How To Lose Your Country, with Ece Temelkuran (Part One)

Intelligence Squared

Nov 14, 2025•37 min•Season 1Ep. 3324

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Episode description

Temelkuran is a brilliant writer, finding humour, hope and humanity in the darkest corners of our current malaise.’ – BRIAN ENO

Ece Temelkuran is the award winning Turkish writer and author who was forced into exile for her critical views of President Erdoğan. She has long signalled the alarm that not only her home country of Türkiye but the whole democratic world is steadily sleepwalking into authoritarianism.

Her 2019 book How To Lose A Country was an impassioned warning to the world that populism and nationalism don’t march fully-formed into government; they creep. In October 2025, she came to Intelligences Squared to discuss how we can spot the early-warning signs of authoritarianism, defend democracy and learn the lessons of resistance from Eastern Europe to South America. Temelkuran also offered an alternative path and described how democracy can survive the digital age.

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