Where did Turkey's president study for his undergraduate degree? This is the question that has vexed social media users in the country this past week.
According to Recep Tayyip Erdogan's official biography, he graduated in economics from Maramara University in 1981. But the university doesn't appear to have had an economics faculty until 1982. The ambiguity has set off a social media storm accusing the president of lying and demanding he offer up his diploma or resign.
Does it even matter and is it relevant? Beyond this, does it matter when politicians say things that are blatantly untrue – that is, they say things that are not merely new interpretations of events, but actual inventions of facts?
The answer in many democracies appears to be “no”. In democracies from the United States to the Philippines, politicians have been called liars, even proved to be so, and yet remain immensely popular.
Yes, I'm talking about Donald Trump. Mr Trump is interesting because he is merely the most extreme incarnation of a phenomenon that appears across the democratic world: the anti-establishment candidate.
Indeed, in the US, the two wings of the anti-establishment candidate are clear, Bernie Sanders on the left and Donald Trump on the right. The same is occuring in Europe, with the left advancing in southern Europe and the right advancing in eastern Europe.
Such is the lure of the anti-establishment figure that voters appear willing to overlook such “establishment” ideas as reason, logic and the truth.
When Mr Trump claims 81 per cent of murdered American white people are killed by black people, or Austrian presidential candidate Norbert Hofer says he saw Israeli police shoot a heavily armed woman in Jerusalem, or British politician Boris Johnson misrepresents the cost of Britain’s EU membership, they are all saying things that do not reflect actual events in the world. Yet they have not suffered in the polls.
The reason has less to do with the candidates and more to do with the political culture of the moment. Politicians who say things that are untrue are not new. What is new is that people are willing to believe them, even against the facts.
Part of it lies in the sense that facts are fluid. Politicians offer up the facts that best suit their arguments.
The media offers “balance”, weighing one claim against a counterclaim, giving equal weight to arguments regardless of facts.
That creates a sense among the public that any version of events is acceptable – so they choose the version of the person they like the most.
Supporters of anti-establishment candidates are particularly tolerant of untruths, especially if those are uncovered by mainstream media. That's what the establishment does, they say. Their belief in their candidate remains strong in the face of lies – and can even, say social scientists, increase.
One reason is that, in the absence of clear facts, people focus on “character”, the type of person the candidate is.
Anyone who seeks to point out a lie actually plays into this belief. In the case of Mr Erdogan, the details of his education three decades ago are irrelevant to his presidency today. But his critics say it goes to his “character”.
That plays into the belief of his supporters that those who criticise him don't care about the facts, they merely want to attack him for any reason. His crtics feel a certain way about him, and the facts follow. Well, his supporters say, we do the same thing.
More than anything else, it is this single issue that enables liar politicians to continue. Because the focus of the media and politicians is usually on whether someone lied over a relatively trivial matter. The amount of energy expended on seeking to prove that lie is far greater than that spent analysing serious policy.
Round and round the media and political machine goes, seeking to prove a “gotcha” moment, to prove that Mr Trump, or Rodrigo Duterte, or Mr Erdogan said or did something. Meanwhile, the big topics – that Mr Trump seems comfortable with the US defaulting on its debt, that Mr Duterte may have an ambiguous relationship with the rule of law, that Mr Erdogan has been accused of disregarding the freedoms of the press – go unexamined.
It is this focus on and obsession with relatively trivial issues that enables the cult of political personalities, and enables politicians to survive lying. After all, the character of entertainers is not to tell the truth, but to entertain. What matters are the feelings. When politicians become entertainers, the public trades facts for feelings – giving the ability to make firm laws to those who have the most fluid ability with the truth.
falyafai@thenational.ae
On Twitter: @FaisalAlYafai
