millions in the streets demanding reform or even revolution as was seen in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014. What it needs, at least as a first step, is for its people to demand accountability on a grand scale. It's time to stop brushing off corruption as a fact of life-reform is difficult but it certainly is not impossible. Kemerovo was not the first fire disaster in contemporary Russia, but if the people are willing to demand accountability, disasters like this can be prevented or at least substantially controlled so there is less to grieve.

Good Party, Uncertain Future: Meral Akşener's attempt to upend Turkish politics

On October 25, 2017, a new political party was formed in Turkey, taking the name İyi Parti (Good Party).

This new party was founded by Meral Akşener, a vocal Turkish politician and critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Akşener, who has been in politics since the mid-1990s, once belonged to the True Path Party, a secular conservative party. As the True Path Party faded into the background, she then joined the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), a small but influential far-right nationalist party which, despite its more moderated image today, has a history of violence.

Last year, as the MHP cozied up to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), Akşener attempted to oust party leader Devlet Bahceli from his post. She was unsuccessful and forced out of the party.

During Turkey’s recent constitutional referendum, the MHP was split. While much of the high-level party officials were supportive of the proposed transition from parliamentary to presidential democracy, many of the party’s voters were not. Indeed, when Turks went to the polls, large amounts of voters in the MHP’s regional strongholds in the south of the country voted against the transition. Akşener was one of many voices to express her opposition to the referendum. 

Maps detailing the results of the Turkish elections in June 2015 and the referendum results. Brown areas in the map on the left are areas won by MHP, many of which are red ("No" voting in the referendum). 

Despite the split, the referendum still narrowly passed and Turkey is undergoing the transition from parliamentary to presidential which its critics dismiss as a power grab by President Erdoğan.

Akşener decided this autumn to start a new party, with one seemingly clear goal in mind: to run for president, unseat Erdoğan and pick up the damaged pieces of Turkey’s still-intact but fragile secular democracy in hopes of gluing them back together. The next Turkish General Election is in November 2019, giving Aksener two years to craft her party's platform, reach out to the Turkish people, and fight the AKP. 

From an ideological perspective, the İyi Party claims to be centrist, perhaps slightly leaning right in an attempt to woo wary AKP supporters. Like the CHP, it is nationalist, secular, and Kemalist, and it also has taken up a bit of populist anti-establishment sentiment as a response to what it perceives as the ineffectiveness and polarization brought on by the establishment Turkish political parties. It also seeks to reverse the transition from presidential to parliamentary democracy. 

A Gezici poll in mid-October had Erdoğan winning another term as president with 48% of the vote. Ms.Akşener sat 10 points behind him at 38%. In third place was Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the Kemalist center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) with 14% of the vote. In this scenario, Akşener and Erdoğan would go to a runoff election which she would have a good chance of winning considering most CHP voters' fierce opposition to the President. 

In Turkey’s last direct presidential election, the CHP and MHP rallied together behind Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, but he came in second with only 38% of the vote compared to Erdoğan’s 51%. Because Erdoğan won over 50% of the vote, no runoff election was necessary. Selahattin Demirtaş, a Kurdish politician from the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) came in a very distant third with 10% of the vote.

President Erdoğan has many critics in Turkey. However, his critics come from vastly different political angles and rarely do they agree on a consensus. The Republican People's Party, known by its Turkish initials CHP, the second largest party in Turkey, is a secular center-left party. While it enjoys large popularity on Turkey's western coast and in cities like Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, its support quickly dissolves once you delve further into the Turkish heartlands. The MHP, already in a state of crisis between the pro- and anti-Erdoğan factions, only tends to draw large support from a small region in Turkey's south. The Kurdish-interest HDP receives almost no support outside the southeast of the country. MHP and HDP refuse to speak to each other and CHP seems stagnant in terms of how much support they can amass. None of these parties seem to be able to cut substantially into Erdoğan's base of support, which even in its low point in the June 2015 elections managed 40% of the vote, still 15% higher than that of the second-place CHP. 

The new presidential system Turkey is moving towards may work in the Good Party's favor, but a few things will need to happen for them to actually unseat Erodgan and the AKP.

In order for Akşener to win, she's going to need to master a big-tent appeal. First, she must be able to convince the CHP and MHP to rally behind her as one as they did behind İhsanoğlu in 2014. It seems unlikely that the second largest party in Turkey will not nominate their own candidate for this position, but Akşener could broaden her appeal and call for her Good Party and the CHP to join forces. If the CHP is dead-set on running their own candidate against her such as Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, it will only split the anti-Erdoğan voting bloc into smaller pieces. Kılıçdaroğlu, the current leader of the CHP, has said he is not interested in running for President in 2019, but that does not necessarily mean the party will not field a candidate. 

Calling MHP to her cause may be even more difficult as she is an ex-member of the party. The pro-Erdoğan faction of the MHP may try to scuttle her plans to win the presidency by running a token candidate who is only lukewarmly opposed to Erdoğan. While Akşener looks like she is already drawing MHP voters to the İyi Party, uniting the party to the point that MHP does not run their own candidate will be difficult. 

A Sonar poll conducted between November 1 and 6 has MHP's support dwindling down to 7.8% while the İyi Party is on track to gain 21% of the vote for the Parliamentary election. In Turkey, a political party must gain at least 10% of the vote to gain parliamentary representation. If this poll is accurate, MHP would lose all its representation at the national level. 

Akşener’s ability to appeal to HDP and AKP voters may be most difficult of all. As a former member of the far-right nationalist MHP, Akşener once carried a banner that Kurds living in Turkey have severe reservations about. Considering both co-leaders of the HDP, Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ are under arrest, neither of them may run in the presidential election and it is unclear whether HDP will even be allowed to contest any part of the 2019 elections. It is unlikely the Kurds will remain politically silent in 2019, and the June 2015 elections showed they can be a considerable force in Turkish elections when they won 13% of the vote. Considering MHP and HDP have barely been on speaking terms while in Parliament together, voters who flip from HDP to the İyi Party will likely represent a very small minority. 

The other goal in Akşener's quest to oust Erdoğan from power is to cut into the base that Erdoğan has relied on 15 years. Erdoğan first swept to power in 2002, and has won elections consistently since then in 2007, 2011, twice in 2015, and then 2017's referendum.

As stated before, even in the June 2015 election when AKP slumped to its worst result since its founding in 2001, it still managed to capture just over 40% of the vote. If Akşener can't cut into this base without significant support from other anti-Erdoğan factions, it will be difficult for her to accomplish her speculated goal of unseating the President. 

Most of the support for Akşener seems to be coming from disaffected MHP voters, as some polls have the MHP falling from its last performance of 11.9% down to around 3-5%, which would effectively end its time in the Grand National Assembly as parties need at least 10% of the vote to get represented. In polls where the İyi Party gets over 10% of the vote, AKP slumps to around 38-40%, while CHP and HDP's percentages stay mostly the same.

Take a Sonar poll conducted from November 1-6. Its results (AKP 38.5%, CHP 23.5%, MHP 7.8%, HDP 10.3%, İyi 16.1%)  indicate that CHP and İyi would have a slight advantage in voting percentage (39.6% to 38.5) to scrape out a tiny majority over the AKP's plurality. If they focus on anti-Erdoğan sentiment, these two parties could likely stall much of Erdoğan's agenda even if he still won the Presidency. The direct presidential poll conducted by Gezici in mid-October suggested that Akşener may be popular enough to, at the very least, force Erdoğan into a runoff election for the Turkish Presidency, which she would make extremely competitive if the CHP voters rally behind her.

Of course, all of this is speculation. Polling is far from an exact science, and the İyi Party is still in its infancy. How much appeal it truly has or can muster when it's time for Turks to go to the polls in 2019 is still uncertain. Their daring attempt to unseat President Erdoğan has a path to victory, but it's a long road ahead.