If Brits are falling out of love with Boris Johnson over partygate, there is still hope for him in Turkey. If you were to quiz my fellow Turks on a list of ‘foreign leaders whom Turks find favourable’, there is no doubt Boris would be somewhere at the top of the list. Despite his hand in the Brexit campaign – when the prospect of a possible Turkish invasion was weaponised to convince people not to back remain – Boris remains popular over here.
Boris’s Turkish roots going back to his great-grandfather’s hometown, Orta in Cankiri (a central Anatolian town) are one of the reasons he remains loved. Us Cankiris, at least, are proud of Boris. When he first became PM he was hailed as ‘Boris the Turk’. ‘Ottoman grandson becomes prime minister,’ read a front-page splash in Sozcu, a popular newspaper. While Boris’s expensive education – Eton and Oxford – is sometimes used against him to suggest otherworldly privilege, his ancestral roots in our humble village are there for us Cankirians to see. It is clear in the way he handles tough attacks from political rivals with wit. We see it too in his larger-than-life attitude even in the most formal settings, not to mention his dance moves.
When he first became PM he was hailed as ‘Boris the Turk’.
Boris is in the midst of the biggest challenge of his political career so far. Will he survive? While British voters are furious about partygate, many of those from overseas (myself included) are baffled: to us, this whole partygate drama looks a bit overegged.
No, I am not going easy on Boris as a fellow townsman. There is plenty to criticise about Boris the politician. But a sense of perspective is vital. As far as I can see, Brits like to boast about their unique experience of democracy and rule of law dating back to Magna Carta. But they are in danger of tainting the brand if they continue down the road of partygate. Why? Because when you let unelected bureaucrats pore over the antics of the elected government – alongside a sometimes politically motivated ‘drip-drip’ tactic of leaks – you set a precedent, and it’s not a good one. Even former prime minister Tony Blair – who dragged Britain into a decade-long war which ended up being a tragedy for Iraq and the Middle East as a whole – was not properly investigated or held to account. Does Britain really want to oust its PM for being ‘surprised by a birthday cake’?
At a time of looming war in Ukraine, the partygate drama is particularly hard to fathom. In its support for Ukraine, Britain has set an example for the Western world that has been otherwise far too slow and lacklustre in its response to Russian aggression. As a journalist following the Ukrainian crisis on a daily basis, it’s not a coincidence that I encounter more stories about what Britain has lately done for the Ukrainians in non-British publications – such as the types of weaponry the UK has provided or how Johnson’s rapid action motivated foot-dragging France to take action and called Germany’s supposed leadership of Europe into question. This is surely the best of Britain and it will not be forgotten by those who are facing down Putin.
But in Britain, you hear all too little about this moment of national pride. Instead, partygate dominates the headlines. Well, he should know that at least some of his fellow Cankirians like me have his back, as we trace, with an element of pride, his family’s remarkable journey from Turkey to Downing Street.
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