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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Russia's Vladimir Putin Meets with Xi Jinping in China; On Taiwan, is Time on China's Side?; The Daunting Job Market Facing College Graduates. Interview With "Plain English" Podcast Host Derek Thompson; Interview With New York Times Investigative Reporter Jodi Kantor; Interview With Author Suzy Hansen. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired May 24, 2026 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:41]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria, coming to you from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA (voice-over): Today on the program. Goodbye, President Trump. Hello, President Putin. The Russian leader visited Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, following swiftly in the American entourages' footsteps. We'll explore the ins and outs of the Beijing-Moscow axis and more with Richard Haass and Kishore Mahbubani.

Also, as the class of 2026 is unleashed on the job market in the age of A.I., Derek Thompson will enlighten us on just how bad it is out there for these graduates. Then Jodi Kantor of "The New York Times" will explain how these young adults can find their passions and pursue them.

Finally, what happens to a nation and its citizens amid the decay of democracy? The author Suzy Hansen will tell us how a neighborhood in Istanbul has managed what she calls the dark, punitive mess under Turkey's leader Erdogan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take."

"I think he is a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term." That's what Jeff Bezos said about President Trump this week.

I'm puzzled by this statement from an obviously intelligent and accomplished businessman. I look at Trump's second term and I see the ham-handed efforts to annex Greenland in Canada. Massive tariff hikes on most of the world. A cruel immigration crackdown that was both lawless and ineffective, and the sudden launching of a war without U.N. sanction, congressional consultation or any clear strategy.

If this is maturity, I would shudder to think what Trump's immature phase would look like. The opposite is actually closer to the truth. Trump's first term was disciplined, more disciplined not because he was disciplined but because he was constrained. He often deferred, however grudgingly, to the Republican establishment and national security elites. His early legislative agenda was shaped by Speaker Paul Ryan and executed by Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Top economic adviser Gary Cohn Repeatedly talked him out of the global tariff hikes he had long wanted.

The generals whom he surrounded himself with urged caution on Iran, support for NATO and arms for Ukraine. The lesson Trump drew from that first term, however, was not that expertise mattered. It was that experts were not loyal enough. After the January 6th attack, you see many of his senior officials distanced themselves from him. Some denounced him. So this time he has surrounded himself with people whose chief qualification is fealty.

The less distinguished the resume, the better. Such people owe everything to him. Process has given way to impulse, procedure to instinct, government to gut. But the starkest difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 is not policy. It is enrichment. Its scale, its brazenness, its open contempt for restraint.

The day before Bezos made his remarks, the acting attorney general of the United States announced that the Justice Department would grant Trump, his family and his businesses immunity from all audits and investigations for any past tax related misconduct. And the announcement claimed it would last forever. The week before, Trump disclosed that his stock portfolio had executed around 3,700 trades in the first quarter alone, a staggering number.

Many following a suspiciously convenient pattern. A stock bought shortly before a government action or statement that benefited it. On January 6th of this year, for example, the Trump portfolio bought half a million dollars of Nvidia stock. A week later, Nvidia received the U.S. clearance to sell its H-200 chips to China.

[10:05:07]

That was not all. The Commerce Department this week announced an investment in a quantum computing company in which a member of the Trump family holds interests. And don't forget, the 500 million UAE investment in a Trump family crypto venture, the $2 billion UAE investment using that company's stablecoin. The flurry of new Trump Organization real estate deals, or the drone company in which the Trump family invested and that later miraculously received a Pentagon contract.

One number says it all. Reuters calculates that from the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2025, the Trump Organization's income rose from $51 million to $864 million. This does suggest discipline, a relentless discipline devoted to monetizing the presidency. But somehow I doubt that is what Jeff Bezos had in mind.

The Trump Organization has maintained that Trump himself, his family, and the organization don't have any role in directing or influencing specific investments. The deeper question is why is this possible and why has it produced so little resistance? Scholars of corruption have long assumed that in advanced democracies, graft becomes subtle and institutional, campaign donations, lobbying networks, consulting contracts.

Trump has taken the elaborate machinery of an advanced industrial state and used it to accelerate something far cruder, old-fashioned personal grift. The public may be troubled, but his MAGA base doesn't seem to be, and that is the only constituency that could restrain him. In a hyper polarized country, corruption is no longer judged as an objective moral failing. It is filtered through tribe. If our side does it, it's either fake news, clever politics, or totally justified revenge.

This reveals a deeper weakness in the American system. The founding fathers built a magnificent constitutional framework, but it rested on an assumption that they did not spell out, that public officials would retain some shared commitment to unwritten civic norms. Madison's design, "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition," assumed that Congress would jealously guard its powers against the executive.

He did not imagine a political party that would surrender its institutional ambition to the personality cult of one man.

The legal guardrails are weaker than most Americans realize. The president is largely exempt from standard federal conflict of interest laws. Many of the actions I've described would expose even the senior most Cabinet secretary to grave legal peril. For a president, the Supreme Court has decided that the only remedy for official acts is impeachment and two-thirds of the Senate voting for conviction, which in our partisan age requires a civic miracle.

The mature response to these travesties is not revenge, but a restoration of the rule of law. After Trump, the urgent task for the American republic will be to turn norms into statutes, curtail the ethical immunities of the presidency, and find legal ways to ensure that the highest public office in the world can never again become a platform for family business.

Go to FareedZakaria.com for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week, and let's get started.

This week, after Xi Jinping welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin to Beijing, the Chinese leader said his country's relationship with Russia had reached, quote, "the highest level in history," unquote. Their meeting came only a few days after a high stakes visit from President Trump to China.

I'm joined by Richard Haass, former top State Department official, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the writer of a great Substack, as well as Kishore Mahbubani, who is a veteran Singaporean diplomat and a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore.

Richard, we now have a kind of interesting dynamic between these three great powers in the world where everyone is getting on a little bit better, I suppose, but the Russians and Chinese do seem to have formed a kind of axis.

RICHARD HAASS, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: I'd call it an alignment. It's not quite an alliance. The last I checked, China's aid for Russia is, shall we say, finite. It's limited.

[10:10:02]

It's also very much a relationship between unequals. That to me was the lead part of Mr. Putin's visit, which is how much he's become almost a supplicant, pushing China to open up this new pipeline, almost more for Russia's economic benefit than for than for China's. So I don't think it's all that significant.

It also highlights the difference. China is a multifaceted, major power. Russia is pretty limited, pretty one dimensional. And by the way, the last I checked, it's not winning its war of choice against Ukraine, and it's paying an enormous price for it. So Russia is going to emerge much weaker as a result of what it's doing.

ZAKARIA: You made this point, Richard, in -- I think on X, that Russia and the United States are both, you know, went to China and as in similar circumstances, they are both losing their wars of choice, one in Ukraine, one in Iran.

HAASS: Yes. For all the differences between the wars, that's the bottom line. They're both going to emerge worse off as a result. The really interesting point for me, Fareed, just to what Kishore thinks, is what message China takes from that. And when Xi Jinping sees this, does he's saying, maybe these wars aren't so obvious. They don't turn out the way you think. So I'm hoping this might be a moment of some sober, sobriety, if you will, for Xi Jinping.

ZAKARIA: Kishore, how do you think Xi Jinping is looking at these two wars of choice where the United States and Russia are both floundering?

KISHORE MAHBUBANI, FORMER PRESIDENT, U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL: Well, I think from China's point of view in many ways things couldn't be better now because the United States very clearly now is stuck in the Gulf. And so in that every war that the United States fights in the Middle East is a gift to China because it buys time for China to keep growing its economy and to become stronger.

And at the end of the day, the Chinese are always playing the long game. They're trying to figure out where they'll be 10 years from now as a result of the current developments.

ZAKARIA: But when you look at -- when they look at how difficult these wars have been despite Russia's massive asymmetrical advantage, it is much bigger than Ukraine, the U.S. is much bigger than Iran, do you think they look at that and draw cautionary lesson about Taiwan?

MAHBUBANI: Well, you know, the way the Western media describes Taiwan is absolutely wrong. And I say this because everybody thinks that China is just preparing to try and invade Taiwan militarily as quickly as possible, and then seeing whether or not the examples of Iran and Ukraine will apply to Taiwan. And here again, you know, I must emphasize that the Chinese take a very comprehensive long term view and ask a very simple question on whose side is time on?

Is time on Taiwan's side or is time on Chinas side? And trust me, if the Taiwanese declare independence tomorrow, which is what will cause a war, how many countries are going to recognize Taiwan? When I was in Taiwan a few months ago, I told the Taiwanese people, you're lucky you have a republic of China passport, which brings you to over 180, 190 countries. You change your passport to republic of Taiwan, you'll be lucky if five or six countries recognize the republic of Taiwan passport.

So time is on China's side on Taiwan. Obviously, they're going to emphasize that the power they're accumulating is on their favor. They're going to show signals of strength, but they're not in any way dreaming of a military invasion of Taiwan any time soon.

ZAKARIA: All right, stay with us. We're going to talk about all this and more when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:18:21]

ZAKARIA: And we are back with the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, who writes his excellent Substack newsletter called "Home and Away," and Kishore Mahbubani, who is a veteran Singaporean diplomat and writes in more conventional publications like "Foreign Affairs" but very well indeed.

Richard, we were talking about who has the advantage in terms of time, China or Taiwan. Whose side is time on? And Kishore makes the point, of course, China is the bigger economy. They will get, you know, larger and larger over time. That's clearly the Beijing strategy. Do you agree?

HAASS: I actually don't. China right now is what, 1.3 billion people? By the end of the century it's projected to be closer to 800 million. The ratio of working age people to people who are elderly is going to move much in the direction of the latter, of the elderly. Defense technology is increasingly through drones and anti-ship and anti- aircraft systems moving in favor of defenders. So I actually think that could help Taiwan if they adapt that.

The key variable, I think, is the United States. I actually agree with Kishore a bit. China doesn't want to do an invasion. There's no Chinese soldier who's fought in a war. To do a combined arms --

ZAKARIA: Since the Korean War. If you come --

HAASS: Exactly.

ZAKARIA: If you take Vietnam out of it, which was a very brief war. HAASS: Yes. And so they were basically all retired. So, you know, I don't think they -- what they want to do almost in the principle of Sun Tzu, they want to subdue their enemy without having to fire a shot. Well, that's really -- that puts a lot of pressure on us. So the real question coming out of the summit and that interview that President Trump did with Bret Baier on FOX, is the United States prepared to trade off support for Taiwan for economic access to China's market?

[10:20:02]

If he's willing to do that, then China might get its wish.

ZAKARIA: Kishore, I've always thought that the real thing deterring China is not the U.S. military, but it is the fear of losing access to the American market, the European market, the -- you know, China wants to sell to the world. It's integrated into the world economy. That's why they -- I tend to agree with you. They're not going to, you know, willy nilly invade Taiwan. But that's the deterrent more than the American military.

MAHBUBANI: Let me make two points in response. OK? The first point is this. What's the big lesson that Iran is teaching us in the Gulf? You don't need superior military weapons to seize control of a chokepoint, OK? You don't need the best military in the world. Iran doesn't have the best military in the world. And guess what? It's held up 20 percent of the world's economy.

Now, in the case of Taiwan, all the Chinese have to do is to say Taiwan is off limits. OK, isolate, blockade Taiwan. They don't have to fire a shot. Trust me, nobody is going to break a Chinese blockade on Taiwan. I mean, let's get serious about this area. If the Chinese declare that they are serious, people will take them seriously. That's my first point. And the second point, your point about selling goods to the world, you know, selling goods to the world is a two-way relationship.

This is one statistic everyone should understand. China's share of global manufacturing in the year 2000 was 6 percent. Now it's close to 30 percent. By 2030, it'll be 45 percent. And you know what that means. Chinese products are becoming indispensable to the world. Absolutely indispensable.

Now, the Chinese have created this dependence on China for a very powerful, deliberate reason to ensure that no American containment policy of China can succeed.

ZAKARIA: A short amount of time. You have a thought?

HAASS: Well, China is also dependent on exports. China has not allowed domestic demand to grow naturally. They've repressed it. Why? So they've got this export led economy. So they need access as much as we need their goods. So I think that's also a constraint on China.

ZAKARIA: Which is why I tend to think -- I mean, I think Kishore is right. It's a two-way street. MAHBUBANI: Sure.

ZAKARIA: But for both and the real deterrent would be if the U.S. and Europe and Japan and Australia would all come together and say, if you invade Taiwan, it won't be business as usual, which, by the way, we could do except that we are quarreling with all our closest allies, levying tariffs on them, and making, you know, far from presenting a united front, we have worse relations with Canada now than we have with China.

HAASS: That was the strategic argument for joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We could present a united front. This was the great strategic advantage of American foreign policy. We wake up in the morning, we have dozens of partners and allies. What have we done? We've undermined our own fundamental strategic advantage.

ZAKARIA: Kishore Mahbubani, Richard Haass, always a pleasure to talk to you, guys.

Next on GPS, college students are graduating into one of the worst labor markets in years. Is A.I. the culprit? I will explore that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:27:42]

ZAKARIA: It's that time of the year. Millions of students across the country are graduating from college, but unfortunately for them, they're entering a punishing job market specifically for their demographic. For roughly the last year, the unemployment rate for recent college grads has been hovering around 6 percent, the highest in more than a decade leaving aside the pandemic. Many people blame A.I. for taking jobs that would have gone to young people.

Joining me now is Derek Thompson. He is the host of the podcast "Plain English" and writes an eponymous Substack.

Derek Thompson, good to have you.

DEREK THOMPSON, HOST, "PLAIN ENGLISH" PODCAST: Great to be back. Thank you, Fred.

ZAKARIA: So, first of all, explain is it true that for recent college graduates, this is a terrible job market?

THOMPSON: Yes. The money statistic here is that the New York Federal Reserve has been measuring the unemployment rate for young college graduates between about 22 and 27 for the last 30, 35 years. So this is a long data set. And for the first time on record, young college graduates now have a higher unemployment rate than the general population. This has never happened before. Historically, young people coming out of college are hired almost immediately.

They are young, they are cheap. They spent the last four years learning how to get that first job. Something seems to have broken down here now, such that the unemployment rate for young college graduates is 20 percent to 25 percent higher than the overall unemployment rate. This is not something that we've seen in modern economic history, and that is really the central mystery here.

What is it? If you look for the year that this break happened, that the unemployment rate for young folks tended to rise higher and higher, it was around 2022. Well, what else happened in 2022? A lot of things. But just to kick things off, ChatGPT was released in November of that year. And so a lot of people have been looking to blame artificial intelligence for this suddenly inflating unemployment rate.

ZAKARIA: So when you look at it, you've parsed through a number of things to look at. And let's get one technical one out of the way, which I think is important, which is the unemployment rate is calculated by asking not how many people are unemployed, but how many people who are looking for jobs are unemployed. And there is good evidence that recent college graduates look for jobs more.

In other words, there are a lot of older people who stop looking for jobs. They had stopped participating in the labor market. So, there may be just some of this is statistical, right?

THOMPSON: That's exactly right. So look, it'd be one thing if it was just young college graduates that we're seeing this -- that we're seeing this elevated unemployment. That would suggest that maybe ChatGPT and other large language models that are very good at doing the kind of thing you would expect from a 22-year-old graduate of Penn State, University of Virginia, reading, writing, synthesizing, making PowerPoints and spreadsheets. Then you would say, OK, what's happened is A.I. is eating these jobs for 22-year-old college grads.

But here's what makes it a little bit more complicated. If instead of looking at the unemployment rate, which is a little bit complicated for all the reasons that you said, if instead you look at the employment rate, it looks like young folks who didn't go to college are facing the same declines in employment as young people who did go to college. And that, I think, should make us not focus exclusively on artificial intelligence, but rather say, no, something that is bigger is happening to the overall economy that is driving down the hiring rate for young people as a general category.

ZAKARIA: And what do you think that is?

THOMPSON: So, a lot of things happened in 2022. It would be very convenient for our purposes of, you know, just explaining the world if the only thing that happened in 2022 was OpenAI released ChatGPT. That's not the only thing that happened.

Another really big thing that happened is that the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates. What is the point of raising interest rates? The point is to cool off demand, to raise the cost of money.

And what you've seen since 2022 is that the overall hiring rate in this country has gone down, down, down. So the way to maybe think of the U.S. economy right now, and in particular the labor market, is that, all right, on the one hand, the unemployment rate is low. Older people who want a job overwhelmingly have a job. But the hiring rate is also low. Young people trying to break into the labor force are finding it harder to break into it.

ZAKARIA: Finally, I want you to talk about the conclusion people draw from all of this is it's not worth getting a college degree. And I think that the data is overwhelming on this subject in one direction, right?

THOMPSON: There's a college wage premium. We can have a debate over whether the college wage premium declined in the last five years, or grew in the last five years, or is flat in the last five years. But a college wage premium, by definition, means that if you go to college, all things equal, you are expected to make a higher wage when you graduate. We have no clear evidence that that has changed. In fact, I would improve --

ZAKARIA: That's significant, right? I mean, if you look at it over a lifetime, you're talking about a very large -- a very large difference.

THOMPSON: A million dollars.

ZAKARIA: Yes.

THOMPSON: Potentially $1 million, which is a lot of dollars. I think one way to think about technology is that every time technology is introduced to the economy, the effect that it has is the same as the effect of the tractor on the working horse.

Working horses had a great run for millennia. The tractor was invented, and then the population of working horses in America plummeted by 99 percent. But that's not how most technologies work. Most technologies work more like spreadsheets.

Now imagine that you and I were commentators in the 1970s, and digital spreadsheets were invented. Things like Excel. And imagine if you and I -- the only story of technological change that we knew was that of tractors. We would have predicted that the number of spreadsheet workers in America was about to decline by 99 percent. It didn't. It grew by a factor of about 1 million.

Everybody works with spreadsheets now. Excel is on everybody's computer. And so sometimes what technology does is reduce the cost of a task, reduce the cost of a piece of work. And by increasing its efficiency, thereby increase demand for it.

Once digital spreadsheet work was easy, everybody suddenly started coming up with work that could be done with Excel. And then you had this explosion of the white collar workforce that was doing work with Microsoft Office.

So I would encourage people to keep the possibility of both these things in mind. We hear a lot about the A.I. jobs apocalypse, which treats artificial intelligence like tractors and human beings like horses. But I would also encourage people to remember that spreadsheets happened. They were invented, and they didn't replace the white collar economy. They grew the white collar economy. It's possible that 20 years from now, when you and I are having a conversation on the metaverse or something, we're going to look back and realize that everybody is using Claude or OpenAI, ChatGPT on their computer. It has turned everybody into an A.I. worker. It has not led to a world where A.I. replaced work.

ZAKARIA: Derek Thompson, pleasure to have you on.

THOMPSON: Thank you very much.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, we'll tackle the other side of the coin. What should young people do to navigate the difficult job market? We have an interesting answer in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:39:41]

ZAKARIA: You just heard Derek Thompson's explanation of why the job market is so tough for today's graduates. But I want to focus now on the human side of the problem. These challenges are leaving young people feeling lost and hopeless as they try to begin their careers.

A new book from "The New York Times" investigative reporter Jodi Kantor seeks to offer hope and tangible advice for young people as they begin their careers.

[10:40:05]

It is called "How to Start: Discovering Your Life's Work." Welcome, Jodi.

JODI KANTOR, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Thank you so much for having me.

ZAKARIA: So this was -- you were asked to give a speech at your alma mater, Columbia, the kind of undergraduate class day address, and you give it and you notice it's going viral. What is it about what you said do you think that made it go viral?

KANTOR: Well, the question I was trying to answer in the speech and in the book is, what are young people actually supposed to do in this environment? Because we've all seen the negative statistics. We know that it's a grim time for hiring, but that doesn't necessarily help if you're 22 years old and looking to begin your life.

So I thought the compelling and very difficult but worthy question was, what does a positive, productive response look like to this environment? Because almost none of us can afford to give up on work.

ZAKARIA: All right. So, let's start right at the -- let's not bury the lead. What is the best response to this uncertain job environment?

KANTOR: I think the best response is, A, to acknowledge that we don't know what's going to happen. I mean, as we speak on 1,000 podcasts, you know, there are people stating with great certainty exactly what the future of work will be. I will tell you, we do not know.

What I would challenge any person, any young person listening to this today, any parent who's concerned about a young person is, I would say, don't just look for a job. You're certainly doing that. But I think the great careers are made of a craft and a need.

A craft being some expertise or skill that you have that other people don't. You want some way of distinguishing yourself. In the marketplace, your craft could be surgery. It could be baking. It could be making a great TV show like this. It could be inventing a new cancer therapy.

The other thing that I think everybody should look for, if you have a craft, if craft is authority, you also want to harness yourself to a need. Need is propulsion. Need is what is going to push you forward. We've seen years of conventional wisdom about the supposed right thing to study.

I think you'll remember this. When I was in high school, the advice was learn Japanese. And we were told that if you didn't speak Japanese, you were going to be a loser and you were going to be left behind in the world economy. Well, meanwhile, the Japanese stock market languished.

ZAKARIA: Then it became a Chinese.

KANTOR: Chinese. Genetics, computer science. And these are all obviously great pursuits. But the idea that they are a golden ticket that is going that are going to protect you against disappointments or failures, that's not right. That is just conventional wisdom and herd thinking.

ZAKARIA: So what does need mean?

KANTOR: So for need, what I want to ask young people now is, can you use your own eyes and ears to make an independent assessment of what you think society will need over the course of your working life? Because those needs, whether they're business needs or altruistic ones, they propel us forward.

The best locators of need that I have seen come from personal experience and often very difficult personal experience. There are stories in the book of people who really faced tragedy or serious obstacles, and built a career around addressing those problems.

ZAKARIA: Tell the story of Exaria.

KANTOR: Exaria, yes.

ZAKARIA: Yes.

KANTOR: So this is kind of -- she is really, I think, the person, more than any who pushed me to write this book, because I meet -- in the middle of the chaos at Columbia during the really bad time there, they invite me to give the undergraduate commencement address. I have to figure out what to say. The students say to me, how are we supposed to find our life's work in this crazy environment? And I meet this extraordinary young woman, Exaria. Exaria wants to be a research psychologist. She wants to get a PhD and she has a very specific reason, which is that she wants to come up with new forms of addiction treatment because her older brother, Keith, died of an overdose when she was 11.

ZAKARIA: Where is she now?

KANTOR: So, Exaria, I am very happy to tell you, is doing groundbreaking research in addiction at a famous Boston area hospital where she's just working with top flight people. And she's really on her way.

In the end, the need pulled her through. She was right about our need for better addiction treatment, and it pulled her through those obstacles.

ZAKARIA: It's a very smart meditation on something, I think, every person is thinking about --

KANTOR: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: -- because either they're young and worrying about it, or they know people who are young and worrying about it.

KANTOR: This is a generational problem, Fareed.

[10:45:01]

It really is.

ZAKARIA: Thank you, Jodi.

KANTOR: Thank you so much for having me.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, what does one neighborhood in Turkey tell us about that country's sustained democratic backsliding? A compelling new book explores just that, up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Two and a half decades ago, Turkey seemed to be embracing western liberal democracy. Restrictions on free speech were relaxing. The country was enacting reforms in pursuit of E.U. membership, and Turkey's leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, spoke of human rights and expanding minority freedoms.

[10:50:01]

Today, that version of Turkey is basically unrecognizable. The country has undergone a massive political and cultural transformation under Erdogan, moving toward a more nationalist, Islamist, and authoritarian leaning country. An interesting new book from journalist Suzy Hansen seeks to understand Turkey's evolution or devolution, and how it has impacted everyday life there. In that book, "From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdogan," Hansen observes one neighborhood in Istanbul over a decade to try to understand the changes that have taken place there. I began by asking her why Turkey has moved down the path of illiberal democracy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUZY HANSEN, AUTHOR, "FROM LIFE ITSELF": I moved there in 2007, so that was the second election of Erdogan as prime minister. And it was -- it felt like Turkey was becoming a more democratic country, certainly, than in the past, and that it was primarily because of him and the AKP. And I think that is partially because he recognized that there were all of these people in the society who had been left behind to some degree by the political process, and he welcomed them into this new party that he created.

And I think that what happened is a really interesting question. You know, is this a case where Tayyip Erdogan was always going to become an authoritarian or a strongman because of something within his personality or because of his lust for power? Or was this also a product of the times that we're living in? And was he actually radicalized by a number of major events that were happening over those 20 years? And I think there are two ways to look at it.

What you have during that time period is especially when Turkey was very much being considered for the European Union was the global financial crisis. It caused him to turn away from the West and look towards markets in the Middle East. You had protests against his government in 2013 that were very, very threatening to him. Those were the Gezi Park protests.

ZAKARIA: You had the European leaders ruling out that Turkey would ever be a member of the European Union. Remember, that was -- I traveled to Turkey a little bit after, and they were shocked by that. I think it was Merkel and Sarkozy got together and said, essentially, you're not a Christian country. You'll never be part of the European Union.

HANSEN: Absolutely. And the Turks felt that. And someone like Erdogan, who is incredibly proud, knew exactly how to capitalize on that rejection and say, well, we don't need you. You know, we are an independent country. And you'll see this time and time again, as his regime develops over time.

So, I think it was all of those things. But also one thing I really try to point to is the Syrian civil war as another -- as another major factor in his radicalization. Because as we know, when people get involved in wars abroad, they tend to become more repressive at home.

But then I think a major decision that he made was to very much welcome millions of Syrians into Turkey and to use rhetoric that suggested, well, we are a great Muslim power, and we are going to welcome our Muslim brothers, very different from most autocrats. But it also gave him a card to play on the world stage with those refugees, which he used in in often very unpleasant ways.

ZAKARIA: So one of the things that you might be able to tell through this neighborhood, because you were living it at the, you know, this kind of granular level, when you see the rise of this kind of illiberal democracy, whether it's in Hungary or in Turkey, for a while in Poland, is it that the public was never actually that secular, that liberal? You know, this was something of a western facade that Ataturk had placed on Turkey and that, you know, you scratch beneath the surface and you discover actually they're totally comfortable with it. Or was Erdogan a mastermind who was able to manipulate them and get them to this place?

HANSEN: I think the secular populist -- secularist population and the people who made up, you know, more of -- the people who were Ataturk's followers, that's a very strong part of Turkey. But I think, again, as we were saying, the people who were left behind and certainly were left out of Ataturk's modernizing reforms were these people from the countryside and who were more religious. And those people left behind the farms -- their farms in the mid-20th century and onward, and came into the cities and they were lost to some degree.

I mean, they had -- they needed someone to speak to their experience. So in my neighborhood in Karagumruk, you really had this division. Most of them were pro-Erdogan. There were a lot of very religious people. But you still had the old guard, you know, the people who were upset about the arrival of these more religious people who dressed in very, very conservative ways.

And these people were, to some degree, not even speaking the same language, I think. But one thing I would, I would suggest is that, yes, the religious people, even by 2025, were still supporting Erdogan. But there was another contingent that Erdogan tapped into, which were these people who loved the prosperity that he brought to the country and the economic development and the illusion that -- not even the illusion. I mean, he was building canals and bridges.

ZAKARIA: No, the economy quadrupled in size.

[10:55:01]

HANSEN: Exactly. And that also gave them a better sense of themselves. And they could look at their children and they could say, oh, well, we had to walk to school. You have bus service. Your lives have vastly improved. But it's those people who would end up shattered in the end.

And I think the interesting thing for authoritarians -- countries that are going through this automatizing process is when does that moment strike people? When does it -- even when people have gone along for five years, 10 years, supporting this leader, when does it strike them but their lives have changed? And I think that was something I was able to see play out, because I stayed in this neighborhood for 10 years.

(END VIDEOTAPE) ZAKARIA: Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

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