Rescued refugees shipwrecked off Libya arrive in Palermo. Demotix\/ Antonio Melita. All rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n
Slawomir Sierakowski: Who are the people flocking Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> There is a lot of discussion over this According The reason Say you are SS: Do you have the impression that some EU Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> Absolutely. I like the term \u2018impossibilism\u2019. Of course UKIP in SS: You are a philosopher and I would like to Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> The economic question has various dimensions. Why? The United Now with A lot of I am giving SS: Some say German politicians are rational in Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> In every labour economy there are niches that This is I cannot SS: Why do we fear the Other? Why do some react Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> I was very, very touched by the Icelandic But Iceland SS: Isn\u2019t it true that as long as there were Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> I don\u2019t think that is the case. I think the We see in SS: So people just don\u2019t understand this Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> Let\u2019s talk a bit about the distribution of I\u2019m very SS: So you think the United States and Russia Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> Yes, absolutely I think they should.<\/p>\n SS: What exactly?<\/strong><\/p>\n Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know too much about Russian migration The United Since we SS: All refugees or Syrian refugees Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong>\u00a0 I\u2019m We have the SS: They haven\u2019t signed it.<\/strong><\/p>\n Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> Yes, I thought so. Qatar is interesting SS: Let me move on to more theoretical Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> From a moral standpoint, human beings are not Now There are If you go If I may Although The human Ironically, SS: In your book you talk about more flexible Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> Obviously, the state system and state I see no justification What the SS: What\u2019s the difference between porous Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> Sometimes I wonder myself why I don\u2019t just None of us During the SS: Isn\u2019t what is terrifying us and politicians Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> I think that such phrases as mass migration, You know, I But I think SS: The best pragmatic solution would be to Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> It has to be possible, why not? I think right SS: But Obama didn\u2019t want to go to Syria and Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> No, he didn\u2019t, and this was a big political This is not We have a SS: Some say that Putin is probably more liberal Seyla Benhabib:<\/strong> Oh God, I hope not! I will become a refugee if But I am SS: So, you have Europeanized Donald Rescued refugees shipwrecked off Libya arrive in Palermo. Demotix\/ Antonio Melita. All rights reserved. Slawomir Sierakowski: Who are the people flocking to Europe now? Who are they, what should we call them? Seyla Benhabib: There is a lot of discussion over this terminology, whether we should call them refugees or migrants. These people are coming…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nto Europe now? Who are they, what should we call them?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nterminology, whether we should call them refugees or migrants. These people are
\ncoming from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, and Libya. All of these
\ncountries are in states of either civil war, as in Syria, or in post-war
\nconflict situations that still have not settled down, as in Iraq, Afghanistan,
\nand Libya. <\/p>\n
\nto the 1951 Refugee Convention definitions, individuals who are fleeing their
\ncountry because of persecution \u2013 and this persecution can take the form of
\ncivil war, threat to life, based on ethnicity, religion, etc. \u2013 are to be
\nconsidered Convention refugees. I think it is hard to disagree that these are
\nareas of the world where there is civil war, where there is continuing
\ninstability, and where the lives of certain human beings are in danger. So, in
\nthe first place, there is reason to call them refugees. <\/p>\n
\nwhy there is so much dispute in European public opinion about refugees,
\nmigrants, and so on is the assumption that we do not have any special
\nobligations towards migrants, but we have special obligations towards refugees.
\nBut is it to be precluded that some of the individuals who are coming also want
\nbetter economic and life opportunities for themselves? No, you cannot preclude
\nthat. But international law tells us to observe this distinction. <\/p>\n
\nin Iraq, and even in Turkey, and you are not being given a position or finding
\nemployment because you are neither\u00a0 Sunni
\nor Shia, but a Kurd or an Alewite, your business is being bombed, you are not
\nbeing hired, no one is threatening your life, but de facto<\/em>, even if you are an economic migrant, you are in a
\nposition of destitution, you have no possibilities in life.\u00a0 What are you then – a refugee or an economic
\nmigrant? So we are in this catch 22 situation, where international law gives
\nprotection to refugees and not migrants, yet what we see is a situation where
\nnot just in Europe but the world over these categories are inadequate to deal
\nwith the realities.<\/p>\n
\npoliticians or political elites are playing with these two categories, trying
\nto stop this \u2018invasion\u2019 of refugees, that they treat refugees as economic
\nmigrants and are using this to justify the \u201cimpossibilism\u201d they use?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nAnother term we could invoke is the artificial creation of a \u2018state of
\nexception,\u2019 as Hungary has done. <\/p>\n
\nthese terms are being exploited by states to deflect from their obligations
\nunder international and European law, but also, as we know, in countries like
\nHungary, as well as France, the UK, and maybe to a lesser degree in Germany,
\nthere are significant right-wing groups that have emerged in opposition to
\nmigration, to the EU, and this mood is being exploited by many forces. <\/p>\n
\nBritain is an extreme case: the situation in Hungary is an extreme case. There
\nis little question though that the tragic refugee situation is becoming a ping
\npong ball in a political game. This is really terrible, and this is something
\nthat Europeans should have learned to avoid, because if you start playing
\npolitics with the lives of these individuals, what you are doing, without even
\nsaying so, is giving a green light to groups who might want to attack them:
\nmigrants and refugees become the unwanted, the others, who, in Giorgio Agamben\u2019s
\nwords, reside in a state of exception, without anybody protecting them. Thus
\nthey become prey to possible attacks. <\/p>\n
\nconcentrate on the legal and moral aspects of the situation. But let me start
\nwith the economy and briefly ask you: can the EU, or the west, afford this
\ninflux or not? What do you think, from the moral point of view, about the
\neconomic arguments around migration, are they justified or not?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nIn general, what migration economists say is that in the short term \u2013 let\u2019s
\ntalk about migrants as opposed to refugees \u2013 migrants impose a certain burden
\non the economy. But in the long term, they benefit it. The distinction between
\nthe short and the long term needs to be made. <\/p>\n
\nBecause, by and large, migrants are young, mobile, and in this case they are
\nmales, although there are a lot of female migrants as well. They begin to
\ncontribute to the economy, and in the long term they end up paying in more than
\nthey take out. Countries like Germany have receding birth rates and an ageing
\npopulation and that\u2019s why German politicians have made a very rational
\ncalculation and have opened the country to migrants. The question about
\nmigration is always what the relationship is going to be between migrants\u2019
\nwages and the existing economy. <\/p>\n
\nStates is probably an extreme example, because we don\u2019t have a regulated
\nmarketplace. Migrants come in and undoubtedly, they depress wages in some
\nsectors of the economy. There\u2019s no question about this. Europe is regulated
\ndifferently, so the real question is the relationship between the wages of the
\nmigrants and the wages of the existing population. Is there no contradiction at
\ntimes? Yes, of course there is. The more unregulated labor is, the more it affects
\ndomestic wages downwards. But can this be altered by policy? Yes, one can set in
\nplace a Europe-wide policy. This would not be all that different from what
\nhappened in the much-discussed case of the Polish plumber going to France or
\nthe UK to work. <\/p>\n
\nrefugees, the question is somewhat different. A refugee is someone who applies
\nfor asylum status. Asylum status processing is now taking anywhere from 2 to 5
\nyears in many European countries. From what I have read, there are now attempts
\nto try to speed up this processing of asylum applications, but in most European
\ncountries, refugees who are asylum applicants do not have work permits, so in
\nthat sense they are not exactly economic migrants. <\/p>\n
\nthem have to receive local aid from the municipalities or whichever local
\nauthority is responsible for them. And this is a very tricky situation, because
\nin effect migration and refugees are a burden to the local region although they
\nare admitted at a national level. There is much intense back-and-forth and
\ntension between national inclusion and local integration. National governments
\nhave to devise intelligent policies for the integration of refugees, even while
\nthey are waiting for their status to be resolved. <\/p>\n
\nyou a complicated answer, because I fully respect the human rights of refugees
\nand migrants; but I think it is best to be realistic about the contradictions
\nthey pose for economic policy and not to present the situation as a coherent and
\nrosy picture. We progressives have to implement a more realistic policy to
\nresolve some of the burdens and contradictions that this can present, even if
\nmigration revitalizes the economy in the long term.<\/p>\n
\nadmitting economic migrants or refugees because they know full well that they
\ncan fill their demographic gap. But others may ask, why do we have 3 million
\nunemployed Germans?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nare not filled by the national working <\/strong>classes.
\nI\u2019m not exactly sure why this is, but there are certain jobs that only migrants
\ndo. For example, cleaning jobs in all buildings, or household cleaning jobs.
\nSpeaking from the US experience, jobs for nannies are often filled by Central
\nAmerican women instead of African-American women. Why? <\/p>\n
\nreally a very hard question to answer.\u00a0
\nTo use post-Marxist terminology, I believe that economic migration is
\npart and parcel of the national peace that various social classes in advanced
\nindustrial economies have reached among themselves. It just seems that an
\nunemployed German or Polish worker will not do some jobs that an Iraqi or
\nAfghani will do. There is some strange segmentation in the labor market that
\ncuts across national and ethnic lines. <\/p>\n
\nsay more than this, because this hasn\u2019t really been investigated. As you know,
\nI lived in Germany for more than 15 years and in the universities, whoever came
\nto clean the buildings \u2013 this was in the 1990s \u2013 was inevitably from the
\nBalkans, and the German worker was the supervisor. So is the migrant taking
\naway the job from the national worker, or is the migrant helping keep the
\nsocial peace between the classes? It\u2019s quite a puzzle to decide. <\/p>\n
\nlike the people of Iceland who voluntarily invited thousands of refugees in,
\nand why do others react instead as in Slovakia, which only wants to have 200
\nrefugees and only Christians? Why do you think it is like that?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\ncivil society initiative. I think the most interesting moral of the refugee
\ndilemma is that civil society groups have displayed a kind of moral sense\u00a0 – I don\u2019t want to call it moral altruism –
\nbut a kind of demonstration of empathy with the suffering of the distant
\nother.\u00a0 But countries like Slovakia and
\nHungary are small nations in the heart of Europe and feel embattled by larger
\ndevelopments, fearing that they will lose their own identity. <\/p>\n
\nis all the more remarkable, because like Hungary and Slovakia, it is also a very
\nhomogeneous country. They themselves are trying to expand their
\nself-understanding: what does it mean to be a citizen of Iceland if you are
\nLibyan, if you are Afghani? And some of the Nordic countries, like Sweden and
\nNorway, which are very homogeneous as well, are succeeding in creating this
\npost-national multicultural identity. Denmark, on the other hand, is just as
\ndefensive as Slovakia. It had one of the most progressive assimilation policies
\nin Europe, but it has moved back to a defensive and conservative posture under
\nthe impact of the Danish caricature controversy and the bombings last summer in
\na Danish bookstore. I am not giving you a very precise answer, but just meditating
\non the question.<\/p>\n
\nhomogenous countries in the west, we could support a welfare state? Is this why
\nmigrants seems to present the biggest danger for the welfare state?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nrelationships between the welfare state, national homogeneity, and migration is
\nnot a zero sum game. Australia and Canada are countries of migration and they
\nhave a welfare state. The US is a country of migration which has a weaker
\nwelfare state, but has unemployment benefits, social security, and a weaker
\nhealthcare system. So national homogeneity and the welfare state are not always
\ncausally related: there are other factors that come into play as well. <\/p>\n
\nwelfare states like Germany, Sweden, Norway, that if you do not absorb a young
\nworking class, you then face the question of who is going to pay the benefits
\nfor the elderly who are taking from the state but not paying into it? A young
\nlabour force is necessary for the welfare state to continue and to flourish.
\nAnd that\u2019s why some countries open up to immigration, and others do not.<\/p>\n
\nbecause they think they do not want to pay for other people, for people of
\ndifferent races and religions, and they did not have this problem when they had
\nto pay for the same people as themselves? Why don\u2019t countries like Qatar, Saudi
\nArabia, the Gulf countries, want to accept any refugees?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\ninternational obligation towards refugees. I\u2019m very irritated about the
\nfollowing fact: in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the United States was directly
\ninvolved in military action. Now morally, if you have a causal responsibility
\nfor creating certain conditions, you also have the responsibility to accept
\nsome of the consequences of your actions. The United States, the United
\nKingdom, France are countries who are still actively militarily involved in
\nthese regions in some way or another, and they have a responsibility towards
\nthe refugee problem. <\/p>\n
\ndisappointed by the reaction of the United States and I\u2019m very disappointed by
\nthe United Nations. I think this is not just Europe\u2019s burden, and it it\u2019s not
\njust Europe\u2019s responsibility. All countries involved in this region, in the
\nconflict, have to come to the table. <\/p>\n
\nshould do something?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nor refugee policy, but we all know that Russia has had tremendous influence in
\nSyria and even Afghanistan, for many, many years. But let\u2019s talk about the
\nUnited States. Because it has the blessing of the ocean between it and the
\nrefugees, it simply has no policy at the present and does not grant many visas
\nto refugees.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\nStates has the luxury of denying refugee visas in its own embassies, or if you
\nhappen to go on a plane, even in the airport your visas are checked, so in fact
\nwhat we have done in the United States is that we have made it impossible,
\nnearly impossible, for overseas refugees to come across the ocean.<\/p>\n
\nconducted this interview, the Obama Administration has said that it will accept
\n10,000 refugees but the number should really be closer to 100,000 at least if
\nit is to meet the USA\u2019s moral obligations toward these countries.<\/p>\n
\nspecifically?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\ntalking about refugees from war-torn countries. Afghanis, Iraqis, Syrians.\u00a0 But the United States is also faced with
\nrefugees coming over the land from Mexico and Central America, sometimes
\nCanada. I feel as if we are morally failing, and I want to get involved in
\nthis. At Yale we have the Human Rights Group, and I want to get involved with
\nthe question of why we aren\u2019t doing more. <\/p>\n
\nresponsibility to do more, this is not just Europe\u2019s problem. And where is the
\nUnited Nations? Now to go back to your example of countries like Qatar and
\nSaudi Arabia, I think these are countries in such internal turmoil themselves,
\nand I\u2019m not even sure what their status is as signatories of the refugee
\nconvention\u2026<\/p>\n
\nbecause it is an extremely wealthy country that takes in labor migrants from
\nPakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, and elsewhere who work in slave-like
\nconditions. And yet it does not accept its own brethren from Syria. I mean
\nlook, Turkey has accepted 2.5 million refugees from Syria. It\u2019s an enormous
\nnumber. Why? Whether there\u2019s a bit of realpolitik, in that President Erdogan
\nwants to influence Syrian politics, cannot be precluded; but nonetheless, it is
\npretty remarkable. Lebanon has accepted and Jordan have each accepted between a
\nmillion and a million and a half, so Qatar and other Gulf countries are moral
\nfailures.<\/p>\n
\nquestions. In recent decades, and your book touches upon this, the categories
\nof sovereignty and democratic values are becoming more and more blurred. And
\nthere is a discrepancy between the moral context of the refugee crisis and the
\nlegal situation of refugees. How would you describe this discrepancy so that
\nregular citizens understand it? Your readers are citizens, what is problematic
\nin citizenship now?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\ndivided into citizens, refugees, and migrants. Morality is the obligation we
\nhave to the Other. To take the example of this refugee boy from Syria who was
\ndiscovered dead by a Turkish police officer and was carried to the shore, of
\ncourse everybody\u2019s moral conscience revolted at the picture of this small boy,
\nand there are very few human beings who do not feel touched by empathy or who
\nfeel some solidarity with the plight of the refugees and their suffering.<\/p>\n
\nlegally, the system of nation states, territorially bounded nation states,
\ndivides us into categories of human beings who are entitled to certain kinds of
\nrights as opposed to others. The modern state experiment, the American, the
\nFrench, the Russian revolutions were based on developing human rights and
\ncitizens\u2019 rights. Human rights express in legal terms the kinds of fundamental
\nobligations we feel we have to one another so that we will never again treat
\nhuman beings in a way that destroys their fundamental dignity. These are
\nuniversal human rights formulated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
\nof 1948.\u00a0 Citizens\u2019 rights incorporate
\nthem, but as a citizen of Poland, you have certain rights, or in the United
\nStates, I have certain rights, which are different than those of a French or a
\nTurkish citizen. <\/p>\n
\nsometimes theoretical as well as legal tensions between human rights and
\ncitizens\u2019 rights. Human rights have both a moral and a legal component and
\ncitizens\u2019 rights can vary according to certain factors across countries.
\nContradictions arise precisely when you are confronted with populations who either
\nlive among you, such as migrants, or with individuals, who in the European
\nUnion are called \u201cThird
\nCountry\u201d nationals.\u00a0 They have different
\nrights to employment, to political participation than regular EU citizens.\u00a0 Increasingly, we are facing a patchwork
\nbecause people are living in each other\u2019s territories and countries for longer
\nperiods of time, as long-term legal migrants. <\/p>\n
\nto London, there are probably tens of thousands of Poles who live in London.
\nNow, what are their rights?\u00a0 If you are a
\nPolish citizen in London, can you vote for the London municipal elections? You
\ncan vote for the European Parliament and you can vote for your own parties at
\nhome, but if you want to vote for London municipal elections, can you?\u00a0 Municipal or regional voting rights vary
\ngreatly across the EU. Now if you are an Afghani or a Turk who is living in
\nLondon for the same number of years as a Polish citizen, but you are a third
\ncountry national in the EU, do you have the same rights, or don\u2019t you? My book,
\nThe Rights of Others, <\/em>deals to use
\nHabermas\u2019s term, with new post-national
\nconstellations<\/em>.\u00a0 We now live in legal
\nregimes which acknowledge universal human rights, and where nationality and
\ncitizenship are not the only basis for being granted certain rights; yet there
\nare still distinctions made among groups of human beings based on their
\nnationality or citizenship. So I would say, as a mental exercise, think about
\nthe Polish citizen in London, as opposed to the Iraqi or Afghani in London and
\nyou begin to understand the dilemma of these different rights. <\/p>\n
\nadd one more thing: the European Union is an extremely interesting experiment.
\nI know that these days no one knows if the European Union will survive. I\u2019m a
\nfriend of the European Union, I hope that it will survive, I hope that it will
\nmove forward. Why? Because the European Union has created an impressive
\ncosmopolitan legal space. <\/p>\n
\nright now it seems that everything is in question, we have to think carefully
\nabout the long-term versus the short-term in politics. 47 countries in Europe
\nare part of the European Convention on Human Rights, Russia and Turkey
\nincluded. 28 countries of the European Union are part of the European Charter
\nof Human Rights and Freedoms.\u00a0 This
\ncreates an extremely interesting case of legal cosmopolitanism. <\/p>\n
\nbeing, regardless of citizenship, is now considered entitled to certain human
\nrights. How does this occur? The interplay and interconnection between these
\nlegal obligations articulated by the Charter and the Convention, this legal
\nspace with its own courts and institutions such as the European Court of Human
\nRights and the European Court of Justice, have created an extremely important
\nexample of a kind of post-national consciousness and post-national legal
\nunderstanding of rights. <\/p>\n
\nrefugees want to come to Europe because they also find this attractive and
\nbeneficial to them, but ironically Europe is beginning to suffer under the
\nweight of its own contradictions. Precisely because countries of Europe
\nsubscribe to the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as to the
\nEuropean Charter, they are obliged to treat refugees and migrants in specific
\nways. So theoretically, the countries of Europe are committed to cosmopolitanism
\nvis-\u00e0-vis the rights of migrants, but in practice they do not succeed in living
\nup to those promises. <\/p>\n
\nborders, or as you say, porous borders. Would you say that that is what we are
\nwitnessing now? Do borders work according to the theoretical solutions that you
\npropose in your book? What works and what doesn\u2019t?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nbureaucracy are failing to deal with the various dimensions of the problem. If
\nthe borders are porous, and let\u2019s say Germany has expressed its willingness to
\naccept 600 000 migrants, what is happening with the building of the fence in
\nHungary? Why are refugees who want to reach Germany not being granted porous
\naccess? <\/p>\n
\nfor it: there seems to be confusion in the minds of everybody, and European
\nStates are failing in this respect. According to the Dublin Conventions,
\nrefugees need to be granted refuge in the first country that they make contact
\nwith. They have to be processed there. Obviously what needs to be done is that
\nthe Dublin Convention has to be reconsidered, renegotiated. Because in effect if
\nGermany is saying we are willing to accept those people, we will process them,
\nthen Hungary or Slovakia are just countries of passage, and they should accept
\nthe porousness of borders. <\/p>\n
\nHungarians are doing by forcing these refugees into camps is not logical,
\nbecause in effect they don\u2019t want these people at all.\u00a0 Porous borders are the only viable way in which
\nnations can co-exist, but obviously we are now living in a situation of crisis
\nthat is generating or attempting to generate the myth that those borders will
\nbe controlled \u2013 but this is a myth. The United States built a wall, 13, 14 feet
\nhigh, on the Mexican border. Refugees have used a ladder 16 feet high to cross
\nthat border. Hungary has built a fence, but refugees are going to cut it, they
\nare going to find ways to circumvent it. Porous borders really mean the
\nacceptance that human beings move across borders, and that they should be able
\nto move without being criminalized.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nborders and open borders?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\ntalk about open borders. Porous borders suggest that we still need some kind of
\npublic authority to be responsible for the settled population in a
\nterritory.\u00a0 The puzzle is, how can you
\nhave open borders without a world state? <\/p>\n
\nwants a world state because we don\u2019t believe that it can guarantee democratic
\nself-governance. So porous borders is a theory that recognizes the moral and
\nlegal rights of human beings to move across borders, and yet at the same time,
\nalso acknowledges that there is a public authority that is responsible for the
\nterritory of the settled population. Increasingly we see that the nation states
\nalone are not that public authority. <\/p>\n
\ntwo wars, the European nation state system collapsed and was then subsequently
\nreconstituted.\u00a0 Today we are faced with a
\nglobal situation where nation states are in crisis again in quite a few regions
\nof the world — the Middle East, North Africa, South East Asia. The world cries
\nout for a more coordinated world organization, yet we have to find ways to
\nreconcile the virtues of democratic representation, civil society,
\nparticipation, solidarity, with that kind of vision of global governance.<\/p>\n
\nat the moment the sense that this is just the beginning, that not thousands,
\nbut millions of refugees will be coming to the island of Europe? If you look at
\nthe differences and inequalities we have in the world, the regions of crisis
\nyou just mentioned, can there be any other outcome? <\/strong><\/p>\n
\nof \u201cinvasion\u201d, are morally and politically charged terms that create fear and
\nthat do not enable us to think rationally, calmly, and morally about the
\nsituation. Clearly, what needs to be done is some very serious regional
\npolitical coordination that will\u00a0 resolve
\nor attempt to find a solution for instability in the Middle East. I don\u2019t think
\nthat people in Damascus necessarily want to go and settle in Hamburg. Maybe
\nsome do: some don\u2019t. Damascus is a beautiful city, but they are desperate. Part
\nof the solution has to be a political solution on the level of states
\naddressing the condition of civil war in Syria. <\/p>\n
\nwas born in Turkey and personally, as someone from the Middle East, I am very
\nscared about the way this region of the world seems to be sort of dissolving
\nbefore our very eyes. So we need to find a political solution and maybe once
\nthe US-Iran nuclear accord is settled, there will be some kind of a possibility
\nto come around the table and try to resolve the difficulties of Syria. <\/p>\n
\nwe should object to this language of invasion, hordes, mass migration. It is
\nnot easy to be a refugee, people don\u2019t just put their children on a boat and
\nwatch them die. So I think we should have some more sympathy for what these
\npeople are undergoing, and meanwhile, politicians have an obligation not to
\nexploit this incendiary language. <\/p>\n
\nstabilize and to improve the situation in the countries from which refugees are
\ncoming and the regions of crisis. Do you believe it is possible?<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nnow we know that we live in the world of post-hegemony. The United States has
\nnot succeeded in Iraq, it has not succeeded in Afghanistan, and all of a sudden
\nthis new force called Isis has emerged, which caught everybody by surprise. <\/p>\n
\nstabilize the situation there.<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nmistake. Something should have been done. Not necessarily with American military
\nforce on the ground, but trying to negotiate, trying to get the Russians to the
\ntable. Something similar has to happen for Syria as happened for Iran. Because
\nSyria has for a long time been a client state of Russia. Particularly the Assad
\ngovernment. So now there is this new situation with Isis which is scaring
\neverybody. Is it possible that there will be a Sunni state between the eastern
\nterritories of Syria and North-West Iraq? Nobody quite knows the answer. What
\nis clear is that Isis has military power that needs to be combatted: I\u2019m sorry
\nI\u2019m not a pacifist in this regard. But how you can stabilize this quasi-civil
\nwar that was created between the Sunni and Shia?<\/p>\n
\nall that different from the situation in Yugoslavia where nobody in one family
\nknew who is a Serb, who is a Croat, who is an Albanian, who is what \u2013 I don\u2019t
\nbelieve in the essentialist theory of primordial human differences. I think
\nhuman differences matter in certain constructions, in certain historical
\nperiods, because there are other forces that bring them to the fore. That\u2019s
\nwhat\u2019s happening right now in the Middle East. <\/p>\n
\npresidential campaign in the United States and it\u2019s a very ugly campaign, so I
\ndon\u2019t see anything happening soon. But it was a failure of the Obama
\nadministration not to try to do anything about the instability in Syria. I know
\nthat many of my American colleagues don\u2019t agree with me. <\/p>\n
\nthan 80% of Russian society. We\u2019ve just criticized Obama, but do you think that
\nDonald Trump is the popular voice of America? <\/strong><\/p>\n
\nDonald Trump gets elected!\u00a0 Donald Trump
\nis representing something that is much closer to a European anti-refugee and
\nright-wing nationalist stance than we have seen in the United States. There
\nhave always been these nativist movements, you know, like in the 1920s, the
\nKnow Nothings, who were against immigration, against the Irish, the Jewish,
\neven the German migrants.\u00a0 Trump is a
\nregressive politician, taking us back to a certain American white-ethnic
\n\u2018nativism.\u2019<\/p>\n
\nnot entirely pessimistic. Bernie Sanders, the first properly social democratic
\ncandidate in America, is also drawing huge crowds. America is in a period of
\nprofound dissatisfaction with establishment politics. Donald Trump represents
\nsomething unusual and that\u2019s why the Republican Party is so confused. The
\ncandidates are so lost, because they don\u2019t know what to do with this kind of
\nnativist language \u2013 America for good white migrants only, away with these
\nMexicans and Hispanics \u2013 this is not the language of America. <\/p>\n
\nTrump – which is a very nice riposte for a European newspaper. <\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"