Fourteen episodes later @ekoshy.bsky.social and I are taking a break until fall! Our season finale reflects on the term "democratic backsliding" and we discuss how useful (or not) the concept is for making sense of global authoritarianism itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-14...

Episode 14: On Rethinking the Words We Reach For (Season Finale)

For our final episode, we sat down without a guest to ask ourselves the questions we usually put to others.

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

Is there hope amid democratic backsliding ? @baykurt.bsky.social and I talk about Brazil (and Turkey, US and more) with @karabekir.bsky.social —Lula, Bolsonaro, coup convictions, and what coalition-building across polarization might teach us about fighting back. itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

It All Happened Before | Burcu Baykurt | Substack

A podcast co-hosted by Ekin Yaşin and Burcu Baykurt. Click to read It All Happened Before, a Substack publication.

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

From Russian journalists in exile to Chinese journalists who never left, @ekoshy.bsky.social & I talked with Dr. Maria Repnikova this week about what political action looks like when it walks around autocratic obstacles instead of confronting them itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-12...

Episode 12: We've Been Walking Around Obstacles with Dr. Maria Repnikova

When we talk about resistance, we tend to picture it: marchers in the street, dissidents with megaphones, confrontation made visible.

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

When political transformation happens to large populations, we try to make sense of it — from up close and from a distance. Why has this happened? Has it happened before? If so, why now, or again? What is the story? open.substack.com/pub/itallhap...

What Are Stories For?

On Hansen, Hochschild, and the Limits of Understanding Authoritarianism

open.substack.com

The people of Karagümrük in Istanbul watched Erdoğan improve their lives for a decade before noticing what was being taken from them. @ekoshy.bsky.social & I talk to Suzy Hansen who wrote about this shift and what it feels like to watch the US thru TR itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-11...

Episode 11: A Neighborhood in the Age of Authoritarianism: A Conversation with Author Suzy Hansen

Suzy Hansen's first book, Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World, is one of the books we kept returning to in the conversations that eventually became this podcast.

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

"Authoritarianism is an act of creation, a process of transformation that begins when few are watching and, once identified, is often too late to stop." — Suzy Hansen, From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan (2026)

Last week, a court removed the leadership of Turkey's largest opposition party. Then riot police stormed their headquarters. This isn't infighting. It's a pattern.

For many Turkish people these days it is an intense period of squeezing everything we know and can find to find a tiny drip of hope.

From the TikTok dancer reporting on breaking news to the YouTube news channel that doubles as a content production studio, we talk about what independent journalism looks like in Turkey & increasingly everywhere w/ Gülsin Harman @ekoshy.bsky.social itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-10...

Episode 10: We've Watched Journalists Become Content Creators

When mainstream media gets captured, the story doesn't end — it migrates.

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

What happens when journalists all have to become streamers? In captured-media autocracies, platforms like YouTube are a refuge. In the US, they're a growth strategy—a way to reach younger audiences. Same shift, very different stakes.

One thing opposition parties need to do is confront what they have become, not just what their opponents are. This week's newsletter is on my twenty years of frustration with the CHP and what it tells us about the Democrats @ekoshy.bsky.social itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/the-opposi...

The Opposition's Long Regret

Twenty years of frustration with Turkey's opposition and what it might tell us about the Democratic Party.

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

Ekrem İmamoğlu’s CHP won Turkey’s biggest electoral upset in two decades in 2024. Six months later he was in jail. @ekoshy.bsky.social and I unpack how opposition parties win in authoritarian contexts and what happens when they do with Aytuğ Şaşmaz itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-9-...

Episode 9: We've Been Frustrated with the Opposition Party Before

The Democratic Party is trying to figure out what will work — and the competing forces within it are doing so loudly.

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

Frustrated with the Democratic Party ahead of the midterms? Turkey's been there. This week @ekoshy.bsky.social and I talk with Aytuğ Şaşmaz about why opposition parties keep feeling like they can't win, and sometimes they really can't itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-9-...

Episode 9: We've Been Frustrated with the Opposition Party Before

The Democratic Party is trying to figure out what will work — and the competing forces within it are doing so loudly.

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

When repression meets local resistance, who wins? @baykurt.bsky.social and I dove deep with @liselhintz.bsky.social on how mayors like Mamdani and İmamoğlu build counter-narratives that threaten regimes from the ground up. itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

One of the best conversations I've had on Turkey-US parallels With @baykurt.bsky.social + @ekoshy.bsky.social we cover: *how gov rhetoric criminalizes dissent *how ethno-racial prejudice facilitates repression *why it matters that protesters keep showing up even when political change isn't visible

Episode 8: We've Seen Protesters Called Terrorists - A Conversation with Dr. Lisel Hintz

In March 2025, masked federal agents arrested a Turkish PhD student on a Somerville sidewalk as she walked to break her Ramadan fast.

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

Burcu Baykurt@baykurt.bsky.social · 3mo ago

From Minnesota protests last winter to the Antifa terrorism verdicts in March, the Trump admin keeps framing anti-ICE activists as domestic terrorists. This week @ekoshy.bsky.social & I dive deeper into this strategy with @liselhintz.bsky.social itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-8-...

For graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, an op-ed became evidence. A student became a threat, forcibly detained by ICE. In our latest episode @baykurt.bsky.social and I talked to scholar @liselhintz.bsky.social about the vilification playbook from Gezi to Somerville itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

“What you call in global north paranoia, we in the global south call history and trauma….” @mertcanbayar.bsky.social shared such a deep and thoughtful analysis of conspiracies and their political resonance with me @baykurt.bsky.social this week! Episode: itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

Inspired by @baykurt.bsky.social and I’s conversation on conspiracies with @mertcanbayar.bsky.social this week, I trace deep state across three registers: a possibility, an object of investigative journalism, instrument of democratic backsliding. itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/deep-state...

Deep State: On the Turkish Origins of America's Favorite Conspiracy

Or: how a Turkish car crash, the X-Files, and the new FBI Director are all in conversation

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

"Deep state" is originally a Turkish concept. So is the experience of living with one for decades. This week @ekoshy.bsky.social & I talk to @mertcanbayar.bsky.social about conspiracy theories and what Turkey's history tells us about Trump's America itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-7-...

Episode 7: We've Lived With the Deep State -- A Conversation with Mert Can Bayar

Americans have been talking about the "deep state" like it's a new discovery.

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Last year the NEH canceled my $75k fellowship. This year it’s channeling $15m into what I call the “Trump-al Arch" That’s 200 fellowships! In this week’s newsletter, I talk about how "American" these gilded monuments actually are itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/before-the... @ekoshy.bsky.social

Before the Concrete Sets

On gilded buildings, captured institutions, and what happens after the concrete sets.

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Gilded buildings have risen before. Autocrats around the world have for decades built big — marble, gold, scale. This week @baykurt.bsky.social trace the architecture of hunger: what vanity projects reveal about power, and what they predict about its end. 🎙️ substack.com/@baykurt/not...

Episode 6: We've seen the gilded buildings before

In 2014, a year after Gezi, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan moved into a 1,100-room palace built on Atatürk's protected forest farm — in defiance of court orders that ruled it illegal.

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In this week's newsletter @ekoshy.bsky.social writes about the "damat" economy in authoritarian countries and its consequences for domestic politics, foreign policy, and the possible/eventual decline of strongmen itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/the-son-in...

The Son-in-Law Problem

What Hungary's election, Jared Kushner's fund, and two Turkish damats tell us about the shape of autocratic rot

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

Why do sons-in-law keep ending up at the center of power? From Ottoman damats to Kushner to Orbán’s Tiborcz. This week @baykurt.bsky.social and I on in-law power, nepotism, and what Hungary just told us. Subscribe! Episode + newsletter: open.substack.com/pub/itallhap... #Hungary #democracy

The Son-in-Law Problem

What Hungary's election, Jared Kushner's fund, and two Turkish damats tell us about the shape of autocratic rot

open.substack.com

Why is it always sons-in-law who engage in the most nepotistic behavior in authoritarian settings? @ekoshy.bsky.social and I compare and contrast Trump, Erdogan, Orban (and their sons-in-law) to come up with a typology of nepotism in the family. itallhappenedbefore.riverside.com/e/episode-5-...

Episode 5: We’ve Seen Nepotism Before

<p>In this episode, we go deep into the role of family in political power, unpacking how nepotism operates under the cloak of democracy. From Donald Trump’s inner circle—Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump...

itallhappenedbefore.riverside.com

What happens inside newsrooms after media capture? @ekoshy.bsky.social & I have Matt Powers (who co-authored a great paper w/ @ozanmask.bsky.social) to talk about the messy middle between heroic resistance and outright propaganda from TR to the US itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-4-...

Our new episode explores how journalists adapt to hostile conditions. @baykurt.bsky.social and I talk to Matt Powers, who with @ozanmask.bsky.social examined Turkish newsrooms. Editors suppressing critical reporting. Convinced they were protecting journalism. open.substack.com/pub/itallhap...

Episode 4: We've Seen Journalists Adapt Before

FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatens to revoke broadcast licenses over war coverage.

open.substack.com

What happens when media owners don't need journalism and just need protection for their other businesses? @ekoshy.bsky.social and I use Turkey's case to undertand the trajectory of media capture in the US itallhappenedbefore.substack.com/p/episode-3-...

Episode 3: We've Watched Media Get Captured Before

In this episode of It All Happened Before, Ekin and Burcu use the CBS controversy as a doorway into a much older story — how media capture works precisely because it doesn't announce itself.

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

I discussed media capture in US and Turkey, and Trump and Erdogan’s media policies. Thanks for all the great questions @ekoshy.bsky.social @baykurt.bsky.social substack.com/profile/1782...

Bilge Yesil (@bilgeyesil)

I discussed media capture in US and Turkey, and Trump and Erdogan’s media policies. Thanks for all the great questions @Ekin and @Burcu Baykurt

substack.com

Last month @victorpickard.bsky.social argued American media was already captured and some disagreed. Coming from Turkey, @ekoshy.bsky.social & I know capture rarely announced itself. It started with a tax fine and a nudge to a business friend. By the time it was visible on air, it was already done.

Episode 3: We've Watched Media Get Captured Before

In this episode of It All Happened Before, Ekin and Burcu use the CBS controversy as a doorway into a much older story — how media capture works precisely because it doesn't announce itself.

itallhappenedbefore.substack.com

I'm trying to get a three-month supply of one of my medications for travel approved by insurance.The exact same drug, sold by the same company in the US and Turkey, costs $557 without insurance in the US but only $7 in Turkey (also without insurance). It's 79 times more expensive in the US. WOW!