Farewell to the Knight

Farewell to the Knight

Berlusconi from Television to Politics

Farewell to the Knight: According to Iran Gate, Silvio Berlusconi passed away on Monday, June 12, 2023, at San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. Last Friday, after a long period of rest that lasted 45 days, he returned to San Raffaele Hospital for tests related to chronic leukemia, which he had been suffering from for some time. This return led to his end.

Berlusconi was born on September 29, 1936, into a middle-class family in the city of Milan. His father was a bank employee and his mother a secretary. He became known early on for his storytelling skills. He went to university to study law and played double bass in a student music group, occasionally singing on cruise ships.

He is described with attributes such as a capable actor, an unrepentant Don Juan—the legendary character known for being a libertine and seducer of women—a full-fledged populist, a showman with a perpetually smiling demeanor, and a narcissist who knew well how to talk to people. He was also known as an obsessive individual who in 1977 received the Order of Merit for Labor and the title of Knight. It is worth noting that this title was revoked in 2014 after his criminal conviction.

Berlusconi’s Legacy

In fact, it is impossible to think of Italy’s history without considering Berlusconi. He started from nothing as a building contractor and continued his adventure by creating commercial television and then entering the world of sports, presiding over the Milan and Monza football teams.

After finishing his studies in 1962, he founded a construction company and built a garden city with 3,500 apartments on the outskirts of Milan, known as Milan 2. In 1973, by establishing Telemilano, a television network initially intended to serve only his apartments, he entered the media world. Within four years, he managed to buy two more networks and broadcast his programs from a studio in central Milan.

In 1975, he launched a holding company called Fininvest and then Mediaset in 1993, buying other companies and rapidly expanding his assets. Meanwhile, he purchased many local television networks and connected them to challenge the monopoly of Italy’s state radio and television. In 1986, he added the AC Milan football club, one of Italy’s most famous football clubs, to his assets, hoping to earn income from Italians’ love of football.

According to the American magazine Forbes, Berlusconi, with personal assets estimated at around 69 billion euros, was the sixth richest man in Italy and the 352nd richest person in the world. In 2009, the same magazine placed him 12th on the list of the world’s most powerful people due to his role in Italian politics.

Politics

His entry into the political arena occurred in 1994 with the founding of the Forza Italia party, which forever changed the history of this country. A center-right party that merged with Il Popolo della Libertà (PDL) in 2008 and then relaunched independently in 2013.

Berlusconi’s plan was to attract moderate Italian voters by establishing a new party called Forza Italia and to neutralize the threat of left-wing parties. However, many believed that his new interest in politics might have been to escape being accused and to avoid investigations surrounding his companies.

But he denied these claims: ‘I don’t need to go to the halls of power. I have homes around the world, amazing boats, beautiful planes, a beautiful wife, and a beautiful family. I am sacrificing myself.’

In 1994, he began working as a member of parliament and was confirmed four times by the same parliament. In 2013, he was elected as a senator for the first time. He served four terms as Italy’s prime minister.

For the first time in 1994 in the 12th Parliament, his second and third terms as prime minister were in the 14th Parliament from 2001 to 2005 and 2005 to 2006. Finally, in the 16th Parliament, he served as Italy’s prime minister for the fourth time between 2008 and 2011.

Berlusconi managed to win the 1994 elections with extensive advertising on multiple networks he owned and was elected as the prime minister of a coalition government. However, his government did not last long. Disagreements among the three parties in this coalition on one hand, and Berlusconi being accused of tax fraud in a Milan court on the other, led to the government’s collapse after only seven months.

But Berlusconi returned to the prime ministership in 2001 at the head of a coalition. The main focus of his electoral program was to make extensive changes to Italy’s economy, simplify the tax system, and increase pensions. However, the worsening global economy meant that Berlusconi could not fulfill his promises. Despite changing the election law to favor his coalition, he was defeated by the left-wing coalition led by Romano Prodi in 2006.

Prodi’s government faced problems from the start, and Berlusconi became Italy’s prime minister again less than two years later in April 2008. In the political elections on September 25, 2022, he won in the single-member constituency of Monza and returned to the Senate as a senator after a 9-year absence.

Every time it seemed his political career was over, to the surprise of his critics, he managed to return to politics. After coming to power, he passed a law that granted himself and other key government officials immunity during their service, but the Constitutional Court annulled it. His tenure as prime minister and his government are referred to as the longest in Italy’s history.

Courts

His legal history is also unbelievable. In 2019, news was published that he had to undergo 88 trials over 25 years, a number recorded in history. However, in reality, according to Truenumbers data, these trials were only 31, with three of them ongoing. His charges included embezzlement, tax fraud, accounting manipulation, and attempting to bribe a judge.

Some of these cases went to trial, but he was either acquitted or managed to overturn his convictions on appeal. In other cases, the statute of limitations expired before the trial concluded, and the case was dropped.

But his luck finally ran out, and in 2013 he was convicted of tax fraud. This was the only trial that ended with a final verdict. The court related to Mediaset, for tax fraud and false accounting, sentenced him to four years in prison, and he lost his Senate seat. However, considering his age, this prison sentence was converted to one year of community service.

The Knight’s Geopolitics

During his years as prime minister, Berlusconi shaped Italy’s foreign policy according to his own vision—a diplomacy comprising personal relationships and deep ties with the United States, Russia, and Europe.

For better or worse, he was always in the spotlight during three decades of political activities in Italy and abroad. If his opponents remembered his blunders, his admirers, on the other hand, emphasized his contribution to resolving various international crises thanks to his unique approach, which involved having personal relationships with other leaders and his particular pragmatism. From a special friendship with Vladimir Putin to strolling in Porto Rotondo with Tony Blair and his wife, from establishing a good relationship with Gaddafi to distancing from Angela Merkel and Sarkozy, and also his last obsession and belief that China posed a threat to the entire world.

Putin and Berlusconi

The special and unique friendship between these two is almost completely evident to everyone, and this relationship was formed in 2001 during the G8 summit in the city of Genoa. Eventually, their relationship was strengthened by repeated meetings and sessions, becoming a bond that transcended the fate and political choices of both. Therefore, the Russian president was one of the first world leaders to pay tribute to the former prime minister. In his condolence message to President Sergio Mattarella, he wrote that Berlusconi’s death is an irreparable loss and a great pain.

Friendship with the Kremlin leader made Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi a historical hero and mediator between Washington and Moscow. The summit at the air force base on the outskirts of Rome embodied the hope for a new era in Western-Russian relations based on mutual trust. He also managed to use this special bond to resolve the Georgia crisis and prevent the escalation of a dangerous tension.

Friend to All

Although the relationship between Berlusconi and Putin sometimes worried Washington and NATO allies, it never managed to destabilize the axis with the United States. Because alongside Putin, Berlusconi established a strong and solid relationship with George W. Bush. In 2003, despite Berlusconi believing that the war against Saddam Hussein was a mistake, he supported the United States in the attack on Iraq, and from that moment on, his friendship with Bush remained forever.

The good relationship between these two leaders led to the opening and beginning of a new chapter in relations from other European powers, including France and Germany, with the Kremlin. With his keen insight and understanding of the importance of the Mediterranean Sea, Berlusconi established personal relationships with many regional leaders, which were lost during the Arab Spring in 2011. From Ben Ali in Tunisia to Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and most importantly, the Libyan Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, with whom he signed the Italy-Libya Friendship Treaty in 2008 during a historic meeting under Gaddafi’s famous tents, paving the way for Italian companies to operate in this North African country.

Among Berlusconi’s other friends was Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the current Prime Minister of Turkey, and it was precisely because of this friendship that the Knight succeeded in 2009 in persuading Ankara not to use its veto against the appointment of former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO’s leader, because Turkey was very angry at the time due to anti-Islamic cartoons drawn in Denmark.

His relations with Israeli leaders, from Benjamin Netanyahu to Shimon Peres, were also very good and strong. Whether we like it or not, Silvio Berlusconi was an influential figure on the international stage, and the condolence messages sent from various geographical latitudes attest to this. The Spanish newspaper El País wrote that Silvio Berlusconi was the man who defined and shaped 21st-century Italy.

Words from Giorgia Meloni

Prime Minister Meloni, with whom Silvio signed the famous Scrofa Pact, left a video message for his ally a few hours after the news of Berlusconi’s death. ‘Silvio Berlusconi was above all a fighter. He was a man who was never afraid to defend his beliefs, and it was precisely that courage and determination that made him one of the most influential men in Italy’s history, allowing him to make real progress in the world of politics, communications, and business.’

The Prime Minister continued: ‘With him, Italy learned that it should never have limits imposed on it, learned never to give up. We fought many battles with him, lost and won, and for him, we bring home the goals we set together.’

Words from President Mattarella

Sergio Mattarella, the head of state, wrote in a message on the occasion of Silvio’s death: ‘I learned with deep sorrow the news of the passing of Silvio Berlusconi, founder and leader of Forza Italia, a champion of long chapters of Italian politics and republican institutions.’

He said: ‘Berlusconi was a great political leader who influenced paradigms, practices, and discourses, shaping the political history of our republic. He entered the political scene during a chapter of profound transformations and with a newly established party achieved such a broad consensus that he could immediately form a government with a majority.’

Berlusconi’s leadership helped shape Italy’s new political geography and enabled him to serve as prime minister four times. He was an individual of high human stature and a successful and innovative entrepreneur in his field. Before holding any political responsibility, he achieved prominent social positions in the television industry and media sector. He was the architect of significant successes in Italian sports.

Mattarella concluded: ‘I wish to express my condolences and solidarity to his children, all his family members, his party, and those who were with him in his final moments and in his last battle with this illness, which he fought with his characteristic courage and optimism.’