Why don't they see democracy as the alternative to Assad?

Exactly 4 years have passed since the start of the revolution process in Syria. In fact, the initial goal of this process was not revolution but nothing other than a modest expansion of freedoms and a more humane administration. That is why the first slogans of the demonstrations, as in the other Arab Spring countries, demanded not "the fall of the regime" but "the reform of the regime."

For Assad and his regime, at this stage of the matter, had they acted with just a little foresight, they could easily have weathered the consequences of these demonstrations without turning them into a larger problem. After all, despite the revolution processes experienced in the Arab Spring, there was not even a persistent demand among the people to change the regime in Syria.

But the regime was suddenly gripped by a fear that what had happened in the Arab Spring could happen in its own country as well. And to eliminate this danger it took the easiest road that came to mind. It took once again the road it had gone down before and which had reached a certain result. To intimidate the demonstrators, it killed a good number as an example for all.

Earlier, that is in 1982, it had suppressed the popular uprising in Hama by carrying out a merciless massacre, killing more than 30 thousand people. By means of a small-scale massacre it would in the end do the same thing and save its regime. But this time the situation was not as in the eighties. After each massacre carried out, the discontent among the people found a somewhat wider base. Assad and the Baath regime, by the way they met the threat, probably unintentionally, expanded the opposition as far as it could go and radicalized it thoroughly.

At the point we have reached today, there is a dictator who resists by fighting his own people to remain standing, and behind him he leaves 400 thousand dead, more than ten million citizens displaced from their homes, and a devastated country, the great majority of which has slipped out of his control.

It had been calculated that Assad would not be able to hold on much in this process. It was thought that, because of the massacres, the whole world except Iran and Russia above all was eagerly wanting and awaiting his departure. All the statements too were in that direction. But from the moment his departure became nearly inevitable, an interesting shield of protection began to form around Assad that did not consist of Russia's and Iran's alone. European countries held one side of this shield, the US and Israel another side, and some Gulf countries, with their strange choices and practices, held yet another. The US, which had above all thought that Assad must absolutely go and had acted in that direction, suddenly began to talk about the absence of a better alternative to Assad.

At this stage of the matter it was truly very strange, because this hesitation would later be perhaps the sole cause of all the radicalizations that followed and of the emergence of DAESH. It is truly strange that the US, which today sees DAESH as the primary problem, has still not seen that the sole cause of DAESH's emergence is this hesitation it displayed toward Assad's departure. By rejecting DAESH, which emerged precisely because of Assad's very existence, as the alternative to Assad, they are in fact leaving the Syrian people alone with DAESH and an endless civil-war environment.

They say there is no alternative to Assad. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, in the speech he gave on Friday upon receiving the Syrian National Coalition and its interim government in Ankara, very clearly pointed to the alternative: "In Syria, the alternative to Assad is democracy."

Is the alternative Davutoğlu points to one so difficult to conceive? Granted, for some forces in the region that do not relish democracy, this alternative may not be accepted at once. But why can the US or the EU countries not think of democracy as an alternative to Assad?

It seems that, in Syria's future, they never deem democracy worthy of the Syrian people. Just as they did not deem democracy suitable for the other Arab countries, they do not see democracy as a suitable alternative for the Syrian people either. Democracy is certainly good for the Syrian people, but who is thinking of the good of the Syrian people? For them, the plight of the people dying in Syria has still not had an effect that stirs their consciences. They are waiting for the next dictator who will listen to them, who will not step outside their word, to come.

More plainly, the alternative they deem suitable for Assad in Syria is in the end someone no different from Assad. That is, again from the top down, they are looking for another dictator capable of suppressing the opposition in Syria by force. Because they are looking for such a person, they cannot find anyone better than Assad. DAESH also comes to their rescue, and they begin to view Assad favorably as the only apparent alternative.

This becomes yet another real cross-section that lets us see why democracy has not developed in the Middle East.