Newsletter

Receive regular updates about forthcoming events and other news from Intelligence Squared

Thanks

You have been added to our mailing list and will now be among the first to hear about events.

Watch

How To Lose Your Country, with Ece Temelkuran

Politics &
Economics

How we can spot the early-warning signs of authoritarianism and defend democracy

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 2019 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. In October 2025, she came to Intelligence 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 also offered an alternative path and describe how democracy can survive the digital age.

Speakers for the motion

  • Ece Temelkuran

    Writer and Essayist

Chair

  • Coco Khan

    Journalist and Co-Host of Pod Save the UK

Speakers are subject to change.

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.  
Chair

Coco Khan

Journalist and Co-Host of Pod Save the UK

Writer, journalist and co-host of the politics podcast Pod Save the UK with comedian Nish Kumar. She writes regularly for The Guardian, and has contributed to books including The Good Immigrant.