The Arab Spring did not blossom (or fade) because of Turkey’s Islamic democracy. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s short-lived popularity on the Arab Street was not because Arabs envied Turkey’s Islamic democracy; but because they embraced his love affair with Hamas and accompanying hatred of Israel. None of which has sufficed to keep the Turkish model afloat.
In fact, Turkey, an overwhelmingly Muslim country, could have appealed to the less and much less democratic countries in the Middle East had it been a democracy instead of an Islamic democracy.
Most Arabs who wanted to breathe democracy, before or after Mr. Obama’s Turkish euphemism, thrived to immigrate to the country Mr. Obama rules, or to Europe where there is democracy, not to Turkey where there is Islamic democracy – unless for force majeure, like in the Syrian case. [Hürriyet Daily News] Read more
