A Decade Later: Taking Stock of the Arab Uprisings and Turkey’s Role

References (6)

1. For a summary of the Western perspective on the Arab Uprisings, see, Riccardo Alcaro and Miguel Haubrich-Seco (eds.), “Re-thinking Western Policies in Light of the Arab Uprisings,” IAI Research Papers, (Rome: Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2012)
2. For more information on the Turkish model, see, Mehmet Akif Kireççi, “Arap Baharı ve Türkiye Modeli Tartışmaları,” (Ankara: ASEM, 2014)
3. Michael Safi, Antonio Voce, Frank Hulley-Jones and Lydia McMullan,”How the Arab Spring Engulfed the Middle East – and Changed the World,” The Guardian, (January 25, 2021) retrieved from https:// www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2021/jan/25/how-the-arab-spring-unfolded-a-visualisation
4. John L. Esposito, Tamra Sonn, and John O. Voll, Democracy After the Arab Spring, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p
5. The Arab Uprisings were described as a protest movement with no precursors. They were different from the anti-colonial independence movements of the early 20th century, as well as a series of revolutions between 1920 and 1973 that brought down monarchies, and the constitutional movements in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. First and foremost, the Arab Spring –as well as the Arab Winter that followed it– was a uniquely Arab experience. See, Noah Feldman, The Arab Winter, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), p. xii. Again, for an assessment of how the Arab Spring abolished the East-West divide and represented the end of the phenomenon of post-colonialism, see, Hamid Dabashi, The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism, (London: Zed Books, 2012)
6. The Arab Spring immediately begged the question whether it was going to lead to democratic transitions, akin to the Eastern European revolutions of 1989, or to the consolidation of authoritarian regimes –as was the case after the 1848 revolutions. During the wave of 1989, a number of external factors, including the Soviet Union’s collapse, the expansion of the Western security umbrella to cover Eastern European countries and the promise of admission into the European Union, supported capitalism and democracy in the eyes of the relevant countries. For the record, those external factors did not apply to the Middle East: the U.S. and the European Union, which traditionally supported authoritarian regimes to ensure the secure transportation of petroleum, to keep irregular migration under control, to combat terrorism, and to preserve the pro-Western regional balance of power, did not place at ri