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Live On Stage
Thursday October 16 2025, 7pm BST

How To Lose Your Country, with Ece Temelkuran

Politics &
Economics

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 2016 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. Now on October 16, she comes 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 will also offer an alternative path and describe how democracy can survive the digital age. 

Join us for an evening of discussion at the Kiln Theatre, and have your questions answered in the audience Q&A.

How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Fascism - Canons (Paperback)
by Ece Temelkuran

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Event Name

How To Lose Your Country, with Ece Temelkuran


ATTEND IN PERSON


Speaker
  • Ece Temelkuran

    Writer and Essayist

Speakers are subject to change.


Location
  • Kiln Theatre
  • 269 Kilburn High Rd
  • London
  • NW6 7JR
Time
  • Thursday 16 October 2025
  • 7pm to 8:30pm BST





Speakers

Speaker

Ece Temelkuran

Writer and Essayist


Ece Temelkuran is an award-winning Turkish journalist, writer and political thinker. She is known for How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Fascism, an urgent analysis of populism and nationalism’s effects on the democracies around the world. Beyond her books, her journalism has appeared in publications including The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde.  

Speakers are subject to change.