On leaving Syria, I was convinced that the regime there was unsustainable. By far the least democratic place I have ever experienced, I was deeply troubled by the twisted and "quietly ferocious" form of state-socialist government I encountered there. Syria is another Arab country with all the problems of its neighbors and—like Egypt—none of the obscene oil riches that keep regimes in power and still dissenting opinions in the Arabian Peninsula. Turkey, too, felt like a place on the verge of momentous change by the time I left there about a month and a half ago. As had been the case in the Arab world (of which Turkey, importantly, is not a part) before a Tunisian vegetable seller reached the end of his rope, Turkey had the feeling of place that was going to (and needed to) undergo a serious social reckoning between its longstanding competing social, political, and economic interest groups. Add the potentially explosive ingredient of Islamism (more vibrant in Egypt than Turkey), and the situation seemed quite precarious indeed.
It should go without saying that this is a genuine Moment in the history of the Arab and Muslim worlds (again, not coterminous). The Big Question of the past decade has been, can Islam and democracy coexist? In the immediate aftermath of the Tunisian rebellions, I read a number of commentaries that encouraged Tunisia to go the way of Turkey in marrying democracy and Islam. I would caution writers and rebels to be wary in hoping for the advent of little Turkeys throughout the Arab/Muslim world. To laud Turkish democracy, religious affairs, and especially Turkey's ways of squaring the two, as exemplary for all other Muslim nations is to fall under the spell of a shallow appreciation of Turkish history and politics. As Colin Powell used to say, those advocating the spread of the Turkish system should "be careful what they wish for, because they might get exactly that."
If Turkey is a 99 percent Muslim country currently celebrating 90 years of democracy and a rapidly increasing global stature, why should Arabs now in revolt or thinking of revolting be skeptical of the Turkish model? The first reason has to do with the unique circumstances of the creation of the Turkish Republic: Turkey emerged in the wake of WWI with a civil war that had been begging to happen for a long time and finally found its moment as the Great Powers caught their collective breath after the Great War; further, Turkey happened in large part due to the singular influence and leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, its inimitable and still revered founder. As many of the same articles that prescribe Turkey for Tunisia note, there currently appear to be no leaders-in-waiting with the vision, ambition, and strength of personality of Ataturk. There is a reason the man known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha took the name "Father Turk;" I do not know of any "Father Tunisia" or "Father Egypt" waiting in the wings in either country right now.
Secondly, Turkey does not enjoy a truly democratic democracy. Its version is light years ahead of that operated by Egypt's National Democratic Party or the recently deposed Constitutional Democratic Rally Party of Tunisia, yet it is far from perfect. The army—viewed since Ataturk's day as the vanguard and guardian of democracy—has not, in the 90 years of Turkish independence, seen fit to actually leave democracy to the people. In that time, it has staged no less than two full coups and three "soft coups" in which the civilian leadership was not actually deposed; though still highly trusted and seen as a force for democracy, by virtue of remaining either at the controls or at least in the control room of Turkish democracy to this day, the Turkish Army remains a concealed but nevertheless significant obstacle to true democracy in Turkey. Thankfully, the armies of both Tunisia and Egypt have so far stayed out of politics and more or less on the side of the protesters; arguing for those countries following Turkey's lead would create a logic if not a mandate for military government in the name of democracy in each. Much better that people like Mohamed El Baradei lead transitional governments than that the generals seize the moment.
Thirdly, Turkey has, to the cursory view, succeeded in getting Islam and democracy to coexist. The problem is that Turkey's success, such as it is, has come by means of incredibly strict secularism laws that have in some ways buried the issue of Islam in politics and public life and created a secular-nationalist religion of the state in its stead. As the world waits with baited breath to see what role the political Islamists in Tunisia and Egypt have in those countries' present and future democratic (?) iterations, why root for the Turkish outcome, which seems on the verge of a great reckoning anyway? Since coming to power, the vaguely Islamist Justice and Development Party currently leading Turkey has generated a serious national soul-searching that has brought the country face-to-face with its legacy of secularism (initiated by Ataturk and thus infallible in the eyes of many) and the undercurrent of political Islam and popular expressions of religion that, it seems, are still in tension after all. Turkey has not solved the apparent problem of democratization/modernization in a Muslim country so much as it simply wrote political Islam out of the public sphere. Now that Islam is creeping in—and especially given global views of Islam today—the issue buried by Ataturk is rearing its head with a vengeance today. Turkey itself is going to have to determine if and how to fit the square peg of Islam into the round hole of pluralistic democracy—it therefore makes no sense to encourage Arab nations to essentially duck the issue as Turkey did. At least for now, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt seems quiescent and willing to negotiate and work with El Baradei to create a transitional government, why not encourage this kind of self-starting democratic behavior on the part of a notoriously conservative and militant Islamist organization?
So if Tunisia, Egypt, and whatever other Arab countries go next are not to follow Turkey, what should they do instead? What if they did become little Turkeys—isn't the devil we know better than the one we don't?
Not only is rooting for (or even actively encouraging) such an outcome not better, it is simply not right. First of all, meddling in the first truly popular democratic movements the Arab world has seen in a long time would be undemocratic on the part of the United States and/or the West, should we attempt it. Secondly, the people involved have been quite firm in stating that they do not really want anything more out of the United States right now than verbal support for democratic processes and outcomes; in other words, king-making, advice, money, and most especially weapons are not wanted right now.
That brings us to the second reason we need to hope for and encourage more out of the current Arab revolts than simply copycatting of Turkey. Frankly, America has not done well by these countries or had particularly healthy relationships with them in the past, so they are not in the greatest rush to see us step in now. Furthermore, we all saw how well not listening and instead barging ahead got us in Iraq and Afghanistan; we have neither created democracy nor won a lot of brownie points with the Arab and Muslim worlds for all of our efforts in either place. Most of all, the best thing we can do to recover some of the credibility and democratic/moral legitimacy we sacrificed in Iraq right now would be to openly encourage democracy in Tunisia and Egypt. I mentioned the unhealthy relationship we have had with these places of late; in real terms, this has meant the United States' support of these very undemocratic regimes for fear of Islamists and their doing our dirty work for us. Specifically, we have long been the armorers of Arab despots against their citizens, a favor they have returned by employing on US prisoners the torture techniques they have developed by use on their citizens. Every time you read about or see someone getting shot in Egypt right now, consider that the shooter's weapon, ammunition, and training (if he is a soldier) are all made in the United States The same holds for many of the tanks on the streets, the fighter jets that buzzed Cairo the other day, and the tear gas canisters used by riot police.
In conclusion, my view is that we, the United States and other leading democracies of the world, need to take this opportunity to put our money (and our mouth) where our mouth has been for so long. It has been obvious for so long that the Arab world was overdue for democratization and that, when it came, it wasn't going to be an easy process or a pretty one. Now that it or something like it is upon us, we would do well to offer the loudest support for true democracy in the region that we can. If, as currently seems to be the case, we are unwilling to say much more than that we have the situation under observation and would like peace, democracy, and McDonald's to reign happily ever after, then our loudest vote of support for democracy would actually be to just shut the hell up. It might even be the most prudent—we're on touchy ground with many Arabs and Muslims these days, and if we learn to listen twice as much as we talk, our standing might go up dramatically. We would also reduce the chances of putting our foot in our mouth: we're currently hedging our comments so much because the outcomes of all this in the near and long term are so uncertain; saying as little as possible now means proportionately fewer chances of supporting a regime that either is or gets ugly.
The threat posed by Islamism, which has led us to support regimes such as those being toppled today in the past, is both a real and a delicate one. It is just as important that democracy come into being in these countries as that it be as free as possible of radical Islamist tendencies. That said, democracy in the Muslim world will not, should not, and cannot be free of Islam. Islam is by nature a more political religion than we in the West are comfortable with or accustomed to; it is also the dominant religion in the Arab world and its social and political expression is going to be part and parcel of any true Arab democracy that comes into being. Turkey decided to simply ban expressions of Islam, notably the headscarf, and their recent reintroduction has caused a national identity crisis; the chances of even imposing such bans in places like Egypt in the first place are infinitely smaller than they were under Ataturk at the dawn of modern Turkey. As long as the Islamist elements in Tunisia and Egypt continue to keep low profiles and support democratic outcomes, let them. How many times have we heard a US president (Bush or Obama) tell us we have nothing to fear from Islam in the past 10 years? Time to find out how we really feel.
So let's not talk Turkey. This democratic moment in the Arab world has been a long time in the making—why not make the most of it? The Turkish Republic has more or less worked for Turkey and it's more or less democratic, true, but we should really be encouraging new thinking, new democratic iterations, and new leadership in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Is it really so inconceivable that the Tunisians and/or Egyptians in 2011 come up with a fresher or better method of creating an Islamic democracy than Ataturk did in the 1920s? What if the Tunisians come up with a headscarf policy that Turks want to emulate? What if Egypt transitions to democracy without the military ever taking power? It's not like the United States is going to apologize out loud for our inconsistencies and screw-ups in dealing with these countries until a couple of weeks ago, so why not seize the democratic moment ourselves and, by word and deed, actively promote the truest and newest democracies anyone could hope for in the Arab world?
The coming days, weeks, months, and years will be messy, uncertain, fractious, tense, and hopeful—in a word, democratic—in Tunisia, Egypt, and quite possibly other Arab countries tired of the same old same old. Their citizens are trying to "win the future" for themselves, and wouldn't it be a lot better if they did so by the ballot box and not with bullets we gave them?
A democratic Arabia, Middle East, and Muslim world? That ought to be a change we can believe in.
