Article published in Kathimerini

In an interview with the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, the Eugene Mayer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at ‪‎Yale, Seyla Benhabib, characterized the way the# EU has handled the refugee crisis as dreadful. Professor Benhabib will be in ‪Athens to attend an event on migration organized by the Harvard Business School Club of Greece and SolidarityNow.

Benhabib criticizes the “narrow-minded selfishness” of countries such as ‪Hungary, ‪Poland, ‪Slovakia and ‪Austria and called the camp in ‪Calais a “human disgrace”.

As mentioned, the “Viktor Orban strategy has been clear for some years: to approach as much as it can in a one-party presidential regime while continuing to receive community funds. What I do not understand is why democrats like David Cameron and Francois Hollande do not respect the human rights of asylum seekers in their countries.”

The Turkish-American scholar argues that with the policy of open borders towards Syrian refugees, Germany has already “resigned” from the “absurdities” of the Dublin Regulation. With this in mind, she asks: “Why continue to overload Greece? Why transport refugees by plane to German soil to process their applications for asylum there, instead of leaving them subject to the tear gas and dogs of the FYROM police? “.

Regarding the attitude of her birthplace, Benhabib observes: “Turkey is the largest refugee host country in the world, with 3.2 million refugees – not only Syrians, but also almost one million Iranians, Iraqis and Afghans. The Turkish policy is among the most generous internationally.”

Benhabib, however, is anything but positive regarding Erdogan. Already in 2013, she wrote (in the New York Times) that freedom of the pres , political and artistic expression was dramatically limited. “Unfortunately, the situation today is much, much wors ,” she says in the “K” of the newspaper Kathimerini. Although the AKP “has achieved much in the 12 years of it being in power,” Turkey today “is moving rapidly to adopt an authoritarian presidential system.” The Yale scholar considers the tipping point the failed  “coup” against Erdogan by the Gulen movement and the rise of Kurdish HDP. In order to explain the authoritarianism of the Turkish president, she cites Machiavelli: “The wounded and vulnerable Prince is more violent than the one who is strong and confident.”
And the United States is in turmoil during this election period. Benhabib attributes the rise of Donald Trump to proletarianization of the American middle class, likening the Republican candidate directly with Mussolini and Franco.

“As all right-wing demagogues in history, Trump promotes anger and resentment towards the weak and admiration for the rich and powerful,” she observes, stressing however that “the election period that ‘bred’ Trump also produced the first open Social Democrat candidate in the US – the Bernie Sanders. Many white working class people are not fascinated by Trump and are voting for Bernie.”