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Plato was suspicious of democracy and argued that it could easily transform into rule by the mob. According to Plato, the lower class grows bigger and bigger and people are free to do what they want and live however they want. People can even break the law if they so choose, similar to anarchy. Tyranny of the majority is a big risk and a danger in democracies. Democracy has suicidal tendencies. The inclination of democratic majorities, composed of mainly the poor and lower classes, tend to take the property of the rich and may provoke a factional conflict that would pave the way for civil war.
The American founding fathers took Plato's critiques of democracy seriously and in Federalist papers nine and 10, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison devised institutions like the separation of powers, bicameralism and representation to permit majority rule but at the same time protect fundamental human rights, mainly property rights. American democracy is so long lasting and stable perhaps because of its founding fathers' wisdom in being influenced by Plato's critique of democracy.
More than two millennia after Plato, 700 years after the Magna Carta and 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regime is now legislating a new law that would permit the government to seize the property of the regime's critics. As I have written here before, the populist and plutocratic Erdoğan government relies mainly on poor, rural, uneducated and lower-class voters. While on the one hand businessmen close to Erdoğan are becoming immensely rich thanks to favoritism, cronyism, urban re-zoning, etc., at the same time crafty and skillful Erdoğan has been giving state donations, benefits, etc., to about 70 percent of people amounting to billions of dollars. Since these people are very poor, a monthly benefit of 200-300 US dollars is not a lot to the Treasury but to these poor people, they are a lifesaver.
Erdoğan is different from earlier corrupt rulers. He is crafty and skillful enough to share with the people. Thus, while his friends and relatives are earning billions of dollars thanks to public tenders, urban rezoning, construction, favorable legislation, etc., at the same time billions of dollars are being “donated” to the poor, who make up millions in Turkey. Afraid that these benefits may disappear if the ineffective and equally corrupt opposition comes into power, the poor stick to the Erdoğan regime despite its increasing authoritarianism.
According to Plato, the poor dominates the regime in a democracy (without any checks and balances or separation of powers). They pursue their own economic interests and try to alleviate their own poverty. They try to pass laws that take property away from the rich and redistribute it among themselves. Since the wealthy are not large enough in numbers to protect their interests in such a democracy without any separation of powers, they tend to become enemies of democracy. They may even become oligarchs. The poor perceive this threat and mobilize behind a leader with extraordinary powers who will protect the interests of the poor. Nevertheless, this leader ends up holding power that allows him to arbitrarily rule at his own discretion, whims and desires. The people's leader becomes the tyrant.
What has been taking place in Turkey did not emerge exactly in this order. For instance, well before democracy, we already had a Kemalist oligarchic regime. Nevertheless, one becomes pessimistic, seeing that human nature has not changed at all and whatever Plato believed about the risks of democracy without any checks and balances and the oligarchy's transformation into tyranny is coming to life based on the behavior of Erdoğan's regime.
Erdoğan is a fruitful and rich case study in political philosophy classes when discussing not only Machiavelli and Hobbes but also Plato. What a shame!
İHSAN YILMAZ (Cihan/Today's Zaman)
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