Why is The Economist wrong?
by Atilla Yayla*

When you Google “The Economist Magazine,” you will find some 18 million entries. The London-based magazine has been in publication since 1843. It deals with developments across the globe, but it gives special weight to the US and the English-speaking world. The founder of The Economist is James Wilson and in the past, the magazine had affiliations with certain philosophers. Famous classical liberal philosopher Herbert Spencer was among the magazine’s editors. The magazine employed highly skilled journalists and analysts. Its language is brisker and sharper than the likes of Time or Newsweek. It can deal with interesting topics and details and it can make sound and reliable comments.

The purpose of the publication was to advocate free markets, limited government and free immigration within the framework of informative and broadminded research and debate. In line with this objective the magazine also promoted such values as liberal democracy, openness and transparency, honest public administration and globalization. It avoided political fanaticism and partisanship. It openly criticized dictatorships. Its line of using straightforward language and not sacrificing truths at the expense of convenience helped the magazine grow and survive to date. Although its name has connotations with economics, it has increased over time the number of its areas of interest.

I was introduced to the magazine in the early 1980s thanks to my late professor Aydın Yalçın, who was an avid reader of the magazine since the 1940s to his death in 1994. I started to regularly follow the magazine in 1989 when I was a visiting researcher at the University of London. During the 20 years of my regular readership, I always recommended The Economist to my students and colleagues. This journal, which sometimes publishes more inspiring articles and studies than academic journals, is really one of the publications that can be enrich people’s lives and knowledge.

The Economist’s ideological location or more precisely, its conception of liberalism, is not the same as its original position. At the onset, the magazine was following the classical liberal line. But two developments caused The Economist to falter. The first development was that the intellectuals who were advocating state interventionism for “benevolent” purposes, not the non-intervention of the state, started to describe themselves as liberals in the US and then in English-speaking countries in early 1900s. The second one was the rise and spread of Keynesianism as the dominant economic policy from the 1940s to the 1970s. These two events affected the magazine to some extent. Today, The Economist is swaying between classical liberalism and American liberalism at least in some cases. In other words, The Economist is now tainted with a bit of Keynesianism and a bit of American liberalism. For instance, the magazine opted for a middle-of-the-road, balanced analysis of the 2008 economic crisis, ignoring the fact that it stemmed from “social” regulation rather than deregulation.

Distorted perception of Turkey

The most interesting bit for me is that The Economist, a liberal magazine, made it a rule of thumb to report completely wrong, incomplete, and false information about Turkey or to make an analysis about Turkey that would breach liberal values. In the last elections, it called on Turkish voters to support the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). Its commentary on Turkey last week, too, portrayed an incomplete and distorted view of Turkey although it employed cautious language. This article argued that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) is moving toward the authoritarianism of Adnan Menderes. It parroted the unsubstantiated claim that media bosses were firing journalists because of their fear of the prime minister and that the government is intimidating everyone by placing its opponents into custody for extended periods. It almost revealed its sadness for the army’s diminishing role in Turkey. Turkey is not being reflected truthfully in The Economist’s mirror. Pro-Kurdish journalists have always been victims in Turkey. The length of detention is a general problem. Except for a few controversial cases, none of the Kemalist journalists were jailed on charges of being journalists or being opponents. They were indicted for conspiring to overthrow the government. It is clear that such a charge must be taken seriously as the country is teeming with coup lovers. Moreover, it is wrong to say that only Kemalist journalists have problems with the judiciary. More than 5,000 lawsuits have been launched against those journalists who report about the cases against Ergenekon and the Sledgehammer (Balyoz) action plan, and some of then have even been sentenced to prison. Academics, too, are under pressure that we cannot say is coming from the government. For instance, Professor Mustafa Erdoğan is about to be sentenced on charges of “insulting the judiciary” in his critical article about the murder of Hrant Dink.

The Economist’s thesis about Menderes’ authoritarianism is more typical Kemalist misinformation. Menderes was a hero of democracy, and of course some of his policies can be criticized, but it is utterly a lie to say that he had established an authoritarian system. If he had established such a system, would he have been overthrown by only 30 rebel officers? Concerns for the AK Party government’s concentration of power may be justified, but this does not legitimize opposition to the AK Party on behalf of Kemalism and the Kemalist authoritarian system. Opposition to the AK Party would be beneficial if done for the sake of liberal values. It is completely unfortunate for The Economist to find worrisome factors in the army’s diminishing “political role.” I wish it had worried about the slowness of the steps taken to put the army into its legitimate position in the democratic system. If the military’s involvement in politics is a really good thing, then The Economic should advocate the British army’s political weight in the UK. The British army should prepare coup plans, but the coup planning officers should not be tried. The journalists who were allegedly involved in coup activities should not be investigated or referred to the courts.

The Economist is not the only Western publication that makes such mistakes. There are others as well. Why? There may be several reasons for this. First, Kemalist circles in and outside Turkey are conducting effective disinformation and lobbying activities about cases against Ergenekon and the Sledgehammer action plan. The Economist and others are relying on this distorted information. Also, they don’t know or ignore the fact that Turkey’s main problem is the authoritarian ideological (Kemalist) state organization. Another reason is the traces of Orientalism. Western publications tend to see and treat Turkey in the category of Middle Eastern countries, albeit a bit cautiously. They signal that they would prefer a secular and pro-Western dictatorship to an Islamist authoritarianism.

The current state of The Economist as a magazine with a long and honorable past is really hurting the image of both itself and of liberalism.

* Atilla Yayla is an author and political scientist.