The Arab Spring has brought the citizenry of the countries affected by this drama to centre stage in politics. If all goes well, those in power will no longer be able to ignore the wishes and aspirations of the people. Citizens will influence the formulation of economic and social policy and policies affecting relations with the outside world. It will not be possible for the leadership in these countries to disregard what the “street” thinks and believes in. Over time the noun “the street” will be replaced by the representatives of the people who will be able to hold the executive branch of the government responsible for its actions. What keeps western leaders awake at night is the fear that they will have to make more than a phone call to persuade the various heads of state to go their way.
The Arab Spring has resulted in the breakdown of what we might call the “grand bargain” between the West and the autocratic governments that dominated the Arab and Muslim worlds. This bargain had four components. The West wanted the Arab leaders to ensure access to vast energy resources in their region. It also wanted unhindered access to the economically and strategically important sea lanes that pass through the waters controlled by the countries in the area. And it wanted Israel to exist without being seriously threatened. In return, the West would not only tolerate these regimes but also provide them with military support when their existence was threatened by some internal forces. They would also allow the establishment to store its looted riches in the West — in the form of large bank accounts and large real estate holdings.
This is one reason why George H W Bush, then American president, went to war in 1991 to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, after the latter had invaded the country in its immediate neighbourhood. Allowing Hussein to stay in Kuwait would have been against the “grand bargain”. It didn’t matter that the regimes that were given support were often brutal towards their people and plundered the enormous wealth of the countries over which they presided. With the Arab Spring having disposed of three long-enduring regimes – in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, in that order – and threatening at least three other – in Bahrain, Syria and Yemen, difficult to say in which order – the will of the people can no longer be ignored. Factoring in what the people want in policy making has already resulted in the collapse of the “grand bargain”. A new order has already begun to take shape and will affect the relations of the countries in the region with the West, in particular with the United States.
It is interesting that Turkey is leading the way in bringing about this realignment. What makes Turkey a good candidate for stepping into the vacuum is the fact that it is led by a government whose broad ideological stance and economic performance resonate well in the Muslim world. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan leads a political party that espouses democracy not only in Turkey but also in other Muslim countries. He has decisively distanced himself from a close ally, the president of neighbouring Syria.
Mr Erdogan’s party, Justice and Development Party, or AKP by its Turkish acronym, is often dubbed “Islamist” but the adjective is wrongly applied. Unlike other Islamic parties, Mr Erdogan’s organisation does not wish to introduce sharia as the law of the land. Nor does it wish to enforce Islamic piety on the population. The party suggests that religion is a private matter, not something to be used by the state for guiding its citizens. Mr Erdogan and his associates are happy to participate in the political process that can be described as “western liberal”. If anything, the party’s leaders have succeeded in curbing the authority of the country’s military in political affairs.
Reducing the role of the military was one of the conditions exacted by the European Union (EU) from Turkey when it applied for membership to the group. However, having met the condition, Turkey is no closer to membership. Given what is happening to EU, this may not be a serious setback for Turkey as it begins to carve out a role for itself in the transformed West Asia. Nonetheless, the AKP leadership, in the words of a knowledgeable western observer of the country, has “astutely used the unifying idea of Europe as an engine of reform, widening freedom of expression and association and minority rights while curbing the power of the military, which until then had reserved the right to make and break governments”.
These moves have increased the prime minister’s popularity among the voters. In the recent elections – the third to be won by Mr Erdogan and his party – popular support grew to more than one-half of the total electorate. This was the first time in many years that a political party in Turkey attained that position. Mr Erdogan now enjoys not only the kind of affection the Turks had shown only once before in their history. That was towards Mustapha Kamal. They began to call him Ataturk — the father of Turkey. Mr Erdogan is now by far the most popular public figure in the entire Muslim world.
Turkey’s economy has also done well under Mr Erdogan; the rate of growth in gross domestic product is among the highest in the world; the country is attracting great amounts of foreign capital – so much so that the exchange rate has appreciated which makes the economic managers nervous. Also, Turkey’s own investments in West Asia have increased enormously under Mr Erdogan’s management. Turkey is now bracketed with BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – as the emerging markets towards which global economic power is shifting. The shift is occurring much more rapidly than most analysts had predicted. Some world watchers have come up with the acronym PIIGS to balance BRICKS — PIIGS stands for Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain, the five countries on Europe’s periphery that threaten to bring down the euro zone.
Turkey, now the world’s 16th largest economy, has begun to exert its influence on the countries in its neighbourhood. There is no doubt that it will be instrumental in devising the new “grand bargain” involving the Muslim world. What shape that bargain might take will be the subject of the next article in this space.
The author is a former finance minister of Pakistan