The chain reaction of social upheavals that started in Tunisia and swept across the Arab World caught even the “Arabists” by surprise. Despite all the attention to the Middle East, particularly after the 9/11, I doubt many experts could claim credit for having predicted these incredible events.
Of course, I am excusing the conspiracy minded chowderheads. Completely detached from the double burdens of fact and rationality, they instantly connected these historic developments to the Wikileaks and to the ubiquitous US scheme to “shape the Greater Middle East”.
I love their ex-post-facto reasoning! Up to the day before these demonstrations, they would have no clue that something was brewing in Mid East. But now that the gene is out, they unabashedly churn the wheels of conspiracy and link it all to Wikileaks, Iraq, Afghanistan, US, Israel and of course, to Zionism… If you are one of those people, please stop reading my blog right here.
These developments in the Arab world humbled me in certain ways. Here are a few of my presumptions that were challenged and some shattered by the recent events:
1. Nothing progressive ever happens in the Middle East!
Having read about the iron grip of authoritarian regimes in the region for so long, the ever-expanding techniques of a Mukhabarat state that spies on its own people and systematically bullies them into submission, the seemingly endless money supply from oil, gas and foreign aid (Egypt is the second largest recipient of US aid, after Israel) in the hands of those abusive governments gave me plenty of reasons that the Middle East really did not have much fertile soil for popular democratic movements. The state was just too powerful and merciless, cutting any opposition movement at the bud. In fact, for my dissertation on democratic progress in Turkey, this was a major reason why I turned to Latin America when looking for a comparable case alongside Turkey. You needed a Pollyanna attitude to look for democratic progress in the Middle East in the last decades…
Today, as a social scientist, I am delighted to see that I was wrong! It is wonderful to see that these societies could generate progressive changes endogenously, just like Southern Europe in the late 1970s, Eastern Europe in late 1980s and Latin America in the 1990s.
The chain reactions of democratic transitions from the 1970s on were famously referred as the Third Wave, by the dark lord of political science, Sam Huntington. I wonder if the Fourth Wave is unfolding right in front of our eyes, engulfing a region once considered frozen in time under tyrannies.
2. Arabs would always find a reason to be divided!
For me, this was not an Orientalist prejudice against the Arab world. Rather it was an acquired pessimism, after reading the history of the region. In most cases, even though their territorial boundaries were artificially imposed by the European colonial powers, these divisions and further ethno-sectarian divisions inside the national borders have managed to splinter the Arab world into endless little cliques. The odds against regional solidarity and collective action seemed incredibly high.
Again, I am delighted to be proven wrong! The flames rising from the body of a desperate young college graduate in Tunisia resonated so strongly in Egypt, Libya and even in the rich Gulf monarchies.
This made me believe that there is such a thing as Arab reality and Arab solidarity. Despite all the divisions and bickering in the region, the fact that socio-political transformations can travel across the state borders like wild fire, only illustrates the deep connections within these societies. Whether it is having Arabic as a shared language, and historical, socio-economic, cultural bonds in the region, or the Facebook/Tweeter and the Al Jazeera effect, there is something that is holding these people together.
I am hoping and praying that this solidarity is going to pave the way to a more free, egalitarian and democratic Mid East.
3. Turkey is different from the Arab countries.
This is probably the most controversial of my three presumptions about the Middle East, and I am afraid, in light of these recent events, I might retain this for a while. Again, this has nothing to do with the patronizing, Orientalist attitude that perceives Turkey somehow “above” the Arab countries. Unfortunately, this is the predominant attitude in Turkey. Even the neo-Ottomanist AKP circles pretend as if they were the "wiser elders" of their "confused" Arab brethren.
However, I find the Euro-American attitudes equally condescending, when they lump together so many different countries from West Africa, throughout the Mid East and Eurasia and all the way to Indonesia as The Muslim World!. Not to scandalize some of you, but Turkey shares greater similarities with Orthodox Greece and Armenia than with Muslim Senegal or Indonesia.
Let’s give a micro example to explain my perception of differences between Turkey and the rest of the Arab world: By looking at popular culture.
The elegant lady in the picture above this entry is a legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, known as Ummu Gulsum in Turkey. In the 1960s and 1970s, the music scene in Turkey was influenced by the Arabic and particularly Egyptian tunes, and a hybrid style called Arabesque became popular. Yet, it was shunned by the mainstream cultural circles, and excluded from the state TV and radio networks. Arabesque was associated with lower classes, recent immigrants, etc who apparently had “bad taste”.
I’m afraid I was not much exposed to this genre either, until I was in college. As a student of one of the most highbrow universities in the country (Bogazici), listening to Arabesque was considered uncouth. But there were ways around it. Alcohol, for example! I was amazed how many of my friends let their guards down and enjoyed the lovely tunes of the Arabesque violins after a couple of drinks. Yet, the society was always lurking behind. One time, a friend of a friend who had a small yacht pulled out of the marina in Istanbul far enough, so that we could play Arabesque and enjoy ourselves without any social stigma…
Today, the New York Times published an Op-Ed, as a tribute to the uprisings in the Mid East and to Umm Kulthum. Watching the video with teary eyes, I couldn’t help but wonder at the contrast between the “lowbrow” image of Arabesque in Turkey, and the graceful Umm Kulthum, her bow-tie wearing orchestra and the audience in black-tie attire at the concert hall.
Click here if you'd like to enjoy the wonderful Voice of Egypt without guilt..:)
In solidarity with the progressive forces in the Mid East,
Academic Mommy
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