In Tunisia, where the first sparkles of the Arab spring were lit, during the elections that were conducted after the Revolution and appropriately to the new Constitution, the secular-liberal Nida Tunisia Party had taken 39 percent of the votes and become the first party by surpassing Nahda. While Nida Tunisia had claimed 85 seats in the 217 seated parliament, with their 32 percent vote rate, Nahda had claimed 69 seats. These results are the proof that since the beginning of the Arab Spring, this is the first time the Muslim Brotherhood or Islamist movement had been surpassed in the elections, and the secular-liberal segments had become prominent.
Since the Arab Spring had begun, as a movement that is happening in a natural and sociological course, Turkey had chosen to stay by the will of the public.
This support neither meant exporting a regime to others, nor interfering with the domestic affairs of some countries. In exchange for Hüsnü Mübarek’s, Zeynelabidin bin Ali’s or Muammar Gaddafi’s bloody attempts to suppress the demands of their publics, Turkey had listened to its conscience’s voice. As a necessity of the mind and humane responsibility, Turkey reminded that this resistance is helpless, and thus, stayed by the side of the communities.
Thus, the process would be affirming Turkey’s stance in a short time, and the bloodshed by the dictators, who taught that they could suppress the demands of the public with blood, would be sweeping them from their ruling positions. The identity of the people, who had carried out the actual revolutions, or the people, who will come to the rulership position as a result of the revolutions was not predictable. Moreover, even nobody could foresee that the Muslim Brotherhood or Islamist parties would assume rulership as the result of these revolutions. After all, the revolutions were realized by the masses, which demanded bread, freedom and pride – not by the Islamists.
Turkey had supported these processes, regardless of who would be coming into power. Because the essential thing here was responding to the freedom, pride and people’s demand for the bread. However, the ballot boxes that are set up after the revolutions, were always bringing the Muslim Brotherhood or Islamic-lined parties to the rulership position; and for Turkey, this was nothing to be worried about. When the democratic procedures were being implemented, why would it be a problem if one of the sides, who had accepted to respect the results of the election, had won? Naturally, Turkey had built good relations with all the winners of the elections. Even if other parties had won in the elections instead of the Muslim Brotherhood, then still, Turkey wouldn’t have taken a step back from making relations with the actors that represent their countries by winning in the elections.
Was Turkey’s own election included in this process? For some, Turkey had chosen the Muslim Brotherhood, and was making an effort for them to reach the rulership position. It is correct that the AK Party government had good relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties that are on the democratic line; however, the suspicion that such good relations are a kind of relation that defines who will come to the rulership and in what way is just a suspicion that some feed on. After all, no matter how much Turkey or AK Party supports a party that doesn’t have any interaction within the public, what could be the result?
As a matter of fact, it’s not like Turkey had objected to the bloody coups, which had been actualized later on against the elected administration by disregarding the will of the public, by saying that these are being conducted against the Muslim Brotherhood. The fact that the people, who couldn’t even accept the coups and have yet to present the required humane reaction against the bloodshed by these coups, are accusing Turkey of linking all their foreign policy to the Muslim Brotherhood, and accordingly to being burst up, is making those people the accomplices of these humanity crimes and hostility towards democracy.
However, Turkey is objecting to these bloody coups or anti-revolutions because of the fact that they are commissioning crimes against humanity, are against the public, and is a real coup; not because they are being conducted against the Muslim Brotherhood. If these coups were implemented by the Muslim Brotherhood on others, than our attitude also wouldn’t have changed.
Thus, Nida Tunisia Party becoming triumphant in the elections, which were conducted after the successfully operated national dialogue process in Tunisia, instead of the Nahda Party, is not discomforting us. The will of the Tunisian community had been carried out in this direction, and Turkey welcomes the decision of the Tunisian public with respect, and congratulates all the parties involved in the election process, including Nida Tunisia and Nahda. The Arab Spring process, in other words, the will of the communities got the best of these elections.
Turkey had supported the Arab Spring without interfering from the outside, as a manifestation of the communities will. However, today, there are attempts being made to choke the same revolutions by all sorts of plots, coups, massacres, war provocations and direct interventions. The ones, who were expected to show even a bit of reaction against all these processes in the name of humanity, are giving themselves pleasure by thinking about how Turkey had emerged as a loser from this process, and how isolated Turkey has become, rather that presenting the minimum humanity, democracy or modernization that is expected of them.
Let’s say that Turkey is isolated, but who had made an alliance with whom and thus had become stronger? Let’s say that Turkey had lost in this process. Then who had won?
Are the ones, who had started a fire in the Middle East by supporting these coups and bloody processes, benefiting a lot now? A deadly paranoia, which will not go away without being annihilated and keeps people up at nights, had surrounded all the Gulf countries. Nobody is feeling comfortable because of the crimes they had committed and their partnerships in these crimes.
