Deal with dictators

Ursula von der Leyen, Charles Michel and Recep Tayyib Erdogan, at the meeting held on April 6 in Ankara (Turkey) .EUROPEAN UNION / Reuters

Mario Draghi has shown, once again, that he is a master of the word.

With one sentence and two ideas, the Italian Prime Minister has formulated the most serious political difficulty that democracies face in a cracked and multipolar globality in which authoritarianism advances and democracy retreats: “With dictators, let's call them for what they are, with whom one needs to collaborate, one must be frank when expressing the difference of vision and be prepared to cooperate when it comes to ensuring the interests of one's own country.

Dictators don't like being called dictators.

Even less when they feel legitimized by the ballot box.

You shouldn't be surprised by his intemperate reaction.

If dictators (like Erdogan) are not called dictators, genocides are not called genocides (like the one the Uyghurs are suffering) and assassination attempts are not called assassination attempts (like the one Navalni suffered and continues to suffer with the prison conditions to which he has been subjected), everything will be equal, dictatorships and democracies, a good deal for dictators, backed by alternative realities.

Erdogan was elected at the polls, but his main adversary, Selahattin Demirtas, is in jail.

That Muslim democracy that claimed to follow the path of Christian democracy is a cruel caricature.

Mario Draghi has not been elected by the citizens, but was invested by the deputies and senators, representatives of popular sovereignty.

Legitimate, democratic and even popular and, thanks to the rule of law, the independence of justice, international legality and the European commitment to human rights, everything that Erdogan lacks, he has all the authority to sing the forty a dictators, as did Biden with Putin.

Trump only called dictators dictators when he was interested in his business dealings.

If not, he agreed with them: he conceded to Putin that the US rulers also killed, he agreed with the annexation of Crimea and the liquidation of Hong Kong's freedoms, and only evoked the genocide against the Uighurs when he wanted to convert China, his favorite adversary, guilty of the pandemic.

It may be a slip, but Draghi has hit the mark.

His words contain the question that will define our time: how will we find the balance between principles and interests in dealing with tyrants?