It’s easy—almost seductive—to slip into pessimism. The world feels broken in a thousand places, and the headlines reinforce the sense that nothing will get better. For many, especially among the expert class, pessimism has become a default stance—a badge of realism, a sign of maturity and awareness, a way to reject naïveté. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: pessimism is not informed opinion. It’s a form of defeatism.

And in that defeatism, something vital is lost—the recognition that even in the bleakest times, people continue to act. Objective political analysis must account not just for acts of regime insiders and state institutions, but for the agency of millions of defiant individuals. No one is blindly optimistic, but most are stubbornly insistent. There is strength in small victories, in quiet acts of resistance, in the invisible labor of those who refuse to be shaped by powers that be.

Nowhere is this clearer than in how many academics and journalists talk about Turkey. There is a rush to coin the most pejorative label, to describe the country in terms so bleak and irreversible that they deny the agency of millions who continue to successfully challenge the regime. Some are already writing melodramatic obituaries for Turkish democracy. This framing doesn’t just misdiagnose the situation—it erases the courage and perseverance of those who refuse to be crushed by it.

People live on hope. And in Turkey, there is still plenty to be hopeful about.

Every day, millions persist—often quietly, sometimes at great personal risk. Despite mass purges, censorship, and institutional decay, the opposition has not surrendered. Students educated entirely under the incumbent AKP’s regime, fed the state’s preferred narratives since childhood, have nonetheless resisted indoctrination. Many have gone on to become critical thinkers, activists, organizers, and simply citizens who say no—even if only in their hearts. Regime insiders have failed to coerce millions of Turks into accepting their travesty as normal. Erdoğan is far from commanding the majority of the country. He governs from a position of minority.

This resilience deserves more than footnotes or end-of-paragraph caveats in expert analyses. It deserves recognition—not just because it’s morally right to do so, but because it is essential for any objective, serious understanding of an evolving situation. Without acknowledging the agency and perseverance of millions, the analysis is not only incomplete—it’s distorted. And that distortion has consequences. The impulse to frame Turkey as a lost cause doesn’t strengthen the opposition—it demoralizes it. It turns away allies. And it mistakes the shouting of the regime for the silence of the people.

Pessimism can wear the mask of radicalism, but it ultimately reinforces the status quo. If you believe nothing can change, you won’t try to change it. And if you roll your eyes at every attempt at opposition—because it’s futile, imperfect, or co-opted—you surrender the field to those who are perfectly fine with the world as it is.

I guess the main appeal of pessimism is emotional safety. If you expect failure, you can’t be disappointed. But political analysis isn’t about protecting your emotional comfort. It’s about assessing risks and opportunities—domestic, international, —to understand where change is possible, who can drive it, and what forces stand in the way.

The world doesn’t need more doomsayers pointing out the rot. It needs enlightened thinkers willing to chart new paths—offering solutions, insights, and possibilities grounded in real analysis.

Despair has never moved history forward. But hope—the real, gritty, defiant kind—has.