34 Time March 15/March 22, 2021
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Exploring AI
Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel,
Klara and the Sun, centers
on artificial intelligence.
The eponymous narrator
is unlike any of Ishiguro’s
previous narrators in that
she is not human but an AF
or “artificial friend,” a robotic
being resembling a human
child, designed to comfort
lonely children. “The narrator
is very different from me,
but that’s really part of
my technique,” he says.
Ishiguro’s narrators typically
look backward, over lives
steeped in self- deception
or regret. Klara, he says,
is a “tabula rasa” at the
novel’s beginning and mainly
looks forward. “She really
has a child’s perspective.
She sees things that we
don’t, and is learning how
to become a human,”
says the Nobel laureate,
charming and self-effacing
in a video chat. Through
Klara’s eyes, we are shown
a near-future world where
emerging technologies
like AI and gene editing
have transformed society.
Despite the dystopian
backdrop, Klara has a more
optimistic story about a
central character who is
learning about humans.
Ishiguro says, “I wanted
to focus on celebrating the
things worth celebrating
about human nature.”
—Dan StewartOver The pasT
18 years, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan has
consolidated more
power than any other
leader since Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, the
founder of modern Turkey. He has trans-
formed Turkey’s politics, faced down a
military coup and rewritten the consti-
tution to give his presidency additional
power. But his combative style and auto-
cratic instincts have earned him critics
at home and abroad. His biggest political
problem at the moment is
economic: unemployment
stands near 14%, inflation
remains in double digits,
and the pandemic grinds on.
The President and his Jus-
tice and Development Party
(AKP) are paying a political
price for all this. Erdogan has
trailed rival Ekrem Imamo-
glu in head-to-head match-
ups in a number of recent
polls. A recent poll from Turkiye Raporu
found that the AKP’s vote share in a pro-
spective election has fallen below 30% for
the first time ever. Erdogan’s willingness
to allow a new Central Bank governor to
sharply raise interest rates late last year has
stabilized conditions by cooling inflation
and attracting more foreign investment.
As COVID weighs more heavily on house-
hold wealth, domestic political pressure is
growing and demand for change is rising. In
coming months, Erdogan may well revert to
the kind of quick-fix economic policies that
made Turkey so fragile in the first place.
In the meantime, short on bread,
Erdogan has offered circuses he hopes
will rally his base. When students pro-
tested his choice of a loyalist as rector at
a major university, he attacked them as
terrorists and many were arrested. He has
picked a political fight by calling for con-
stitutional changes that would give the
President new powers, despite the near
certainty that they can’t win the super-
majority vote needed in parliament.
Erdogan has also worked hard to stoke
national pride. Last month, he pledged
to mark the 100th anniversary of mod-
ern Turkey’s founding with a space mis-
sion culminating in “first contact with
the moon.” His poor polling suggests the
public’s priorities lie closer to home.Erdogan has also turnEd toward
more predictable targets. On Feb. 8, he
hinted at coming good news on the secu-
rity front. But then a plan to rescue Turk-
ish hostages held by Kurdish separatists
in northern Iraq turned disastrous, and
Erdogan was forced to cancel a promised
triumphant televised speech.
Next came news that Erdo-
gan’s government had ar-
rested more than 700 people,
including members of a pro-
Kurdish political party.
Erdogan’s heavy-handed
approach to domestic opposi-
tion fuels tensions with other
governments. U.S. President
Joe Biden and E.U. leaders
care far more than Donald
Trump did about democracy and respect
for human rights. But there are many is-
sues dividing Turkey and the West. NATO
member Turkey’s purchase of a Russian
S-400 missile system over U.S. and Euro-
pean objections is one. The upcoming trial
in New York City of state-owned Turkish
lender Halkbank on charges of helping
Iran to evade sanctions could prove deeply
embarrassing to Erdogan.
Erdogan has defied E.U. objections
to authorize oil exploration in con-
tested areas of the eastern Mediterra-
nean. That’s on hold for the moment, but
Erdogan also created a crisis last year
when he announced he had “opened the
gates to Europe” for refugees Turkey had
held back as part of a deal with the E.U.
He can hope for stable relations with
Vladimir Putin’s Russia, but that depends
on whether a truce remains in force
around the Syrian city of Idlib.
History says Turkey’s strongman will
become even more aggressive and erratic,
at home and abroad, as his country’s econ-
omy threatens his political future. •THE RISK REPORT
Beware Turkey’s President as
he faces uncertainty at home
By Ian Bremmer
History says
Turkey’s
strongman
will become
even more
aggressive and
erratic, at home
and abroadTheView Opener