Georgia, a small South Caucasian country, has long been considered a leader in the European Union’s Eastern Partnership program. Over the past two decades, relations with Brussels have significantly deepened.

Georgia has secured a free trade agreement and visa-free travel for citizens holding biometric passports, while benefiting from sustained EU financial, political and diplomatic support. This includes consistent backing for Georgia’s territorial integrity, as 20 percent of its territory remains occupied by the Russian Federation. 

Georgia’s current government, led by the Georgian Dream party, maintained largely stable relations with the EU for nearly a decade after coming to power in 2012. It positioned itself as pro-European in both domestic and foreign policy, while simultaneously pursuing what it described as a policy of “not irritating Russia,” which emphasised largely non-confrontational positions towards Moscow.

However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has significantly reshaped political rhetoric in Georgia, contributing to the rise of strongly anti-European messaging. Much of this messaging has been spread by major information outlets affiliated with the ruling party and known for their pro-government stance.

The narratives circulating among the public increasingly mirror patterns common in Russian information campaigns, at times echoing similar discursive frames and messaging strategies. This article outlines the core narrative and messaging strategies that have gained special strength in Georgia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The anti-European turn, accompanied by intensified disinformation and propaganda efforts linked to shifting geopolitical dynamics, as well as continuing undemocratic decisions at the legislative and executive levels, has strained Georgia-EU relations.

Georgia is now a subject of growing scepticism, contributing to the suspension of several EU-funded initiatives and raising concerns about potential future restrictive measures, which will suspend the benefits, such as a visa-free regime, firstly for the decisionmakers, followed by ordinary citizens.

Post-2022 regional changes – Russia’s decreasing hard power influence

Russia’s influence in the South Caucasus has been strong for decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The occupation of Georgian territories – Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the conflict in Karabakh, Armenia’s dependence on Russia due to its regional isolation, Russia’s influence on Azerbaijan, and later the introduction of a peacekeeping mission in Karabakh have enabled Moscow to maintain hard power in the region. Russia is also effectively using soft power measures, particularly by promoting ideological narratives targeting growing EU and NATO influences.

Russia’s influence in the South Caucasus has been strong for decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had significant implications for the South Caucasus. Azerbaijan was able to regain control over Karabakh in 2023. The Karabakh region has been a source of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the early 1990s.

After the outbreak of second Karabakh war in 2020, Russia deployed a peacekeeping mission in the region, which proved unable to effectively monitor the ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan and in 2024 withdrew from the region. Considering the shifting regional realities, Armenia has started deepening its connections with the EU, attempting to balance Russian influence.

Altogether, these developments have left Russia with decreasing hard power influence in the region. However, this has opened space for informational influence strategies. Ironically, Georgia, the country that has historically been the most pro-European in the South Caucasus, appeared particularly vulnerable during this period to such campaigns, especially those targeting pro-Western and particularly pro-EU views.

Georgia’s vulnerability and echoes of Russian rhetoric

As mentioned, for almost a decade the Georgian Dream ruling party’s foreign policy has been based on balancing between the West and Russia. For years, this approach was communicated to the public as a pragmatic strategy, given Georgia’s geographic position and the continued military threat from Russia.

However, in parallel, over the last decade Georgia has also opened space for groups, media outlets and political actors using more radical rhetoric, sometimes openly pro-Russian.

Examples of these include far-right political actors such as the Alliance of Patriots, Alt-Info, and television channels that have been promoting anti-EU narratives. In their discourse, these actors have often attempted to shift public attention away from Russian threats toward vaguer concerns, such as the need to protect Georgian identity from foreign, primarily Western negative influences, including what they describe as “LGBTQI propaganda.” These actors have at times been regarded as informal “satellites” of the government, voicing messages that the authorities themselves were still avoiding publicly.

However, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the government itself has moved to the forefront of Euroscepticism, and at times openly propagandistic rhetoric. Recent trends indicate a shift toward clearly anti-Western, and occasionally hostile, messaging. The narratives have also increasingly portrayed Ukraine, historically a key partner of Georgia, as a negative actor.

Many of the messages constantly circulating among the Georgian public and supported by the government, echo Russian rhetorical patterns, particularly in their portrayal of the EU as a threat.

In some cases, Ukrainian leadership has been framed responsible for failing to prevent Russian aggression, while similar arguments have been extended domestically by accusing Georgia’s previous government of provoking Russian aggression in 2008. The launch and completion of a parliamentary investigation in relation to the 2008 war has further been used to reinforce these narratives and provide them with greater political legitimacy.

Many of the messages constantly circulating among the Georgian public and supported by the government, echo Russian rhetorical patterns, particularly in their portrayal of the EU as a threat and in their aim and ability to generate suspicion and confusion among the public. This has long fueled concerns about Georgian Dream’s potential ties to Russia.

At the same time, some observers argue that the party and its founder, oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili is primarily driven by own economic and security interests, while strategically using well-established informational mechanisms to maintain political power.

Core narratives  

In the Georgian case, social media does play a significant role in spreading anti-Western narratives, but reports show that traditional actors still play a significant role, like political figures and parties. Traditional media remains key too, with the most influential TV channels widely seen as supporting the government and actively deploying the same messaging.

This is especially relevant for reaching populations living outside the capital, in regions where these TV channels are sometimes the only source of information. It is interesting to note that, UK has already sanctioned Imedi and Postv channels, widely believed to be pro-governmental, by the end of February, for spreading misleading information about Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Many of these narratives repeat ideas and messaging that originate in Russian information campaigns and comparisons are provided to illustrate these parallels.

The data from several reports by different international and local organizations in Georgia, as well as limited number of academic publications on this topic suggest the existence of key narratives since 2022, that have been actively promoted among the Georgian public, both by the government and by satellite actors operating within the country.

Some key examples are outlined below. Many of these narratives repeat ideas and messaging that originate in Russian information campaigns and comparisons are provided to illustrate these parallels.

Georgian Sovereign Democracy

“Sovereign democracy” is a well-known Russian concept used to describe the governing model promoted by the Russian state. In simple terms, it can be understood as democracy practiced on a country’s own terms.

At the same time, Russian officials have consistently argued that their system is equal to, or even superior to Western democratic models. A key characteristic in this concept is that criticism of the system is often portrayed as suspicious or hostile, with critics frequently labeled as foreign agents, unfriendly actors or political enemies.

In recent years, similar messaging has played a key role in government rhetoric and among supporters of the Georgian authorities, particularly regarding EU political influence. The core argument suggests that Georgia no longer needs advice from its European partners on how to build democracy, while simultaneously promoting the view that Georgian democracy and the rule of law are in better condition than in parts of Europe.

Legislation supporting these restrictive practices has often been described by the ruling party as analogous to laws in the United States or Europe.

This messaging became especially dominant since November 2024, when the Georgian government decided to pause EU accession talks. The decision was followed by mass protests that continue daily across Georgia, as well as large-scale government suppression targeting civil society, opposition groups and independent media.

Legislation supporting these restrictive practices has often been described by the ruling party as analogous to laws in the United States or Europe. However, the European Commission has issued critical reports on these developments, portraying them as a serious threat to Georgia’s democratic future.

The narrative that “Georgia does not need advice on democracy,” often reinforced through selectively presented or manipulated examples of police misconduct, corruption or governance failures within the EU, closely resembles the Russian concept of “sovereign democracy,” which has long been used to shape public perceptions and justify political violence.

Stability vs. Ukrainisation

The narrative portraying Georgia as a “land of peace and stability under the Georgian Dream” government has been one of the most prominent since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It has been used to support the argument that Georgian Dream has saved the country from opening a so-called “second front” against Russia, while claiming that the collective West has been pressuring Georgia to do so, often through the vague notion of a “global war party.”

This messaging became particularly intense ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections, aiming to instrumentalise societal fears of war in a country that has experienced several internal and external conflicts over the past 35 years.

The narrative has been closely linked to developments in Ukraine, promoting the perception that the West seeks Georgia’s “Ukrainisation” by opening a second front, while portraying the ruling party as the only political force capable of preventing such a scenario.

The broader practice of shaping public opinion against the collective West has often been identified as a well-established Russian strategy, in which conspiracy theories play a central role.

A particularly visible illustration of this messaging appeared in Tbilisi and other parts of Georgia ahead of the 2024 elections, where campaign banners displayed images of destroyed Ukrainian cities alongside images of peaceful Georgian landscapes. The campaign provoked strong critical reactions in Ukraine as well.

The broader practice of shaping public opinion against the collective West has often been identified as a well-established Russian strategy, in which conspiracy theories play a central role. The conspiracy narrative surrounding a so-called “global war party,” portraying Western governments and European institutions as opponents for the peace in Ukraine, has also been widely used in official Russian rhetoric.

Similar messaging patterns have appeared in Georgian political discourse, leading many researchers and practitioners to argue that Georgia is currently experiencing extensive, multi-level Russian influence operations, including efforts to shape public perceptions through disinformation and propaganda.

EU as the enemy of Georgian traditions

One of the most established anti-European narratives in Georgia has targeted Euro-integration by claiming that EU membership would destroy Georgia’s cultural identity and traditions.

This narrative has been particularly promoted by groups such as Alt-Info and similar actors that position themselves as defenders of Georgian traditions. Their rhetoric is often characterized by extreme right-wing views combined with religious arguments suggesting that opposing certain Western values is a moral and cultural obligation.

The narrative has specifically focused on sexual minority rights, claiming that EU membership would force Georgia to legalize same-sex marriage and allow Pride marches in the country.

Although other actors, including some religious figures have also contributed to spreading these messages, one of the most influential promoters of this discourse has recently been the government itself, which has emphasized “family sanctity” as a core national value while introducing restrictive legislation targeting sexual minorities.

Although public support for EU membership in Georgia remains consistently high, the persistence of Russian informational influence continues to present a significant challenge.

This approach is not unique to Georgia, as restrictive policies and rhetoric targeting sexual minorities have long been present in Russia. What is particularly notable, however, is that several studies indicate that Russia has systematically promoted such narratives through various channels, while supporting groups that adapt and localize these messages.

The broader objective of this strategy is to create distorted perceptions of Europe, undermine trust in European institutions and foster skepticism toward Euro-integration. Although public support for EU membership in Georgia remains consistently high, the persistence of Russian informational influence continues to present a significant challenge.

Impact on perceptions, Euroscepticism and EU-Georgia relations

The most critical question is: what impact do these information campaigns have on Georgian people’s perceptions of the collective West, and on the country’s aim to join the EU? As noted above, support for European integration remains strong among the Georgian public, with almost three-quarters of the population still supportive.

However, a closer look at surveys over the years reveals a noticeable decrease in positive perceptions and trust toward the EU in the last two years alone. EUNeighbours East has been producing annual survey results on the EU’s image and trust in Georgia, and comparing the reports from 2023 and 2025 clearly shows a drop of more than 10% in both categories.

The most critical question is: what impact do these information campaigns have on Georgian people’s perceptions of the collective West, and on the country’s aim to join the EU?

It is reasonable to consider that information campaigns influence public opinion and trust. Constant campaigns, originating from influential sources can succeed in creating confusion and prompting people to question previously held beliefs, eroding trust in the EU and in the long term, potentially decreasing support for integration.

The undemocratic tendencies and continued anti-EU rhetoric have left their mark on Georgian-EU relations. The European Union has repeatedly warned Georgian authorities that continuing this path will ultimately undo all the positive developments achieved over the years under different administrations.

The EU has also expressed concerns about anti-Union narratives in recent years. Georgia’s candidate status is currently largely symbolic, and the accession process is effectively frozen. The EU warns that it will remain so until the ruling party reverses course.

Concerning shifts and geopolitical influence through informational and ideological channels

The growing similarities between Georgian government messaging and narratives long associated with Russian informational strategies highlight a concerning shift in Georgia’s political and communicative landscape. Russian-style anti-Western rhetoric by ruling political figures and influential media, conspiracy theory-driven messaging, and hostile identity-based narratives have affected public trust in Western institutions and complicated Georgia’s relationship with the European Union.

These developments demonstrate that geopolitical influence in the South Caucasus is no longer exercised primarily through military or economic leverage, but increasingly through informational and ideological channels.

Georgia’s case also illustrates how external narratives can be localised and adapted to domestic political agendas, particularly during periods of geopolitical instability and societal vulnerability.

Georgia’s case also illustrates how external narratives can be localised and adapted to domestic political agendas, particularly during periods of geopolitical instability and societal vulnerability. The persistence of strong public support for EU membership suggests that Georgia’s European orientation remains continuous and deeply rooted. However, the continued use of anti-European discourse increases the risks of gradually reshaping public perceptions.

Understanding these dynamics is essential not only for Georgia’s democratic future but also for broader European engagement in the region. Addressing information influence operations within the context of Russia’s shifted regional strategies will remain critically important regarding Georgia and its European trajectory.

Nino Chanadiri is a political science researcher and analyst specialising in Eastern Europe and the Baltic Sea region. For years, she has contributed analytical and research-driven content to reputable organisations and journals in Georgia, Estonia and Poland, focusing on socio-political developments in South Caucasus, wider Eastern Europe and Baltic Sea region.

Article image: Etienne Dayer / Unsplash

Julkaisu Sovereignty, Stability and Suspicion: Russian Messaging in Georgia’s EU Debate ilmestyi ensimmäisenä Politiikasta.

The widespread disregard for human rights and international law that seems to characterise contemporary politics may lead one to believe that politics is about power and not about ethics.  This belief, however, is wrong and dangerous.

It is wrong because it reflects a wrong understanding of what politics, power and ethics are all about. It is dangerous because, this wrong understanding leads to the justification of violence and oppression and pave the ways to autocracy. Ultimately, this belief tells more of the personalities of those who hold it than of what politics is all about. 

The ethics of power

The are at least two kinds of people that think politics is about power rather than ethics. First, there are those who think that ethics, and moral values play no role in politics, second there are those who think the role these play is only instrumental: an accessoire that makes the exercise of power less costly and more effective.

The best example of the former type is Stephen Miller, Senior advisor of US President, Donald Trump, who candidly enough declared to journalist Jack Tapper on CNN: “We live in a world (…) that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time…”.  

“Other less candid (but smarter?) leaders refrain from voicing such radical opinions, but hold on to the belief, that role of ethics is only instrumental to the effective exercise of power. In politics and elsewhere, these leaders pay lip services to values such as sustainability, compassion, equality etc. as a practice of image management or “branding” for themselves and the institutions they represent. As German scholar Tomas Klikauer argued in his critique of management ethics, “Ethics is simply a somewhat distant add-on to management like milk in a coffee, if needed at all.”

To argue their case, the apologists of the instrumental role of ethics typically mobilise the “classics”, especially the all-time favourite among them: The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. Despite his fame, this is an author that is read not as often and perhaps not as attentively, as it is quoted. In other words, there are reasons to believe that those who think of Machiavelli as a champion of the political ruthlessness, either haven’t read him or, if they did, they completely missed the point.

Machiavelli’s prescriptions do not deny the political relevance of virtue but quite the opposite. As Erica Benner argued in her book Machiavelli’s Prince: A New Reading: “At the Prince’s core is a biting critique of both ruthless realpolitik and amoral pragmatism, not a revolutionary new defence of these positions. Far from eroding ancient contrasts between good and evil, just and unjust, or tyranny and freedom, Machiavelli’s book shows readers the dire consequences that ensue when our language and practices fail clearly to distinguish them.”

Those who seek to justify ruthless behaviour in politics and elsewhere on grounds that only strength, deception and ultimately self-aggrandizement matter, know very little about power and how it works.

The instrumental (mis)use of ethics and the misinterpretation of as classic texts like Machiavelli’s Prince does not diminish the importance of ethics for the exercise of power, nor the important of these texts. It only tells of the quality of the leaders (mis)using them. These uses stand like a stain of filth on the fine clothes wore to compensate with appearances what is lacking in substance.

Those who seek to justify ruthless behaviour in politics and elsewhere on grounds that only strength, deception and ultimately self-aggrandizement matter, know very little about power and how it works. These people are not “realist”. They are just incompetent.

The instrumental use of ethics has entropic effects on the legitimacy of power and therefore on the effective exercise of power itself, because when the legitimacy of power declines, the roles of violence and fear increase. As history shows, there is always a point in which this equation delivers a negative result and people will choose to “fight” instead of “flight”.

Despite its falsity, this belief is appealing to leaders who lead without having neither the competences nor the integrity to do so. Still,  those who believe ethics are only instrumental to the exercise of power, to the manipulation of consent, and ultimately to oppression, should be aware of the power of ethics and of people’s inclination to eventually rebel against abuses.

The power of ethics

The power of ethics – the influence of moral principles and considerations on society, its institutions, on people’s lives and ultimately on the competition for political power – should not be underestimated. To acknowledge this power is important, not primarily for moral reasons, but for pragmatic ones – or as Machiavelli argued, for the effective exercise of authority.

In democratic regimes, this acknowledgement is particularly important because truly democratic leaders should be inspired by an ethic of democratic accountability (and e.g. pursue the long term welfare of the community they lead), rather than by an instrumental ethic: the manipulative use of moral principle and standards for the pursue of particular interests and the preservation of their influence.

To argue my point here I will rely on three metaphors: the glue, the compass and a promise (or a threat).

First the power of ethics can be thought of as a glue that keeps people together through consensus rather than coercion and bring about compliance through active participation instead of fear. Truly ethical behaviour by the leaders increases trust which becomes an important resource especially when the particular interests of some have to be sacrificed for the common good. 

Second, the power of ethics is the power of a compass that gives direction: it does not tell one where to go but it helps to get there rather than get lost. As Antti Kylliäinen recently argued in his book on ethics, Hyvänteossa, “values tell us what is good and worth thriving for” (“Arvot kertovat, mikä on hyvää ja tavoittelemisen arvoista”).

The power of ethics can be thought of as a glue that keeps people together through consensus rather than coercion and bring about compliance through active participation instead of fear.

If leaders neglect the influence of ethics and moral values, the individuals and communities that depends on them will get lost. When this happens, in politics and elsewhere, fragmentation, polarization and even violence increase because sacrifices are extolled for no other purpose than to preserve a leadership that has lost its direction and has no other purpose that preserving itself.

Third, the power of ethics can be described in relations to social functions similar to those performed by forms of speech like a promise (or a threat). It is perhaps an evolutionary fact that the constitution of society was originally inspired by the efforts of individual to increase their chances of survival by uniting or, as we would say today, hanging together so not to hang separately.

Whatever the reason, fundamental values and virtues participate to the human experience of life and its appeal depends on a promise about the possibility of a societal harmony: a reward for the effort of personal improvement with transformative effects on the relationship between the individual and society.

This promise, in other words, transforms the meaning of the social bond from a risk of subjugation and oppression to an opportunity for emancipation. The idea that “there is no such a thing as society” supports ideologies and policies that seek to isolate people: to break up collectives and let the individual stand alone and vulnerable against their rulers.

To “deny” society is to deny the “social contract” and pave the way to a social order based on fear. If the power of “ethics as a promise” is suppressed, the same will return as a threat – and once the Genie of fear is unleashed, however, the leaders that freed it are not immune from it.

These metaphors may perhaps also help to understand why the power of democratic ethics – a distinctive, post-feudal form that inspired and became politically relevant after the American and French revolutions – is what makes democratic regimes unique and uniquely resilient. In democracies, ethical leadership combines the power of ethics as a “glue”, as a “compass” and as “promise” transforming the people into the people that rule themselves or Demos: an indomitable community of individuals with the competences and the integrity necessary for self-rule.

Fundamental values and virtues participate to the human experience of life and its appeal depends on a promise about the possibility of a societal harmony.

The power of democratic ethics, in other word, is not an attribute of the leaders or the population. Rather it is an attribute of democratic politics: in essence, a relationship uniting the people and their leaders which establishes the Demos as a collective capable of deciding about own future and on the ways to bring that about.

In other words this is the power that establishes the actual rule of the people by the people as a practical possibility rather than a mere ideal. In this perspective, the resilience of democracies does not depend primarily on the qualities of their leaders but on the extent the importance of democratic ethics as the glue, the compass and the promise is acknowledged by both the people and their leaders.

When this acknowledgment collapses, because leaders deny or neglect the importance of democratic ethics and/or because the ethics of individualism and opportunism become influential, a democracy loses cohesion, direction and hope.  The leaders that effectively manage to interpret their role in relation to the responsibilities associated to democratic ethics, rather than the privileges of authority, are the “martyrs” of Demos: the “witnesses” of its existence and its political power. The rest are merely demagogues that corrupt the ideal of democracy.

Thinking the power of ethics in the age of polycrisis  

The subordination of ethics to power is nothing new. What is new is perhaps the combination of two tendencies. The first is the end of a useful fiction. In the years of the Cold War and its aftermath, the political support for democratic ethics in international politics was perhaps a fiction or facade – but a useful one, because it supported fundamental democratic principles, such as the rule of law and human rights, and the authority of institutions such as the United Nations  and the International Court of Justice that actually worked for a better world.

As the power of political actors that in the past supported this “fiction”  is currently used to undermine it, the result is not a better, more “honest” world but just the undermining of the values, the hopes and ultimately the “promise” these principles and institutions testified.

The other tendency, closely connected to the previous one, is the growing popularity of “transactional leadership” – a form of leadership in which authority is used to achieve more or less particular interests and short-term results – among political and corporate leaders, in domestic and international politics. The glorification of autocracy as “strong leadership” in both the state and the firm, by the likes of Stephen Miller, naturalizes the influence of toxic personalities in politics and in the working place. It inspires and justifies “organizational dehumanization”, the representation of people as “sacrificial citizens”, “extrajudicial killing” and abuses of the kind recently inflicted by ICE on the people in Minneapolis.

In the years of the Cold War and its aftermath, the political support for democratic ethics in international politics was perhaps a fiction or facade – but a useful one, because it supported fundamental democratic principles.

Independently from their declared ideological standpoints, too many political and corporate leaders around the world are uniting today in what philosopher Jacques Rancière called “the hatred for democracy”: a fundamental resentment for the very idea of the rule of the people by the people and for the ethics that supports it as a compass and as a promise.

For people of my generation and older – the Cold War & post WW2 generation respectively – the idea of ethics subordinated to power hurts because, at some point, in a not-so-distant past, we actually experienced the power of ethics. The world-wide consensus that created the UN and its Charter, the international law and human rights, was possible because our predecessors, having witnessed the horrors of the concentration camps and the nuclear effacement of innocent civilians, cared about the future of the generations to come, our present.

Those institutions were established as conceptual landmarks that, like monuments, are erected to testify of a past that must be remembered and its lessons heeded in order to avoid repeating tragic mistakes. That consensus expressed a union of ideals, directions and a promise that the leaders of today refuse to acknowledge.

I don’t think Machiavelli would consider this choice a wise one, nor the condition of a struggle for power deprived of meaning a desirable condition. And perhaps, he would join the  character “V” of the movie V for Vendetta and remind them that: “People should not be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people”.

PhD Matteo Stocchetti is docent in political communication at Helsinki University and Åbo Akademi. matteo.stocchetti[at]proton.me

Article image: rawkkim / Unsplash

Julkaisu The Ethics of Power and the Power of Ethics ilmestyi ensimmäisenä Politiikasta.

For centuries, Africa’s vast wealth fuelled the ambitions of foreign empires. Colonial powers plundered gold, diamonds, cocoa, and minerals, enslaving millions and impoverishing entire populations. In the post-independence era, exploitative contracts and lopsided trade deals perpetuated this plunder, enriching foreign corporations while leaving hundreds of millions in poverty. Today, a monumental shift is sweeping the continent. African leaders are rewriting the rules of global trade, scaling back ties with foreign powers and embracing resource sovereignty.

Ghana, for instance, has rejected Western aid tied to political conditions that historically forced development paths serving foreign interests over national priorities, instead asserting its right to chart an independent development path. Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have expelled French troops, ending decades of military presence that served Paris’s geopolitical goals while undermining the stability and welfare of local communities. Zambia is cracking down on foreign mining companies, enforcing stricter regulations to curb worker exploitation and environmental degradation, Senegal is pushing back against trade agreements with Europe, that favour foreign producers and suppress the growth of local businesses and farmers, advocating for policies that enable homegrown economic resilience.

Adding to these efforts, Algeria is focusing on African-led security and economic initiatives, such as mediating Sahel conflicts and boosting intra-African energy trade, while limiting engagement with NATO to the Mediterranean Dialogue to safeguard its non-aligned stance and promote Global South solidarity. Zimbabwe is moving to ban the export of lithium concentrates from 2027, Kenya is reviewing infrastructure and energy contracts with Chinese and Western companies suspected of imposing unsustainable debt burdens and compromising national control. Similarly, Nigeria is tightening oversight of foreign oil and gas companies revising production-sharing contracts to increase local revenue and ensure greater equity in partnerships with multinationals like Shell and ExxonMobil.

Their project is as urgent as it is ambitious, grounded in self-determination, regional integration, and the development of homegrown institutions capable of managing and defending Africa’s wealth on its own terms: Africa’s wealth must serve Africa first.

At its centre lie Africa’s premier strategic frameworks: the African Union (AU), which champions solidarity-driven economic cooperation; the African Mining Vision (AMV), which promotes value addition, regional beneficiation, and sovereign control over mineral wealth; and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), envisioned as the world’s largest single market. The AfCFTA is particularly important as it aims to radically transform intra-African trade by dismantling tariff barriers and harmonising regulatory frameworks, thereby reducing the continent’s dependence on foreign powers. In the process, it lays the foundation for a continental economic front defined by unity and strategic coherence, strengthening collective bargaining power and allowing African nations to engage the global economy not as disjointed, dependent clients, but as coordinated actors – a single bloc – capable of asserting their interests as equals on the world stage.

The DRC Makes a Different Deal

Meanwhile the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is going in a strikingly different direction. Its government is currently negotiating a high-stakes bilateral agreement to hand over operational control of an estimated $24 trillion worth of critical minerals to the USA in exchange for military equipment, tactical training, and on-the-ground security assistance against the March 23 (M23) insurgency that has destabilised its eastern provinces for over a decade.

The DRC holds over 70% of the world’s known cobalt reserves, in addition to vast deposits of copper, lithium, and rare earth elements, essential to the functioning of electric vehicles, high-capacity batteries, solar and wind infrastructure, semiconductors, drones, precision-guided weapons, and emerging artificial intelligence hardware systems. Whoever commands access to these materials will have control over the direction of global civilisation, wielding decisive economic and strategic power especially in the global clean energy future. Global powers are acutely aware of this, and, as expected, have been aggressively courting the DRC for years.

The DRC holds over 70% of the world’s known cobalt reserves, in addition to vast deposits of copper, lithium, and rare earth elements.

China has already entrenched itself in the DRC’s mineral economy through a dense network of state-owned enterprises and infrastructure-for-minerals swap deals, controlling nearly 40% of Congo’s cobalt output by 2024. The European Union (EU) is playing catch-up through its Global Gateway initiative, offering infrastructure funding and “strategic partnerships” to avoid total dependence on Chinese and Russian inputs.

Now, it appears, the USA is set to overtake both, not through a competitive bidding process or multilateral consensus, but because the DRC itself is voluntarily advancing a deal granting Big Tech giants Apple, Tesla, and Google, alongside major defence contractors, direct and guaranteed access to its critical minerals. The proposed terms include below-market extraction rates, long-term supply guarantees, and state-backed logistics coordination. If finalised, the deal will hardwire American dominance into both the global clean energy economy and the next-generation military-industrial complex.

In return, the government of the DRC anticipates an American arsenal. This includes advanced military equipment, elite tactical training, and real-time counterinsurgency support to significantly degrade or dismantle the M23 insurgency.

M23’s Devastating Hold on the DRC

M23, emerging from the collapse of the 2009 Goma Peace Agreement, ranks among Central Africa’s most lethal and resilient non-state armed groups: transnationally networked, financially fortified through illicit mineral revenues, and sophisticated. The group currently controls vast swathes of the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu, which hold some of the world’s most lucrative coltan and gold mines, effectively hijacking the region’s critical resource flows. This has led to instability in the region, fuelling a cascading humanitarian disaster.

M23’s offensives displaced nearly 2.8 million in 2024 alone, accounting for 73% of all internal displacements in the DRC that year. In North Kivu,  Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) treated nearly 40,000 survivors of sexual violence attributed to M23 operations, marking the highest figure recorded in a single year. In rebel-held territories, food insecurity has surged, leaving millions at risk of starvation.

The environmental toll has also been catastrophic, with nearly half of the animal life in these same territories reportedly wiped out. Since January 2025, the group has killed an estimated 7,000 civilians. And its forced recruitment of child soldiers has become a chilling fixture of its operational strategy, entrenching trauma across generations. There is no mistaking the scale of the crisis.

DRC’s pursuit of a minerals-for-security deal with the USA reads, at least on the surface, as a desperate but straightforwardly pragmatic, technocratic, commercial exchange.

The government is not equipped to respond. The national army is structurally incapable of mounting an effective counter to M23 as a result of decades of structural adjustment and austerity programmes imposed by the IMF and World Bank in the DRC. These programmes prioritised debt repayment, fiscal restraint, and market liberalisation over the essential tasks of state-building and national security. Military infrastructure has crumbled, procurement systems are plagued by corruption and mismanagement, and troop morale remains dangerously low due to inconsistent salaries, inadequate training, and insufficient equipment.

Efforts to fill this security vacuum through regional cooperation have largely failed. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community (EAC) have offered inconsistent and undercoordinated interventions. Meanwhile, the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission has lost credibility, widely viewed by the Congolese as either ineffectual, unable to protect civilians or repel rebel advances, or complicit in maintaining the violent status quo in which instability and resource extraction coexist as tolerated norms. The cost of continued inaction grows heavier by the day, threatening to tip the crisis into irreversible collapse.

Against this backdrop, the DRC’s pursuit of a minerals-for-security deal with the USA reads, at least on the surface, as a desperate but straightforwardly pragmatic, technocratic, commercial exchange – a necessary, if radical, attempt to reclaim sovereign control over its eastern provinces, safeguard its critical mineral wealth, and restore a semblance of order in a region held hostage by M23. In this light, it is difficult to dispute the legitimacy of its demand for support from a superpower with overwhelming military capacity.

A Betrayal of Africa’s Future

At its core, however, this deal is a geopolitical earthquake in the emerging architecture of African political economy – a betrayal not of intent or incompetence, but of principle. For, as it prioritises immediate transactional benefit, it also severs the moral and strategic thread that binds Africa’s wealth to Africa’s people, cutting to the very heart of the collective aspiration that Africa’s wealth must serve Africa first. This is not just a Congolese issue – at stake is nothing less than the entire trajectory of African resource politics and, by extension, the continent’s future.

While the deal is presented as a solution to the M23 insurgency, it does not address its root causes, making it no more than a superficial fix on a wounded nation – a sedative rather than a cure, like a temporary quelling of symptoms while the disease festers beneath. Equally troubling is that the deal offers militarisation without any meaningful diplomatic framework or peacebuilding vision. There are no provisions for local reconciliation, no community-led demobilisation, no engagement with civil society and regional actors who might sustain peace – just more weapons in an already volatile landscape.

At stake is nothing less than the entire trajectory of African resource politics and, by extension, the continent’s future.

Worse still, the deal sidesteps state-building entirely. It does not repair institutions, strengthen governance, or develop long-term administrative capacity, leaving the DRC politically fragile and dependent on foreign intervention – a broken leg hobbling Africa’s collective ascent.

More grievously, the deal openly bypasses African-led security frameworks and sidelines regional bodies like the SADC and the AU, outsourcing the DRC’s crisis response to a global superpower. Arguably, this choice is a quiet admission that the DRC lacks confidence in Africa’s ability to manage its own challenges; that African nations cannot depend on African help. They must look outward.

This reconditions the political imagination of current and future African leaders, normalising dangerous ideas: the future belongs to those who sell it; survival, not sovereignty, is the highest aspiration; dependency is inevitable and perhaps even desirable; Africa’s salvation lies not in its own collective strength but in the whims and favours of foreign patrons. This mentality sets a precedent of external arbitration in intra-African affairs, rendering regional diplomacy obsolete and weakening the continent’s security architecture from within.

To transfer critical minerals without public consent or transparent debate is to rob the Congolese of their most powerful leverage. It is to deny them the power to influence how their wealth is used – and who benefits from it.

Perhaps most tragically, the Congolese people, the very communities battered by M23’s violence, are spoken for, negotiated over, and excluded from the decisions being made about their land and future. Their exclusion is deepened by the injustice of the deal. The minerals at stake are not mere economic assets but generational capital in a world increasingly driven by green technologies and the geopolitics of critical minerals. To transfer them without public consent or transparent debate is to rob the Congolese of their most powerful leverage. It is to deny them the power to influence how their wealth is used – and who benefits from it.

This denial extends beyond the borders of the DRC. By proceeding without meaningful consultation or coordination with neighbouring African countries, the deal risks fracturing continental unity and undermining Africa’s collective claim to its wealth and future. It opens the door for external powers to exploit Africa’s resources unilaterally, threatening to revitalise a dangerous dynamic akin to the Scramble for Africa. This is where strategic mineral wealth becomes a contested prize in superpower rivalries, and ordinary Africans bear the human and political costs.

The deal sends a clear and unsettling message, devastatingly out of step with the continent’s ambitions: Africa’s resources remain up for grabs.

The question looms large from here: will the DRC’s choice end Africa’s long march toward resource sovereignty, or will it serve as a cautionary tale that stimulates the continent to forge stronger, more united paths forward free from the shackles of foreign domination?

Moshumee Dewoo is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Political History at the University of Helsinki

Article image: A mining quarry in Mambanga in the Djugu territory, DRC. Alfani Franck / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Julkaisu The Democratic Republic of Congo’s $24 Trillion Betrayal of Africa ilmestyi ensimmäisenä Politiikasta.

On March 19, 2025, something shifted in Türkiye. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul and a leading opposition figure, had his diploma canceled — and the next day, he was sent to prison. What followed was unexpected: after years of political silence, people began returning to the streets. This moment of rupture raised a crucial question — what emotional and political dynamics make such reactivation possible?

The recent wave of protests in Türkiye signals a major emotional and political rupture: after more than a decade of fear, repression, and political apathy. To understand this renewed momentum, we must return to the emotional and narrative landscape of the 2013 Gezi Park protests. This means not only exploring how people remember the protests but also revisiting how they first began and why they resonated so widely.

To understand the emotional legacy of the Gezi protests, it is important to recall how they began. In May of 2013, Türkiye witnessed an unexpected wave of resistance. What started as a small sit-in by a group of environmentalists trying to protect a park in central Istanbul — Gezi Park — quickly transformed into a massive nationwide uprising. People rose up against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — then Prime Minister and leader of the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party) — and his increasingly conservative and repressive regime.

As part of my doctoral research, I conducted 52 one-time retrospective interviews in late 2019 and early 2020 with individuals who participated in Gezi. These interviews explored how participants recalled and narrated the pre-Gezi grievances, the emotional transformation during the protests, and the aftermath shaped by increasing authoritarianism.

Drawing on the work of sociologists Francesca Polletta (narrative), James M. Jasper (protest and emotions) and Randall Collins (emotional energy) , the study examines how emotions and storytelling practices shaped participants’ political memory and post-Gezi disengagement. Participants reflected on these periods through a rich emotional vocabulary — mistrust, worry, fear, anger, hope, joy, disillusionment — showing how emotions structured both their memories and responses.

These emotional patterns are not just analytically useful but politically vital. Recent research highlights that hope is central to sustaining democratic life. As political scientists Mikko Leino and Katariina Kulha argue, democratic deliberation can spark hopeful and compassionate emotions, supporting long-term, future-oriented engagement. Similarly, another political scientist Antonin Lacelle-Webster suggests that hope is not a result but a condition of democratic action — an emotional foundation for imagining and striving toward alternatives.

The findings reveal that while the state’s harsh repression led to widespread withdrawal and self-censorship, the emotional memory of Gezi persisted as a latent force. Today, as fear begins to subside, this suppressed emotional memory is being reactivated — reigniting not only resistance, but also a renewed belief in the possibility of democracy.

Tensions That Paved the Way to Gezi

The protests were not organized by a single group or ideology. Instead, they drew in people from across the political and cultural spectrum: secular and religious, leftists and nationalists, feminists, LGBTQ+ individuals, students, workers, and even anti-capitalist Muslims.

Despite their differences, they were united in their opposition to the Erdoğan regime’s authoritarianism and its steady erosion of democratic institutions. It was an eruption of accumulated frustration — over moral policing, police brutality, the shrinking of civic freedoms, and the narrowing of public life. Many had already been feeling pushed out of public life.

What made Gezi remarkable was not a single unified demand, but a shared emotional threshold — the collective sense that democracy was slipping away, and that people could no longer accept the way things were.

There was growing anxiety over political Islamism, the narrowing of personal freedoms, and an increasing sense of being watched, judged, and silenced. What made Gezi remarkable was not a single unified demand, but a shared emotional threshold — the collective sense that democracy was slipping away, and that people could no longer accept the way things were.

Long before tents were pitched in the park, the pressure was mounting. A young woman from Ankara described how she adjusted her personal life: “I stopped wearing short skirts and didn’t invite my boyfriend over anymore. People in the building stared. I felt like I had to hide.” Another participant pointed to broader mechanisms of control: “The alcohol bans, the mosque sermons about how women should behave — all of it felt like an attempt to reshape how we live.” These were not merely private discomforts. They reflected a deeper collective fear — that the secular and democratic foundations of the Republic were being steadily replaced by a more intrusive, moralistic, and authoritarian regime.

During the Protest: Togetherness

When the protests began, something shifted. It was not just about saving a park anymore. People who had never joined a demonstration before found themselves standing next to seasoned activists. “We weren’t all the same,” one man said. “But we all said: this is too much.”

Despite their differences, people were drawn together by a shared anger toward Erdoğan’s regime. This collective anger served as a bridge — allowing people from different ideological and social backgrounds to unite and express a common refusal. At the same time, many still held on to the hope that Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian rule could be stopped and that the erosion of democratic institutions might be reversed. When this hope became collective during the protests — shared by thousands in the streets — it grew stronger, transforming into a powerful emotional force that fueled mass mobilization.

Rather than forming a collective identity in the traditional sense, protesters built a sense of commonality grounded in shared emotions — especially anger, urgency, hope and mutual recognition. These emotional bonds created a strong sense of solidarity and togetherness, even among those who had previously kept their distance or distrusted each other. Drawing on sociologist Laurent Thévenot’s idea of commonality in the plural, the protests became a space where people did not need to share the same political views — they just needed to feel the same intensity of rejection.

The protests became a space where people did not need to share the same political views — they just needed to feel the same intensity of rejection.

In the square, people shared food, medicine, songs — and moments of joy, even under police violence. For many, this was the first time public space felt like it belonged to everyone. One participant said: “Just being there, refusing to leave, was our way of saying — we exist.”

A woman from the Anti-Capitalist Muslims recalled how people who previously used to keep their distance — especially Kemalists — approached their stand in the park and said things like, “You’re actually really kind people.” She added, “Every day, 300 to 400 people visit us. They asked questions, they stayed, and they listened. People who used to see us as backward in the past were suddenly getting to know us.” Protest made unlikely connections possible — not by forcing sameness, but through simple presence and shared care.

Gezi did not end in victory. The park was eventually emptied by force, many were detained, and Erdoğan’s regime came out stronger than before. “Gezi taught me that we are not alone,” one participant told me. “It gave us a memory — and that memory still gives us strength.”

Repression and Retreat: The Post-Gezi Landscape

After the Gezi protests, the state launched a systematic campaign of repression. Protesters were detained, beaten, surveilled, and marked as “terrorists” or “traitors.” Many were fired from public sector jobs or blacklisted, especially those working in education, media, or civil society. Universities were purged of critical voices, and cultural or political gatherings were closely monitored or banned altogether. Fear, anxiety, and mistrust replaced the hope and solidarity once felt in the square.

Many participants withdrew from visible political life, feeling that any form of resistance could lead to punishment. As a result, some turned inward — either disengaging entirely or finding quieter, more localized ways to resist. The emotional toll was heavy: a mix of grief, disappointment, hopefulness and unresolved longing for the sense of unity they once shared.

The fear of state retaliation has fundamentally reshaped the dynamics of collective action. The burden of responsibility no longer lies solely in moral or political conviction — it now carries legal and personal risks.

One participant explained: “Now, I think three times before posting anything on social media. I’ve stopped sharing anything political. Even when I retweet something on Twitter, I pause and wonder — could this get me into trouble later?”

Another participant, who was a member of a political party, explained: “We can’t invite people to protests anymore. If something happens to them, we’re the ones held responsible. Because of that, our calls for action have almost completely stopped.”

These two accounts reflect how the fear of state retaliation has fundamentally reshaped the dynamics of collective action. The burden of responsibility no longer lies solely in moral or political conviction — it now carries legal and personal risks. As a result, political engagement has become not only emotionally taxing but also strategically constrained. Even those in organized political structures feel paralyzed, leading to a visible decline in public mobilization efforts. The space for collective dissent shrinks not just through direct bans or police force, but also through internalized fear and anticipatory self-censorship.

Moreover, one participant even said, “If something as massive as Gezi didn’t change anything, then nothing will.” These findings suggest that emotions like hope are not merely reflective of political conditions — they are constitutive of whether democratic participation can flourish or fade.

The Return of Democratic Hope

The wave of protests that began on March 19, 2025, still continues today and carries an uncertain future — it is too early to say whether they will lead to democratic restoration or end in disappointment, as Gezi once did. But one thing appears to have shifted: the deep sense of defeat and fear that had settled after Gezi seems to be breaking. People are returning to the streets again, despite years of repression, which may indicate that the emotional withdrawal and political apathy of the post-Gezi period is slowly giving way to renewed engagement.

While the Gezi protests emerged from a hopeful belief that democratic backsliding could still be stopped, today’s protests reflect a more urgent demand — not just to defend democracy, but to reclaim what has already been lost. The hope that once united people in resistance has reawakened, shaped by a clearer understanding of what is at stake and what it means to act together under authoritarian rule.

The emotional memory of Gezi — especially the experience of solidarity, shared anger, and political awakening — continues to resonate, even though my data predates the most recent protests. This legacy may help explain why, in this new moment, people are once again finding ways to raise their voices — perhaps this time with more clarity, purpose, and a renewed hope for democratic change.

Tülay Yılmaz is Doctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, and Member of the Centre for the Sociology of Democracy (CSD) research group.

Article image: Mstyslav Chernov / Wikimedia Commons_CC BY-SA 3.0

Julkaisu Breaking the Wall of Fear and Hopelessness: Protest, Memory, and Resistance in Contemporary Türkiye ilmestyi ensimmäisenä Politiikasta.

Turkey is currently facing two contradictory and interrelated political processes: seemingly promising peace negotiations between the state and the PKK, and a determined drive by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to crush the main opposition party, the CHP.

The dominant view among the researchers has underscored that the Kurdish question can only be solved within a larger democratization framework, thus making the ongoing process highly uncertain. Due to these highly contradictory tendencies, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that we are witnessing a new round of divide and rule strategy by President Erdogan – creating a wedge between the Kurdish and Turkish opposition blocs to secure his own rule.          

From the founding of the Republic until the 1990s, the Turkish state sought to manage the Kurdish question through assimilation and repression, both domestically and in the region. While this approach maintained control for decades, the rise of Kurdish political and military mobilization eventually rendered it unsustainable. However, the early 2000’s marked a new phase in the state’s approach under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) rule. 

Sociologist Mesut Yeğen explains that after coming to power in 2002, the AKP initially maintained the traditional repressive policies toward the Kurdish question but introduced small reforms like lifting the emergency rule and easing restrictions on the Kurdish language. Although then-Prime Minister Erdoğan made a historic speech in 2005 promising a democratic solution, deeper recognition of Kurdish identity was limited, and tensions quickly resurfaced.

During this period, pro-Kurdish parties like HADEP and DTP gained regional strength, but it was with the founding of Peoples’ Democracy Party (Halkların Demokrasi Partisi, HDP) that the Kurdish movement moved toward building broader, leftist alliances and became a key national opposition force. It was within this evolving political landscape that the HDP emerged as a new force.

The Rise of the HDP

Under the leadership of Selahattin Demirtaş, HDP embraced a pluralist and rights-based agenda, aiming to represent not only Kurds and other marginalized communities but also progressive Turks through democratic reforms and decentralization. According to a recent study by Matthew Whiting and Zeynep Kaya HDP draws inspiration from socialist ideas of “radical democracy” (a political notion that emphasizes grassroots participation and minority rights) and PKK-leader Abdullah Öcalan’s concept of democratic confederalism. Based on this, the HDP positioned itself as a challenger to both the AKP and Turkey’s long-standing one-nation model, redefining the meaning of democracy and political representation in the country.

As Whiting and Kaya further explain although initially open to cooperating with the AKP during the peace process, the HDP later distanced itself as Erdoğan’s government grew increasingly authoritarian. The HDP’s electoral strategy, especially after 2014, aimed to broaden its base beyond Kurdish voters by appealing to secular, liberal, and urban constituencies across Turkey.

While the HDP has emerged as a key advocate for radical democracy and minority rights in Turkey, its ambiguous relationship with the PKK has consistently undermined its democratic credibility.

This strategy paid off in the June 2015 elections when the HDP not only surpassed the 10% electoral threshold but also secured 13% of the national vote, significantly influencing the balance of power in Turkish politics and marking a milestone for pro-Kurdish representation at the national level.

Matthew Whiting & Zeynep Kaya note that while the HDP has emerged as a key advocate for radical democracy and minority rights in Turkey, its ambiguous relationship with the PKK has consistently undermined its democratic credibility. Despite officially rejecting ties to the PKK, symbolic connections and local-level controversies, particularly during the 2015–16 conflict, have fueled state repression and public distrust, limiting the HDP’s broader political appeal beyond its Kurdish base.

HDP’s growing influence led to intensified state repression after the 2016 coup attempt, resulting in the arrest of many of its leaders, including Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, on terrorism-related charges. Facing the risk of closure by the Constitutional Court, HDP contested the 2023 elections through the Green Left Party (Yeşil Sol Parti), preserving its political space.

Following the elections, the movement reorganized itself under the DEM Party (Demokrasi ve Eşitlik Partisi), which now carries forward HDP’s legacy, continuing to advocate for decentralization, minority rights, gender equality, and environmental justice. In this way, DEM has become the primary representative of the Kurdish political movement within Turkey’s legal political framework.

CHP Facing the Kurdish Question

Historically, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) approached the Kurdish question through a nationalist, state-centric perspective, viewing minority demands as a threat to national unity. As Mesut Yeğen also notes later in his analysis, the Turkish state’s discourse historically marginalized Kurdish identity by framing the Kurdish issue not as an ethnic or political matter, but as a problem of “backwardness.” As the founding party of the Republic, the CHP played a central role in constructing and maintaining this state-centric narrative, which shaped its longstanding reluctance to engage with Kurdish political demands.

This rigid stance began to shift during Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s leadership, as CHP gradually recognized the legitimacy of Kurdish political actors like the HDP. Although formal alliances were avoided due to nationalist sensitivities, the strategic support of HDP voters in the 2019 local elections, which enabled CHP to win key cities like Istanbul and Ankara, underscored the growing necessity for a more inclusive and democratic approach within the party.

Turkish state’s discourse historically marginalized Kurdish identity by framing the Kurdish issue not as an ethnic or political matter, but as a problem of “backwardness.”

After Istanbul mayor, CHP’s Ekrem İmamoğlu’s arrest on 19 March 2025, public protests erupted, and discussions around a renewed Kurdish peace process gained momentum. In this context, the relationship between the CHP and the DEM Party became increasingly significant yet complicated.

While CHP leader Özgür Özel attempted to build democratic solidarity by reaching out to Kurdish actors, figures like Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş reflected the party’s strong nationalist tradition by using exclusionary rhetoric towards Kurds during public events.

Although Özel later apologized to Kurdish voters, these incidents exposed the ongoing challenge for CHP: to reconcile its nationalist-leaning base, historically close to MHP, with the need to secure Kurdish support. This tension highlights the deep structural difficulties within the party as it seeks to lead a broader democratic front.

The Evolving Agenda of the PKK

Abdullah Öcalan founded the PKK in Turkey in 1978 as a Marxist-Leninist Kurdish nationalist organization. The original goal was to create an independent Kurdish state and crush the conservative and traditional Kurdish social organization and replace it with a secular-nationalist society. The method for achieving this involved the use of violence against all representatives of the Turkish state, whether these were ethnically Turks or Kurds. The PKK’s foundational programme called for the establishing of a single united independent state called “Kurdistan”.

However, this line changed considerably in 2005 as the PKK announced that it now considered the nation-state a hindrance on the road to freedom. As explained by rural sociologist Joost Jongerden, Öcalan declared that the PKK had abandoned its objective of establishing a state and now aimed to create a network of councils as the basis of self-determination.

The PKK since the early 2000s can best be described as a party-complex that in fact comprises several parties, more specifically the sister parties in Iraq (PÇDK), Iran (PJAK) and Syria (PYD), that are all accompanied by a platform institution called the Association of Communities in Kurdistan (Koma Civakên Kurdistan, KCK), a network of village, city and regional councils. 

To almost everyone’s surprise, in autumn 2024 Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) inaugurated a new “Peace process” with the PKK, calling its leader Abdullah Öcalan to come to address the Turkish parliament and declare the end of the organization, also signaling the Kurdish party HDP as a legitimate actor. This happened after a near decade of security-centred approach by the state during which not only the PKK but also HDP were repeatedly declared as treacherous separatists.

While the key message of PKK ending its armed struggle and dissolving itself was received positively and raised hopes for a brighter future, it was also obvious that there were many question marks regarding the next steps.

After a short while, it was made public that Öcalan was in fact willing to contribute, and even adhered to same narrative, emphasizing, together with Bahçeli, the Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood and the need to overcome all dichotomies in order to secure Turkey’s position in the increasingly volatile Middle East, that was in a danger of becoming the playground of “imperialist powers” – reference to the US  and Israel in particular.

Finally, on 27 February 2025, the Kurdish DEM-party’s leading figures read Öcalan’s written statement before cameras in Istanbul’s Elit World Taksim Hotel, the venue crowed with Kurdish activists, representatives of NGOs, international and domestic media, and academics.

While the key message of PKK ending its armed struggle and dissolving itself was received positively and raised hopes for a brighter future, it was also obvious that there were many question marks regarding the next steps, in particular regarding the judicial process and the state’s response. In terms of Syria, PYD figures and some DEM party members were quick to argue that Öcalan’s message was about the PKK’s activity within Turkey and as such did not determine the future decisions of the Syrian branch.     

A Peace Process or a Tactic of Divide and Rule?

It is not known what the PKK leadership is promised in return for laying down the arms and dissolving the organization. However, there are also some intra-PKK factors that probably play a significant role in Abdullah Öcalan’s calculations. First of all, there are some indicators that the state repression of recent years has not generated a more radical Kurdish generation as expected.

The recent public opinion polls also indicate that a significant segment of HDP voters are of the opinion that a crucial prerequisite for solving the Kurdish conflict in Turkey is the PKK laying down its arms unconditionally,  that is, not after a bargaining or dialogue with the state, but as a first step. As recently underscored by Murat Yetkin in his Yetkin Report blog posts, according to a report published in November 2024 by Istanbul Ekonomi Araştırma, around 30 percent of the pro-Kurdish HDP voters share this view.  

A rather bizarre process is currently shaping Turkey’s political landscape: the Erdoğan regime has embarked on a determined project of getting rid of genuine competitive politics.

Lastly, in recent years the new drones and other high-tech military equipment have enabled the Turkish Armed Forces to gain a rather dramatic upper hand in its fight against the PKK guerillas, having also been able to remove operations almost entirely beyond Turkey’s borders, to Iraq and Syria.

All in all, we argue that a rather bizarre process is currently shaping Turkey’s political landscape: the Erdoğan regime has embarked on a determined project of getting rid of genuine competitive politics, crucially aiming to restrict the political power created during the last five years by the CHP through its municipal base.

Yet at the same time, the PKK, Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM, formerly HDP), and the state are seriously negotiating. The PKK has now officially declared that it has dissolved itself and ended the armed struggle against the Turkish state. The most contradictory figure in all this is PKK’s leader Abdullah Öcalan, who repeatedly speaks about the end of PKK’s armed struggle being secured by wider democratization, at the time when the suppression of the opposition has been taken to unprecedented levels.

Tülay Yılmaz is Doctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, and Member of the Centre for the Sociology of Democracy (CSD).

Doctor of Social Sciences Toni Alaranta is a Senior Research Fellow in the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA). 

Article image: Ekrem Osmanoglu / Unsplash

Julkaisu Current Uncertainties in the Kurdish-Turkish Peace Process ilmestyi ensimmäisenä Politiikasta.

Protests mobilized by Generation Z in June 2024 came as a surprise for the Kenyan government. The national civil action movement was triggered by rejection of the Finance Bill 2024 but evolved from a technocratic problem to political reform of democracy.

The Finance Bill included a variety of tax hikes, such as increased VAT on bread and added fuel tax to cover the fiscal deficit and accumulated public debt in Kenya. Poor governance and waste of public funds have resulted in youth unemployment and brain drain, income inequality and poverty.

Kenya has officially been a multiparty democracy since 1990s and is often cited as a role model for African democratic development. However, state capture by the elite has been prevalent, including bribery of the opposition. Current president William Ruto, who was elected in 2022, campaigned himself as the “hustler candidate”, speaking specifically to youth and informal sector by making promises of jobs and “bottom-up” politics to decrease income inequality and poverty. However, these promises have not been delivered.

Ongoing peaceful protests have been met with unconstitutional police brutality, killings and abductions of protesters. After the protest escalated to activists storming into the parliament in Nairobi in June, Kenyan president William Ruto cancelled the Finance Bill and removed his political cabinet, reinstalled some of them later and formed a broad-based government by including the opposition members to his cabinet.

However, this was not the end of the protests. The aftermath revealed a deeper goal of the protests, which is the rejection of the entire political regime in Kenya.  Politicization of the Kenyan society this summer has enabled a saturation of politics which have disrupted relations of local corruption and international governance of development.

“We are tribeless, leaderless, fearless”

What differentiates the GenZ political movement is its nature free of tribalism and organic aggregation of youth to pursue a shared political goal. The movement emerged through social media platforms such as X and TikTok without a leader or organization, and rather considers the 2010 constitution and rule of law being its leader. It was triggered and mobilized a nation-wide movement online that took to the streets rejecting corruption within the presidency as well as county and church administrations.

However, politics pursued by the youth is not defined by their age. Its focus is on shared causes and visions rather than identities. As Senegalese philosopher Souleymane Diagne has stated; “African thought has passed from yesterday’s thinking of identity, which was part of the struggle against colonialism, to today’s thinking of becomings.” By “becomings” he refers to transformative politics led by causes beyond tribal identities for example, as in Kenya tribalism can operate as a politically erosive force and cause polarization.

However, politics pursued by the youth is not defined by their age. Its focus is on shared causes and visions rather than identities.

The activists are inspired by late Frantz Fanon, a critical theorist from Martinique, who advocated for objective and subjective freedom of the people. This liberation is leveraged through collaborative solidarity and revolutionary humanism of that specific generation.

In his seminal book, Wretched of the Earth, Fanon describes this purpose as a generational mission to be fulfilled or betrayed. This messianic temporality is visible in the ability of the movement to unite the people to the mission of liberation by exercising their civil rights and in turn exposing the injustice within the system they all are a part of beyond tribalism.

As such the movement has created a window to contemporary demographic shifts in class politics, where the goal is the fundamental reform of the corrupt political system, as well as affirmative political imagination of democracy itself.

From development to politics

The uprising is also connected to a wider register of politics of development within the Global South and Africa. Development is political by nature, however, how it is pursued remains largely apolitical and undemocratic. The politicization of development is something that Global South politics have been advocating for since independence from colonization and more strongly now during shifting global geopolitics.

Locally, the division between development and politics is visible in the ratio of political organizations to development organizations. Kenya is a major hub of social entrepreneurship, non-governmental civil society, and development organizations in East Africa, as well as hosts UN headquarters in Nairobi.

At the same time, political organizations remain marginal. Kenya also has a large informal sector which accounts  for a significant part of the economy and workforce. Third sector largely compensates for the poor implementation of public policy and service delivery by the state, externalizing responsibility of the social sector to NGOs which in turn weakens political mobilization of civil society to the sidelines.

The uprising is also connected to a wider register of politics of development within the Global South and Africa. Development is political by nature, however, how it is pursued remains largely apolitical and undemocratic.

Internationally, since the second world war, the treaty-based political order has dominated south-north cooperation and politics. Critique of the international political economy has been on the political agenda of the Global South especially since New Economic International Order (NIEO) in 1974. This entails a democratization of governance and decision-making processes of international organizations such as IMF, World Bank and UN.

Kenya’s continuation within the IFI system to solve the sovereign debt crisis has earned IMF a reputation as “neocolonial slavery” by the activists, especially since the economic downfall and state repression of the 1980s and 1990s.

However, IMF’s technocratic approach to policymaking can operate as a depoliticized scapegoat to cover up for domestic corrupt policies. President Ruto’s plan to execute the Finance Bill 2024 as a technical accounting strategy, as if it would be the only option to save Kenya from a financial crisis, operates as the terrain for apolitical and populist policymaking.

This authoritarian rhetoric in turn hides other causes the movement has been calling for, such as the rule of law and democracy, reduction of corruption and accountability measures to eradicate impunity, without which the equal economic reform cannot me made. In other words, development is not only a technical problem but a political problem.

Towards a new generation of ideological Leftist politics

The timing of the movement is not a coincidence. It emerges during a global trend of an erosion of politics while democracy is under siege, as well as political polarization.

Ideological politics have experienced inflation since the Cold War in Kenya. The political terrain has suffered from a vacuum of the false comfort offered by complacent traditionalists/reactionaries of the political class, which has led to an erosion of politics of the Left.

The movement is demanding a legitimate battle of ideas, a call towards a new wave of politics where content and merit matter, not birth right or money. Associate professor Ken Opalo from Georgetown University has argued that emerging Leftist politics are key to shifting the balance of single party and monolithic history of politics in Kenya; “This historical moment calls for Leftist political mobilization as a homeostatic correction to the region’s political and economic failures over the last 60 years”.

Politicization for a reform in Kenya may show the early signs of a more profound Leftist shift in politics in Africa.

The movement can thus be seen as a counterforce against spectator politics and an opening for fertile re-imaginations of political ideologies against the hegemonic polity.

Politicization for a reform in Kenya may show the early signs of a more profound Leftist shift in politics in Africa. The movement has already spread to Uganda and Nigeria. It demonstrates the possibility of new means to imagine and build democracy beyond current models.

Cameroonian political theorist Achille Mbembe has suggested that Africa could serve as the experimental laboratory of political imaginations now and in the future, by gaining leverage from its power of the youth and learning from the mistakes made in other democratic societies.

What next?

The movement is calling for the state to take responsibility for the killings of its own citizens who are exercising their constitutional rights. Rather than talking to the youth directly, the government has blamed foreign grant organizations, such as the Ford Foundation, for funding anarchic action against the state of Kenya.

The state has accused the movement of looting and violence, while at the same time requesting a dialogue. However, the movement has refused to collaborate with a government that enjoys impunity over killing of protesters. The president’s seeming desire for peace and compromise has also been denied as it is seen as a disguise to stifle the oppositional movement and force consensus.

The movement is calling for the state to take responsibility for the killings of its own citizens who are exercising their constitutional rights.

The new generation aims to transform democracy, governance and class politics maintained by the ruling political class. Youth is demanding the government to be held accountable for its actions and to respect the sovereignty of its people. The movement wants to break the legacy of impunity, corruption and cronyism within the political regime and public governance.

As the protesters have made clear, “We do not want dialogue, we want action. We do not need peace, what we are calling for is liberation. We cannot have peace until everyone is equal.”

The next national protest march is planned to take place 8th of August 2024 in Nairobi with the goal to dissolve the president administration and hold fresh elections.

Eeva Mäkinen is a PhD researcher in political studies at the University of Lapland, based in Nairobi.

Article image: Jorono / Pixabay

Julkaisu Youth paving the way for politicization in Kenya and beyond ilmestyi ensimmäisenä Politiikasta.

On 14th of February 2024, Indonesia had an important election. In this complex election – that Reuters News called the “biggest single-day election” – more than 200 million voters elected the new president and vice president, and legislative members on three levels of the region (national, provincial, district/city) including a national “senator”. Voters used five ballot papers in different colors.

Indonesian election of 2024 was important as President Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, could not run again after completing two five-year terms as president. The election was big, involving over 200 million voters in 823 000 polling stations across the country – 12 million more voters than the previous 2019 election. The young voters were a significant voting cohort, 55% or around 114 million youths: the Millennial generation (born between 1980–1995), and Gen Z (1997–2006), with 33,6% and 22,85% respectively, dominated the voters. I am also one of 1,7 million voters abroad.

The election for president and vice-president received the most attention. There were three pairs of candidates for president and vice-president and they are given numbers as in ballot papers: number one: Anies Baswedan – Muhaimin Iskandar (supported by four political parties); number two: Prabowo Subianto – Gibran Rakabuming Raka (supported by five parties); and number three: Ganjar Pranowo – Mahfud MD (with the support of four political parties).

Both Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo were governors previously, while Prabowo Subianto was ex-military general, the current Minister of Defense and Jokowi’s opponent in both 2014 and 2019 elections. Jokowi’s party is PDIP whose supported candidate nomination number three, Ganjar-Mahfud.

Jokowi’s victory in the 2019 election led to Prabowo joining his government and marked no opposition in the Indonesian executive branch, and ultimately showed democratic regression. Such democratic regression has been witnessed in Indonesian society. This is ironic, as President Jokowi  Widodo who won in the direct presidential elections both in 2014 and 2019 against the New Order luminary Prabowo, was the one who brought it back. The authoritarian regime of 32 years, New Order, led by president Suharto was toppled in 1998, and voters elected Jokowi instead of Prabowo to avoid the existence of the old regime in the country.

According to the edited volume of the Democracy in Indonesia. From stagnation to regression? the signs of democratic decline were seen especially in Jokowi’s second term. There were “populist mobilizations, growing intolerance, and deepening sectarianism, increasingly dysfunctional electoral and representative institutions, the deterioration of civil liberties and the executive’s expansion of an authoritarian toolkit for suppressing opposition and curtailing criticism”. Moreover, there was no formal opposition to the government and nepotism became rampant, especially with the selection of Jokowi’s son as Prabowo’s vice president.

In early February, at least 30 universities expressed their concern towards the government, protesting the government’s partial support toward certain candidates and the election machine or institutions, allegedly leading to election fraud.

After the election, most quick count surveys predicted that Prabowo Subianto won the presidential election in the first round with 58% of votes. Prabowo’s winning was the culmination practice of such democratic regression. The election result was still shocking, despite the open fraud and unfair attempts of the president to make Prabowo win, as shown in the film Dirty Vote. Released a few days before the election, the film showed “the intricacies of the purported systemic, structured, and massive election fraud throughout the electoral process fabricated by the current president, Joko Widodo”.

The fraud did not only involve the institutions –The Constitutional Court or Mahkamah Konstitusi/MK; the Election Commissioner or Komisi Pemilihan Umum/KPU, and the election supervisory agency or Badan Pengawas Pemilu/Bawaslu. These institutions’ actions supported indirectly the presidential candidate number two, Prabowo-Gibran, it also involved village and community leaders and newly appointed regional leaders, mingled with money politics (spreading money to support certain candidates), strategic distribution of social assistance, and manipulation of the electoral mechanism.

The concern was voiced by the academic communities calling for electoral integrity and warning the government for weakening democracy. In early February, at least 30 universities expressed their concern towards the government, protesting the government’s partial support toward certain candidates and the election machine or institutions, allegedly leading to election fraud. Exactly what the documentary film Dirty Vote had shown.

Controversial candidates

Thanks to Jokowi’s support, Prabowo’s victory was unstoppable. His running mate was Jokowi’s elder son, 37-year old Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the Mayor of Solo city for two years. Gibran’s candidacy was initially hindered by the law (Law 7/2017 on regular election) that enacted the age of presidential candidate and vice president must be at least 40. Yet, the Constitutional Court—led by Jokowi’s in-law, Gibran’s uncle, Anwar Usman – opened the way for Gibran’s vice president candidacy by adding the phrase “experienced in regional heads” and the decision took immediate effect.

Even when the Ethical Council of the Constitutional Court decided that Anwar Usman was violating the code of ethics for judicial review (due to personal interest) and removed from his position, Gibran’s candidacy was still underway. Prabowo chose Gibran as his running mate, on the last day of election registration in late November 2023. The move was sudden, as Gibran was considered to lack experience as a mayor and especially as vice president. The skepticism about Gibran remained.  

It was obvious that due to this controversial background, Jokowi would support his son running as vice-president. This meant that Jokowi also supported Prabowo to win in the 2024 election as president. Jokowi had attempted to lengthen his term to the third period, despite his saying otherwise. This was not possible according to the constitution, which limits the terms the president can serve to a maximum of two. He gave his support to a particular candidate but only hinted that the president could also do the campaign, according to the law on the election.

To soften his public image especially for young voters, Prabowo was rebranded as a cute and harmless grandpa, and in social media his picture where he was playing with cute cats was widely circulated.

This hint was misleading as the law enacted, that the president could only do the campaign if he is the incumbent running for the second term, or he is supported by his own political party. Jokowi as the president obviously could not run anymore, and he supported candidate number two, and not number three, as his political party, PDIP, supported.

Prabowo Subianto is another controversial figure. He was an ex-military general linked to the authoritarian regime led by president Suharto, by marriage to one of Suharto’s daughters. Prabowo was accused of human rights abuse during his military leadership in East Timor, and was banned from entering the United States until 2020. The ban was lifted when he became the Minister of Defense in Jokowi’s government. He was suspected of being responsible for student kidnapping and torture in 1997–98 leading to his being dismissed from the military. Unfortunately, since 2004, previous presidents in office were not interested in investigating the historical case of 1997–98 which toppled the authoritarian regime and included human rights abuses involving Prabowo.

Prabowo has been haunted by his past, in every election human rights issues have come up into public discussion. Prabowo has dodged the issue as part of the Indonesian democracy. The case was “resolved” when President Jokowi recently gave Prabowo a “four-star honorary general rank” which was condemned by human rights activists, including the families of the victims whose fate was unresolved because of Prabowo’s actions. Activists also saw this as “Jokowi’s attempt to accumulate power for him and his family”.

In the 2024 election, to “soften” his public image especially for young voters, Prabowo was rebranded as a cute and harmless grandpa, and in social media his picture where he was playing with cute cats was widely circulated. Gibran’s youth was also highlighted. Such advertisements were successful, although these controversial background promotions of the pair were seen as worrying.

Systemized election fraud?

President Jokowi is known to have popular support, roughly 80%, which made him the kingmaker. Therefore, whoever Jokowi supported was likely to succeed. Jokowi is from the PDIP party and therefore, at first hinted to support the presidential candidate Ganjar Pranowo, from the same PDIP party. In late 2022 he said to support the leader with “white hair”, which described Ganjar’s hair. But after his son’s candidacy, nepotism was clearly underway. Nepotism together with collusion and corruption was one of mandates for the Indonesian reform back in 1998, when the authoritarian regime was overthrown, but was brought back by Jokowi himself.

Not all controversies were with the candidates either. Also, the Constitutional Court or Mahkamah Konstitusi/MK with the Election Commissioner or Komisi Pemilihan Umum/KPU, were questioned for their integrity. The head of KPU committed the third ethical violation, surrounding Gibran’s vice presidential candidacy. The general election supervisory agency or Badan Pengawas Pemilu/Bawasluwas also alleged for not having “teeth” to question or impose sanctions towards many frauds practiced by KPU.

Quo vadis Indonesia’s democracy

With such a challenging background, people cast their votes. Indonesians are known to follow the rules, including participation in elections, thus the turnout vote was around 80%. Polling stations were opened from 7.00 to 13.00.

Abroad, the election was conducted on the previous weekend, but the count actually took place at the same time as in Indonesia, on election day, February 14th. People went to cast their votes enthusiastically and showed their purple finger as the sign of casting their votes. It was a national holiday too.

A few hours after the ballot stations were closed, and counting at the local stations closed, a quick count from a credible survey organization showed the expected election results. Usually the surveys are collected from around 2000–2500 stations with around 3% margin of error. In such a quick count, the general result was shown as the PDIP (Jokowi’s party), Golkar (old regime party) and Gerindra (Prabowo’s party) gained the most votes with approximately 16–17%, 14% and 13% vote shares, respectively. Other parties got less than 10% but as long as the support is higher than 4%, the parties earn seats at the national parliament. There were expected to be around eight political parties taking roles in parliament.

For the presidential election, due to Jokowi’s support, Prabowo swept the votes by more than half. The calculation showed Prabowo-Gibran 57–59%, Anies-Muhaimin 25% and Ganjar-Mahfud 16–17%. It was not surprising, with the many anomalies in vote counts, Prabowo gained more than 500 votes from one polling station, a suspected vote bubble, as one polling station usually only has around 300 votes. Jokowi’s supporters were considered likely to follow Jokowi and his hints to vote for Prabowo-Gibran. Prabowo and his team quickly celebrated their victory based on the quick counting results that evening.

The huge geographical coverage area means counting the votes takes time. The count was still done manually. A new recapitulation application, Sirekap, was introduced, but due to its difficulties  in reading the numbers or uploading the info, the election result was based on manual counting.

While fraud and manipulation were suspected, as Jokowi ran many state policy support for Prabowo, people became aware of how the democratic regression was in place. The pre-election survey showed, that Prabowo electability was around 40%. Therefore, it was quite a shock to see Prabowo’s winning more than 50% of votes in one round. Indeed, to win outright and avoid a second-round runoff, the leading candidate needs more than 50% of total votes cast and at least 20% of the ballot in half of the country’s provinces.

Fraud charges concern changing of the results, and not the process of the election, which is hard to show beyond numbers.

In the formal election result on 20th of March 2024, Prabowo-Gibran won with 58,6% votes in 36 out of 38 provinces, followed by Anies-Muhaimin with 24,9% and Ganjar-Mahfud 16,5%. Eight political parties continue to be in the parliament, with PDIP – Jokowi and Ganjar’s political party – got the highest votes, 16,72%, followed by Golkar (15,29%) and Gerindra (13,22%). This was another unusual practice in Indonesian politics, that the winning party will not automatically lead the government, as the president is directly elected, and his/her personality matters for voters.  

Jokowi’s government and his supporters called many times for “letting democracy work” or “letting people vote to elect their president”, as if electing president is only about vote share, and not also about the process. If the manipulation was systematic due to political actors, the institutions themselves, or the system, including intimidation, one would ask, how could the result be fair?

The losing candidates prepared their cases of fraud to be brought to the Constitutional Court. However, knowing that the Court was already in the grip of the incumbent president, any allegation of fraud is not likely to change the result of the election, especially the presidential election. Indeed, these fraud charges concern changing of the results, and not the process of the election, which is hard to show beyond numbers.

These events showed the fragility of Indonesian democracy, with political elites’ lack of political ethics, as shown in this year’s election.

There is another possible political way to proceed, that is establishing an Inquiry Committee (hak angket) at the parliament, Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat/DPR, to inquire the president, ministers and actors of institutions of the alleged fraud, so narratives and stories behind the scenes can be studied and analysed. This perhaps could be the way to re-establish a democracy process once again in Indonesia: a signal to the new president, that he cannot do things as he pleases, but only within the corridor of laws and the constitution.

Establishing a parliamentary committee of inquiry is not hard, all needed is at least signature from 25 members of parliament from different parliamentary groups to sign a document calling for such an investigation. However, knowing the political cartel in Indonesia and no opposition against the government in the parliament, it would be a challenge to establish a courageus will to question the president.

In the public sphere, people rally on the streets and academics continue to protest the democratic regression prior to the formal election result. Indonesian election credibility was also questioned by the United Nations Human Rights Committee (CCPR) concerning president Jokowi’s intervention. This directly affects the credibility of the new president.

These events showed the fragility of Indonesian democracy, with political elites’ lack of political ethics, as shown in this year’s election. Democratic regression and nepotism should be mitigated better in the future. The president should be impartial and not break the safeguards needed to protect Indonesian democracy now and in the future.

Ratih D. Adiputri is a postdoc researcher at the Department Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, working for the project on United Nations and multilateralism, funded by the Kone Foundation.

Article image: Wisnu M. Adiputri: Ballot boxes in Jogjakarta, Indonesia

Julkaisu Indonesia election 2024: Democratic Regression and Nepotism ilmestyi ensimmäisenä Politiikasta.

A recent theme in western media involves the casting of younger generations negatively in contrast to older generations using clickbait news titles and surface level discussions. News headlines conveying that younger generations are having a hard time ‘adulting’, or that younger people simply like living at home, have become commonplace to the point of being parodied.

These stories often lack the nuance or detail that goes beyond simplistic narratives to accurately explain the behavior or views of younger individuals. News stories about the relationship between younger people and politics is equally susceptible to simplistic generalizations about their behavior. In Finland, this phenomenon has recently manifested itself in narratives about young people’s greater support for one of the country’s far right parties – the Finns party.

Finnish media, younger people, and Finns party support

The Finnish media has published several news stories highlighting a link between younger people and support for the Finns party. For example, a recent press release from a research organization highlighted by the media indicates that TikTok impacts the voting behavior of younger people, and that the effect is especially strong for voting for the Finns Party. Yle News published a related story where they indicated that one-third of young people who use TikTok would vote for the Finns party.

The article was mostly framed around how the Finns party has been able to attract youth support through the app. The article dedicated considerable attention to the strategies of the party’s posts. The narrative is that younger people on the platform are particularly receptive to the types of content that the Finns party disseminates. The story did not ask the obvious question – is it that the Finns party is using TikTok to attract young voters’ support or that the party has created a ‘meeting place’ for the young supporters they already acquired?

The story leaves us to posit why Finns party support is so strong among younger voters and whether TikTok is the cause? What these stories lack are nuanced explanations and systematic comparisons to other age groups and the support of competitor parties.

A more nuanced analysis of the relationship between TikTok and Finns party support was published in Helsingin Sanomat. This story highlighted that the Finns party is the most popular party among the youth, which has been discussed in additional news stories. However, the story pointed out that according to a recent study younger voters do not support the policies of the party. The story leaves us to posit why Finns party support is so strong among younger voters and whether TikTok is the cause? What these stories lack are nuanced explanations and systematic comparisons to other age groups and the support of competitor parties.

Additionally, the news has recently emphasized the results from the democracy education event (Nuorten vaalit). The “the youth elections” event is used as an educational tool where youth participants under the age of 18 vote for a candidate running in the Finnish presidential election. The result of the event was that Finns party candidate Jussi Halla-aho finished second in the voting and missed first place by just over 600 votes (out of 94,000 cast). The result has led some to ponder over whether the Finns party is especially attractive to young people.

What does the democracy education event results tell us?

The democracy education event results convey only some information to researchers. However, that information is unlikely to be the attractiveness of the Finns party to younger people. Instead, the results more likely indicate quite a bit about some of these younger peoples’ families.

Since the 1960s political scientists have uncovered that the family is one of the strongest ‘agents of socialization’ in democracies. Agents of socialization are those entities that impact an individual’s political attitudes through the socialization process, which includes family, social groups, school, religion, etc. Studies confirm that there is a strong connection between parental partisanship/vote choice and that of their children. The relationship is especially strong when individuals are younger.

A study in Finland by Gidengil, Wass, and Valaste in 2016 showed that the likelihood a young person even votes can be directly tied to their parents’ political behavior. The results from the democracy education event are more likely reflective of parental attitudes rather than an informed selection of a candidate based on their own ideological commitments. As the Helsingin Sanomat article mentioned above highlighted, there is an incongruence between younger Finns party supporters’ policy preferences and those of the party.

Since the 1960s political scientists have uncovered that the family is one of the strongest ‘agents of socialization’ in democracies. Agents of socialization are those entities that impact an individual’s political attitudes through the socialization process.

Alternatively, the democracy education event might convey little to no information about younger people. First, the participants are casting a vote in an event that has no real-world stakes. The purpose of the event is that it is an educational tool. There are no consequences for their vote choice, which is not the case for actual voters. Therefore, the incentive to be an informed participant is missing from the activity.

Second, and related, as previous participants are aware, the seriousness that individuals approach this type of event does not match that of a real election. There is always a handful of participants that cast their votes in a joking manner. Finally, the younger participants lack a cohesive ideological profile. It takes time to develop an individual’s comprehensive set of political orientations towards society. Therefore, the choices might not be based on policy preferences, but rather other non-political considerations such as a candidate’s appearance or media reporting.

Analysis shows the relationship is over-emphasized

To calculate the precise impact of age on vote choice, I conducted an analysis from a survey of around 3,000 Finnish respondents just prior to the parliamentary election. My analysis controls for a range of demographic variables, as well as attitudinal positions (views on the economy, environmental issues, LGBTQI+ rights, and immigration). When I plot the impact of age on vote choice in the figure, we see that age only has a small impact on vote choice for the Finns party.

Figure: The impact of age on vote choice

The first aspect of the figure to notice is that the probability of vote choice is never greater than 25 percent for any party for younger people. In fact, the difference in the probability of voting for the parties that came first through fifth in the 2023 parliamentary election is on average only a four percentage point difference for 20 year old respondents. The result indicates a lot of fragmentation in the youth vote – no dominant party among the youth.

The result is not surprising given that younger people have not developed partisan attachments. Again, the lack of partisanship is due to an unformed ideological profile. In addition, youth voters are not a monolithic group that has a dominant issue to rally around, such as older voters and an issue like pensions. Thus, we would expect the youth vote to be divided between several parties as these young people navigate through the early years of political socialization.

Youth voters are not a monolithic group that has a dominant issue to rally around, such as older voters and an issue like pensions.

Comparing younger people to older people, the figure points to only small age related differences in vote choice for the Finns party. An individual that is 20 years old is only on average 3.8 percent more likely to report vote choice for the Finns party when compared to a 50 year old. When comparing a 20-year-old to an 80-year-old the difference is around 10 percent. The differences are small but could still be meaningful. Does this mean the Finns party is more attractive to younger people? Not necessarily, in fact, the results point to another narrative.

The narrative does not involve the Finns party’s oversized attraction to younger people, but instead the extremely large amount of support for the Social Democrats among older people. The results show that the probability of vote choice for the Social Democratic Party increases drastically with age. An individual that is between 70–80 years old is between 35–40 percent more likely to vote for the Social Democrats when compared to a 20-year-old voter.

The small age-related gaps in Finns party vote are likely a product of older voters’ very strong attachment to the Social Democratic Party. The finding aligns with narratives that older people have a much stronger partisan attachment to the Social Democrats in the Nordic countries. The question the media should be asking is why are the Social Democrats failing to appeal to young people? Therefore, the real puzzle is explaining gaps in Social Democratic party appeal.

Media and a bandwagon effect: A warning

Several studies show a bandwagon effect related to elections where citizens cast a vote for a candidate that they perceive, through the publishing of favorable news stories or opinion polls, as popular. The people that are most susceptible to this type of bandwagon effect are individuals that are low information voters or pay less attention to politics, which tends to be younger voters.

Given the disproportionate amount of attention the link between younger voters and Finns party support has received in the media, there is the potential that the relationship becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, younger votes may express support for the Finns Party in the future because they believe their peers also support the party due to the media’s incomplete reporting.

Therefore, the perpetuation of the narrative that the Finns party has an oversized appeal among young people could have implications for actual election results. That outcome would be unfortunate because the reality is that there is no party that dominates support from younger people in Finland. Instead, it is the case that younger people are dividing their support among several parties. We could call this process “finding a partisan home.” In addition, there is not a large difference between younger and older people in support for the Finns party. In all, news stories attributing Finns party success to younger people are not providing a complete picture.

Ph.D. Michael A. Hansen is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Turku.

Article image: Elizeu Dias / Unsplash

Article updated 30.1.2024 at 15.05: Some minor typos corrected.

Julkaisu Young people’s support for the Finns Party: An incomplete story ilmestyi ensimmäisenä Politiikasta.