Quoting the Washington Post:
While the protests evolved into a full-scale demonstration against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (more on that later), they started out much smaller. The peaceful sit-in began on Monday to counter planned construction at the park, which would replace one of downtown Istanbul’s few green spaces with a shopping mall. The scene looks similar to what cities like New York and D.C. experienced during the Occupy protests: large crowds of people milling around, playing instruments and sleeping in tents.
While Erdogan is not exactly a democrat of the highest credentials, he has won free elections and does represent the wishes of a majority of Turks. We can wish the Turks were as secular as their reputation says, but birth rate differences between the rural more religious types and the urban protester class have changed Turkey.
And for me, comparisons with the Occupy Marxists is no way to generate sympathy. But I'm perhaps not the Post's target audience.
But these protests do not reflect a majority sentiment being suppressed by the majority. They may represent the release of pent up frustration at being on the electoral and demographic losing end the last decade, but this is not vanguard of the silent majority.
Some might hope that the military would rely on the support of such protesters to save secular Turkey from the Islam-friendly government (and society), but the military is probably purged sufficiently to prevent that. Besides, would the rank and file follow orders to remove Erdogan who probably reflects their views more than those of their officers?
Further, even if the army did take over the government, the protesters are exactly the type who would not be grateful for long. They'd agitate for democracy again--which they'd lose in such a contest to the Islam-friendly parties, again.
Perhaps the biggest danger is that the government, fearing the army is not purged enough and willing to use the protests as an excuse for a coup, might order the Turkish military to intervene in Syria to get the army busy.
Turkey is a democracy. And the majority is getting what they want. We can be disappointed by that. But there you go.
Turks are not Arabs, of course, but Turkey represents a long-term problem in the Arab world that we can't expect to be solved in a season. The Arab Spring of 2011 has dashed many hopes for rapid improvement, it is true:
"The Arab Spring is moving into, let's say, a more mature phase," says Ali al-Ahmed, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute of Gulf Affairs. "There is Syria, of course. But the rest of the region is moving into a slow burn now. Voices are speaking up against corruption and political arrogance in the Gulf, but also in places like Egypt and Tunisia that went through their revolutions and are still undergoing a political shakeout."
Twitter and social media is as insufficient alone to plant democracy as our military has been. Each provided Arab and/or Afghan Moslems a chance to build democracy by tearing down the autocrats who stifled movement to freedom, but each is insufficient alone.
But this movement to freedom is not over. Remember that in 2005, there seemed to be a stirring of freedom throughout the Arab world as the ripples of Iraq spread out. Lebanon, Kuwait, and Egypt all seemed to feel the pressure to reform and assert freedoms. The Lebanese actually ejected the Syrians from their country before the impulse for freedoms stalled.
Remember, in 2005, it seemed like the Iraq War was won. Elections had taken place and we planned to reduce our Army in Iraq by the end of that year considerably. It is easy to forget this given that the spring 2006 bombing of the Shia Golden Mosque in Samarra eventually sparked the sectarian bloodshed of August 2006 to August 2007 that we so easily think of as the norm for the entire Iraq War.
But in 2011, stirrings for freedom from autocrats and Islamists shook the Arab Moslem world. Sadly, this will be a long process. But the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century did not bring instant fraternity, equality, and liberty to the French. Even in the modern world the French have struggled against impulses for a strongman to rule them. Threats of a military coup were in the air as France withdrew from Algeria, which was considered a part of France itself rather than a colony.
So how much longer might the Arab Moslem world have to struggle?
I just want to see progress, as halting and reversible as it seems (and is). We did make progress in Iraq even if we risk all we've achieved in a futile attempt to deem the war over there. Iraq would be a better example of democracy for the region if we were still there to help Iraqis keep violence from reappearing, would it not?
We have made progress in Tunisia and even Egypt. Even Libya has seen progress. Syria, too, could yet benefit once the strongman of minority-rule is swept away. There is even hope that Iranians might finally tire of their decades-old mullah rule and seek to end that experiment in the joys of religious dictatorship.
So don't hope for too much or despair that all is lost when the weather of individual regimes seem to go hot or cold. Neither is a necessarily trend in the Moslem climate for democracy, rule of law, and freedom.
I hope the climate is really changing for the better, and that one day we can look back on this era as a key moment in that eventual change. But it is too soon to tell.
It is certainly too soon to give up on Moslems. Heck, I still have hope for France.
