A liberal take on the Turkish elections

A liberal commentator interprets the outcome of the Turkish municipal elections as representative of a broader trend. Big cities tend to support liberals in many countries, while conservative nationalists manage to keep rural areas under their influence.

On the Heti Világgazdaság website, András Földes takes the result of the municipal elections held in Turkey on Easter Sunday as proof that the world tends to be divided between urban and rural areas rather than East and West. Turkey, Israel and Hungary, he writes, are governed by conservative nationalists who manage to mobilise rural populations, while city dwellers tend to vote for cosmopolitan liberals. If Donald Trump wins the presidential elections, he writes, the United States will be one more case in point. The problem is, Földes argues, that nationalist slogans don’t help solve the problems of national economies.

Tags: Conservatism, Erdogan, Israel, liberalism, Trump, Turkey