Mayor may not: Turkey’s election re-run

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. A weekend tweet from President Donald Trump has cast doubt on a trade deal with China that for weeks had seemed to be inching closer. But whether or not there's a deal, one American senator is warning of a far greater danger than escalating tariffs. And there's a genre of music that permeates Brazilian life. It's known for lyrics that glorify violence and misogyny and lends itself to some pretty raunchy dance moves. Surprising, then, that there's a feminist movement growing in Brazilian funk. First up, though, it was a huge setback for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his justice and Development, or AK Party in Turkey's local elections in March. They lost control of the capital Ankara and narrowly lost the mayoral contest in Istanbul. But that wasn't the end of the story. The ruling party refused to concede defeat in Istanbul, And yesterday the electoral board annulled the results. The elections will be rerun next month. Turkey now braces for another political crisis.

There was plenty of fear that this would happen, but somehow people refused to acknowledge that fear and held out hope until last night.

Piotr Zelewski is Turkey correspondent for the Economist.

The decision was greeted with that mix of disbelief and anger by supporters of Ekrem Imam Olu, the you could now say the former mayor, the man elected mayor on March 31 and deposed last night. When he spoke to a crowd of supporters last night following the decision.

You.

Could sense that people were truly upset. And there was certainly a note of defiance in the air and willingness to give this another go and to prepare for a showdown ahead of the new election, which will be held on June 23rd. Aside from that, you could hear across most opposition districts in Istanbul the sound of people banging pots and pans outside the window that to many Turks is a familiar sound Heard most recently on this scale about six years ago, during Turkey's last wave of major anti government protests, there was probably, you know, a note of defiance, but also a note of resignation. I did feel, at least to many observers, something like a beat of the death march of Turkish democracy.

To your mind, were there any legitimate reasons to rerun the vote? Is there, is there any justification offered that rings true to you?

Well, so far the election board has presented one reason and one reason only for canceling the election, which is improprieties in the appointment of some polling station officials. But critics and analysts, and certainly the opposition, have pointed out that the decision of the election council and the appeal of the ruling party apply only to one part of the election. Now, when Istanbulus went to the polls in March 31, they voted both for mayor and for the district and municipal council. So one envelope, three votes. And what the election council has done last night was to cancel only one of those votes, whereas logical argument would be to conclude that the whole election should have been annulled and that did not happen.

Well, it's not only internal observers who are kind of raising red flags here. I mean, the European Parliament has said that rerunning the election would end the credibility of democratic elections in Turkey. What's your view as to the degree to which this is a Rubicon that the ruling party is crossing here by kind of messing around with these elections?

This was a local election in which the ruling party lost control of five out of six of Turkey's biggest cities, and it has conceded those cities to the opposition. But what has happened in Istanbul has certainly shaken the faith that Turks have had in the ballot box and in the institution that is meant to be the arbiter of free elections in Turkey. Turkey has had reasonably free, if not fair elections for the past seven decades. I think this is the first time that many analys can recall election being overturned for practically no good reason, and the first time that the loser in election fails to transfer power to the winner. Now, this has happened on a smaller scale elsewhere. And you'll remember that the vast, vast majority of mayors in the Kurdish southeast of Turkey have been deposed over the past couple of years over allegations of links to terror groups. And in fact, following this local election, about half a dozen of Kurdish mayors in the southeast have also been stripped of their mandates. But that has happened on a smaller and maybe more distant, less visible stage. Now it is happening in Turkey's biggest.

City if the ruling party is willing to concede all of these places that are not Istanbul. Why make the risky move then, of doing this in Istanbul?

Well, I think that's the question everyone is still asking, given where we are this morning. You know, the lira has sank to its lowest level, I think, since last September. There is some fear of street protests and further political and financial turmoil. On paper, it looks like the justice and development party and Mr. Erdogan have an even lower chance of winning Istanbul than they did in March. Now, would have Mr. Erdogan ordered or leaned on the election board to order a new election if he thought he risked losing it? Well, most analysts would say no. And most people, especially opposition circles, now fear that. That Mr. Erdogan will attempt to win this election for his party by hook or by crook.

What do you mean by that? How do you think things could play out from here?

There's certainly fear of yet more voting irregularities. There is fear that Mr. Erdogan will provoke some sort of a crisis, and that he will do whatever it takes to win the election. And, you know, we've failed to grasp exactly how deep his playbook is for years now. And he may have tricks up his sleeve that few people are able to pred at this moment.

I. I have a sinking feeling we're going to be speaking about this again, Piotr. But for now, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Jason.

Just as it was looking like a trade deal between America and China was about to be struck, President Donald Trump took to Twitter. His threat to slap 25% tariffs on all Chinese imports has put in jeopardy what was being described as the final lapse of talks scheduled to take place in Washington this week. That sudden shift in tone rattled investors in Asia and most of all, in China. The CSI 300, an index of major Chinese stocks, fell by nearly 6% yesterday, its worst day in more than three years. The discussions have already addressed some tricky issues. Central among them, China's policy of forcing American companies to share technology secrets in return for market access. The tensions have been underscored by concerns about Huawei. American officials have declared the technology company a national security risk, alleging its equipment could be used by the Chinese government for espionage. But one influential American senator is warning that even if a deal is reached, the it'll do little to tackle the long term danger that China poses. A danger he believes cannot be overstated.

It is the most comprehensive threat to our country that it has ever faced.

Marco Rubio is a big player. He's a Republican senator from Florida, a big state. But he's also very interested in foreign policy.

David Rennie is our Beijing Bureau chief, but he's recently been doing some reporting in the States.

So when you go to talk to him about China, you go through waiting rooms filled with people who are anxiously waiting to talk to him about Venezuela or Latin American policy. But he is very focused on China. So I'm writing a long piece for The Economist about US China relations. I've read your Made in China 2025 report.

There are now five people that have done so.

So as a starter, sat at a long work table, cleared his head of distractions, and focused and spoke very intently and with quite a mastery of detail about his extremely hawkish view of what a gigantic threat China presents to America and how that will be the core issue of the 21st century.

This China issue is not a four year, two year or one year issue. It's not even a singular issue. It is so broad, so comprehensive, and so critical to the very outline of what the century is going to be about that future presidents are going to be dealing with this as well.

Well, I mean, what's the core of his view on China? That sounds pretty dire.

So he takes the view that China is not just America's largest economic competitor, it's also a military rival and an ideological rival, and also that its behavior has taken it from just a kind of competitor to something closer to an adversary. It matters that Marco Rubio sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. That means he sees top secret intelligence in these secure committee rooms they have in the basement of Congress. And he's very fired up about what he's heard there.

We have faced military threats, we have faced security threats, we have faced economic threats. But we have never faced a direct competitor who has a plan and is executing on a plan with the support of an entire government at every level. Technological, diplomatic, geopolitical, military.

And their level of espionage activity at the moment, how high is it?

It's never ending. It's like a game of whack a mole. Every time you hit one and five others pop up somewhere else. I mean, it's across the board. It's the stealing of defense secrets, technological secrets, biomedical research. They can steal it, they can buy it, they can force you to transfer it. I mean, it's all across the board.

So it's the espionage end of this that bugs him the most.

He's very fired up about the fact that the espionage threat is on every front. It's not just cyber hacking. It's not just stealing trade secrets from companies. It's things like Chinese spies being sent as Students and researchers to American universities.

I mean, again, it sounds very much like dire warnings, a suggestion that this is pervasive in business as in society. Are there no risks at raising that kind of alarm?

A really interesting moment in our interview was I asked him, are you not worried that this will put a cloud of suspicion over the third of a million Chinese who are currently in America as students? And he's kind of, he paused mid flow. How normal can it then be for there to be 300,000 Chinese students in these? I don't understand in some ways how.

That's a great question. And so you talk about the students for a moment. You know, that is one of the, that I struggle with. And we have to balance. On the one hand, we cannot ignore the fact that the Chinese government has used student visas as a way to bring people to the United States for purposes of accessing technology. You know, when people in the west think of spies, they think of a James Bond movie. This is a very different sort of espionage in which acquiring a key research position at a university allows a Chinese national to transfer information back to China. The flip side is I don't want to trigger xenophobia in which every Chinese student in America is presumed to be a spy until proven otherwise. So it will be a struggle for us to figure out a way to solve that problem.

And so how does Mr. Rubio think America should deal with the threat that he says China poses?

So Marco Rubio, remember he was a presidential rival of Donald Trump's. He thinks that it is the job of the Congress to get tough on China, not just on fighting espionage, sounding the alarm about the theft of economic secrets, but if needs be, to use the law to start passing export controls, to tell American businesses, we don't trust you to put the national interest first. We think that you are chasing profits by doing business that is not good for America. And he has drafted laws with Democratic colleagues that would actually ban American companies from doing business in China in a whole raft of mostly high tech sectors.

Well, that's just it. I mean, if he is pushing so hard with, you know, with the policy chops behind it, how, how seriously is he being taken? How, how well is this message being being promulgated?

I think he is being taken seriously. He's the most hawkish voice of a very large consensus that spans not just the Republican Party, but also the Democratic Party, particularly on the Senate side, which tends to try and think slightly more long term people who are interested in foreign policy. There's been a real sea change. The Last year or two, people are really talking about the China threat as the big issue that they need to get their heads around for the next several decades.

I mean, it seems as if we're talking about an issue that is sort of far bigger than what people are focusing on now, trade deals. This might go well beyond even the Trump presidency.

I think that's absolutely right. I think everyone thinks that. I think they think that Donald Trump has picked the right fight, but they think that this fight is larger than him. There's also an element of distrust that maybe he's picked this fight but won't end it the right way, that he'll take a bad deal. And I think it's fascinating that when you ask Marco Rubio about that, he starts talking about how there will be a different president after he says Donald Trump's second term because he's a loyal Republican, but that after 2024, there will be a new president with a name that isn't Trump.

This is not going to end with a trade deal. This is not going to end with the Trump administration. These challenges that we face with China are going to be around for the next 50 or 60 years.

I think even some people in Washington might wonder whether he thinks the name of that president might be Marco Rubio.

David, if it's a problem on the scale that Mr. Rubio is suggesting, and there's a cross party consensus about that, do you think that will make this a campaign issue?

China's been a campaign issue for the last several presidential elections, but it was always about China stealing America's jobs and promising to bring them back. It was a trade thing. This is much, much bigger. You could imagine the next election, there will not be a pro China or even a kind of moderate pro business voice up there on the stage. It will be competing to say that China is a threat and America is not going to lose top dog status without a fight.

David, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

You're listening to a classic example of Brazilian funk music, Atola Genia by MC Tachike Rabaha Marco and MC Bolajifogo. Also known as funky carioca or baile funke. The genre emerged in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. It derives from American hip hop styles such as Miami bass. For its critics, funk promotes crime, promiscuity and misogyny. It's infamous for strong sexual lyrics and saucy dance moves to match. But as our Brazil correspondent Sarah Maslin has discovered, there's increasingly a feminist tone emerging in the music.

I've just gotten back from two weeks in Rio de Janeiro. I was staying up high in the hills in a neighborhood right next to one of Rio's famous favelas, where every night until the wee hours of the morning, I heard the throbbing, syncopated beat of Brazilian funk music. This is a style you hear coming out of car stereos, coming out of boomboxes on the beach. It's really a defining feature of the sound of the city and of all of Brazil at this point.

So it's enormously popular.

Then there are people who absolutely adore funk music, and there are people who detest it. It's most popular in poorer neighborhoods like the favelas where it was born, Especially among young people who crowd into the bailes funk, these massive dances where the music is played and everybody dances. However, it also has its critics because a lot of the lyrics are extremely explicit. Some of them are misogynistic. Others speak about crime and violence in a way that often seems to promote it. Actually, in 2017, more than 20,000 Brazilians signed a petition calling on Congress to declare funk music, along with those dances, a public health violation. You won't be surprised that Congress refused.

And so is it as rude, as misogynistic, as dangerous as its critics say?

Well, it's a genre dominated by men, and many songs are misogynistic. However, there have always been funk artists singing more conscientious funk music, including a lot of female MCs. This more feminist funk is on the rise right now. Their mission isn't to make funk music less rude, but rather to bring it to women's viewpoints.

And how do you mean, what are.

They singing about one of these feminist funkadas? A woman called MC Carol released a song a couple years ago called SEM Porcento feminista, which means 100% feminist. She starts rapping about witnessing domestic violence. She sings that she's not gonna wash the dishes. She's an independent woman, and she wants to grow up to be different than the women she saw.

And so this sounds like quite a departure from the version of this that has people wringing their hands about funk.

Well, actually, McCaro got her start singing puteria, or funk music that's explicitly about sex. And a lot of these women who are rising stars of the funk world are actually gaining fame because they're singing openly about sex from a women's perspective. So, for example, one of the hits of last year is this song called Kaiji Boka, Which translates roughly as drop your mouth It's a Puteria hit in which a woman named MC Rebecca sings about men performing oral sex on women, a huge taboo. She says the song is a call for sexual liberation in a world where women are still seen as submissive.

And I imagine that this creates some friction in a relatively conservative society that's just elected a very, very socially conservative president in Jair Bolsonaro.

Indeed, Bolsonaro's election seems to have given new energy to this subgenre of conscientious funk. A lot of the women I spoke to said they're even more determined to sing about sexual liberation and social tolerance because they now have a president who has aggressively conservative views on a lot of social issues and is known for comments that are frankly sexist, racist, and homophobic. So MC Rebecca recently came out as bisexual on Twitter, and for a music video filmed during Carnival, she wrapped herself in a rainbow flag.

I guess I have just one more question for you, which is, do you like dancing to it?

I love funk music. I would say, however, that I'm more of a listener than a dancer. I can't move my ass that way.

Sarah, thanks very much for joining us.

Thanks, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and you can subscribe to the economist@exterator.com radio. Offer 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds. See you back here tomorrow.