Turkey, India and the return of strongmen

'A Question of Order: India, Turkey, and the Return of Strongmen' by Basharat Peer (Columbia Global Reports, 160 pages, $13)

Plenty of ink has been spilled on the global rise of the new authoritarianism and "illiberal democracy." The democratic tide that flowed out after the fall of the Berlin Wall has apparently been reversed, returning as angry populist waves crashing on the shores of the West. Belligerent strongmen are coming to power in a range of countries, supported by voters motivated by religious and ethnic nationalism, economic anxieties and disillusionment with earlier inefficient or corrupt elites. 

Each country roiled by these forces can only be understood within its own history, but parallels can be traced across them all. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are among the pioneers of the new populism, and "A Question of Order: India, Turkey, and the Return of Strongmen" by New York Times journalist Basharat Peer details striking similarities between the two. It also issues a timely warning about the threat to liberal assumptions of politics as a vehicle of the inevitable march to freedom. 

Peer grew up in Indian Kashmir, the mountainous disputed territory on the border with Pakistan. Described as the "largest militarized zone in the world," more than 47,000 people have been killed there since India and Pakistan gained independence in 1947. Peer draws a parallel between Kashmir and Turkey's Kurdish southeast, describing how conflict in both has reinforced authoritarianism in Turkey and India. "A nation's illiberal practices on its borders do not remain isolated there," he writes. "Using militant nationalism to beat up on peripheral populations often paves way for the rise of...