Déjà vu in the UK: As a Turkish exile, I’ve seen this story before

I moved to London from Istanbul over a decade ago. As a novelist put on trial in Turkey for writing fiction, I longed for freedom of speech, and wanted to live in a place with a strong liberal democracy and stable democratic institutions. Back then, Britons were calm when they talked politics. Even when they disagreed, they seemed to remain controlled, and norms prevailed. In the post-Brexit era, that distinctive British calmness and sense of continuity is no more. Politics has become divisive, aggressive, emotionally charged. The dominant motto is to disrupt, dismantle and defeat. As my adopted country becomes increasingly polarized and drifts further away from Europe, I find myself seized by a strange sense of déjà vu: Some of what I see in the U.K. today reminds me of what I’ve seen happen in Turkey.
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