It is an unhappy country that hates its public intellectuals. Turkey, my motherland, is one such place. Increasingly today, intellectuals are demonised in pro-government media, trolled on social media, accused of being “traitors” or “collaborating with western powers”, put on trial, imprisoned or exiled. But one thing they are not is ignored. Turkey, just like Russia, has a long and depressing tradition of taking its intellectuals seriously and making them suffer for daring to think differently.

Here in the UK things are very different. Freedom of speech prevails, democracy is strong. Novelists are not sued for tackling controversial issues, academics are not expelled in their thousands, journalists are not put in jail en masse. Compared with their Turkish, Russian, Venezuelan, Pakistani or Chinese counterparts, British intellectuals have so much freedom. One would expect them to be aware of this privilege, and speak up not only for themselves but also for those who can’t. So why don’t we have more public intellectuals in this country? The answer lies in the words of a British academic who once told me: “Well, we think it’s a bit arrogant to call yourself intellectual. And to do that publicly is twice as arrogant.”

There appears to be an interesting mapping of the world in some people’s minds. According to this, feminists and activists for freedom of speech and human rights are only needed in those parts of the world where things are dire and democracy is visibly under attack. What seems arrogant to me is the presumption that intellectuals are needed in backward countries whereas over here in the developed, democratic west we are beyond all those “petty troubles”. This strange geographical hierarchy is voiced sometimes openly, often indirectly; either way, it is deeply entrenched. Well, it was. Things are changing. And they must. In the new Trump world order more and more people across the west are realising that the rights and liberties that they have taken for granted for so long might, in truth, have to be defended passionately and urgently.

In this age of widespread uncertainty and anxiety, politics is too often guided by emotion. Despite this, mainstream political science underestimates their power. Most analyses assume that human beings are rational creatures whose future actions can be measured with the help of empirical data. But the reality is, at times of rapid social, political and economic change, our emotions come to the surface. Sadly, so far, populist demagogues have proved to be more adept than the liberal left at tapping into people’s feelings. This, too, needs to change.

We have entered a new era in world history. Liberal democracy is widely under threat. There is a dangerous discourse brewing outside the borders of Europe that claims, “Democracy is not suitable for either the Middle East or the east”. Isolationists are proposing new social models in which democracy, human rights, freedom of speech are all dispensable and all that matters is economic stability. They do not understand that undemocratic nations are deeply unhappy nations and cannot be stable in any way.

Turkey, Hungary, Poland … Case after case shows us that democracy is more fragile than we realised. It is not a material possession that some countries have while others have not; rather, it is an ecosystem that needs to be continuously protected, nourished and cared for. And today, faced with populist movements and tribalist discourses, this ecosystem is threatened. If we do not speak up for basic human rights and pluralistic values then we run the risk of losing them one by one. Turkey holds important lessons as to how countries can go backwards with a bewildering speed. What happened over there can happen anywhere.

After decades of globalisation, whether we like it or not, we are all interconnected. Our stories, our destinies, our futures are deeply connected. This also means that populist demagogues in one country will embolden populist demagogues elsewhere. Autocrats are encouraged by each other in the same way that extremist ideologies breed each other. Against this turbulent background, we need a global solidarity (and a global sisterhood) around shared democratic values. We need more activism, and we need intellectuals. Let us not forget that in Europe, the rise of the public intellectual occurred during the Dreyfus affair in the late 19th century. It happened at a time when nationalism, racism, jingoism and isolationism had all reared their ugly heads. Zola’s legendary response, J’Accuse, is a brilliant manifesto of conscience.

Populism creates its own myths. It tells us that intellectuals are “a privileged liberal elite” out of touch with “the real people.” In truth, however, in the past many public intellectuals were public servants and they were not from the ruling class. From Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin, they taught at universities both because they valued academia and because they could not make a living by writing books alone. It is not true that intellectuals are a privileged class. It is also dangerous to over-romanticise the people. Today there is an alarming rise in “anti-public intellectual” discourse. It is fed by populism, nationalism, isolationism. It is also fed by social media and a modern world with a shortened attention span.

Let’s abandon once and for all the cliche about public intellectuals being arrogant and aloof. Let’s also stop worrying about what other people might say if we claim the life of the mind. We have more important things to worry about. The demise of the public intellectual across the world is a bad sign. This will only make things easier for the demagogues and autocrats. It will accelerate the collapse of pluralistic liberal democracy and internationalism. Without public intellectuals we will be catapulted into a world of dualities: “us” versus “them”. Nuances will evaporate. We are already seeing signs of this trend. On every major issue an artificial polarisation is imposed on us. In public debates on TV and elsewhere we watch an atheist scholar being pitted against a theist scholar. Or a pro-Brexit speaker against an anti-Brexit speaker. Or an “Islamophobe” against an Orthodox Muslim and so on. When did the world become this black-and-white? An intellectual is someone who challenges binary oppositions, bridges cultural gaps, has the cognitive flexibility to connect various disciplines and passionately defends a nuanced way of thinking.

Intellectuals should be bold and loud and yes, offensive. It is high time to stop denigrating the term. At least out of respect for those people who pay a heavy price in other parts of the world just to be a public intellectual.