Is all the world Istanbul now?

Already ready for anything. Taksim Square, August 2012

There are few places that grew on me as fast as Istanbul, where I spent a few days last August when I had to leave the EU to clear my visa. It is an overwhelming place — massive, crowded, sprawling over water and hills, and heavy with layer upon layer of history. But I didn't anticipate how it is one of the most authentically friendly places I've ever been. I remember with bemusement the almost constant conversations I had with men trying to sell rugs to me, the unhurried way the shopkeepers in the Bazaar would chat away while trying to make a sale, the way the waiters at restaurants fussed over me (even though it was Ramadan and a very busy time for them), the way Olga's friend from grad school took a day off work to show me around.

So I was horrified that it came to this. The people of Turkey do not deserve the kind of government that shoots tear gas and water cannons at them for a perfectly reasonable protest against a perfectly stupid and tacky transfer of a public asset into a playground for the wealthy. As everyone makes clear, the recent protests are not just about Gezi Park, but about an arbitrary and authoritarian government that takes advantage of the shortcomings of the democratic process. It is an example of something that has been happening all over the world. And the world is not big enough that you can afford to believe this isn't about us.

Erdogan is just another case of the only "Third Way" that really exists in politics today: the election of servants of self-perpetuating oligarchs who run the businesses, an international ruling elite that successfully manipulates the rickety power of voting with softcore nationalism and full-blown, religious mind-fog.

I think the template for this comes from Russia, obviously, where Vladimir Putin has successfully coopted the once unruly post-Soviet business elites to get on board, powered by the strange, desperate voting power of superstitious old crones in dying villages. Another obvious emulator of this strategy was the Fidesz party in Hungary, who took advantage of their first supermajority in Parliament to write one of the dumber constitutions of any self-proclaimed democracy.

Of course, the model is beginning to fall apart. Hungary's economy is abject mess, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban's schizophrenic switching between constituencies makes one question his mental health. In Russia, the state if relying more and more on the tried and true means of coercion, like insane new laws that proscribe jail terms for hurting the feelings of the religious faithful. And in time-honored Stalinist tradition, it not only throws the book at opponents like punk bands and bloggers, but has begun purging alternate centers of power within itself. So the idea that peaceful protests in Istanbul would end in baton-wielding policemen and water cannons is part of a general human story.

Here in America, we briefly flirted with the idea of looking at the problem with the Occupy movement, which ran out of steam too fast. Thanks to our institutional two-party system, we cling to an illusion of difference when in fact, both parties work for the same wealthy elites — only Democrats are slightly more concerned about how unsightly it would be to have old people dying in the streets. The process was well on its way even before 2001, when we terrorized ourselves into giving everything away. Obama hasn't really changed anything but the details — we still have secret prisons, we murder people by executive fiat more than we did before, and of course, the massive spying apparatus we've allowed to be put in place. And his fundamental faith in compromise is looking more and more like a part of some Bilderburg scheme to maintain the status quo at all costs. Obama represents the absolute poverty of "hope" as a political end or means. And if you think Cory Booker is the answer, keep hoping.

That's the world we live in, and the most depressing part is how few options there are. The conflict in Syria is fascinating because it is a struggle between the most dynamic and active alternatives to the "Third Way." Choosing between Authoritarianism and Jihad is hardly how anyone hoped the 21st century would play out.

I think about the people of Istanbul in Gezi Park, who are aware of what their government is about, who are part of the modern global economy and know its tools and ideals, and who are still faced with a daunting opponent. It would be a wonderful world, if we could choose being something other than the bug or the windshield.