On the occasion of 14 August: putting history back on track

14 August is the anniversary of the founding of the AK Parti. Yesterday, at the Headquarters, because of the martyrs' funerals, a kind of anniversary event limited to commemoration, instead of celebration, was held. Note the coincidence: the date on which the Arab Spring, the AK Parti's most important effect on regional politics, was sought to be drowned in a bloody raid in Egypt also coincided with the 12th of this anniversary.

Two years have passed since thousands of civilians demonstrating against the coup in Rabia Square were massacred by the Sisi administration. There is no doubt that this greatest mass slaughter in modern Egyptian history will also deeply affect Egypt's future. Those who will write Egyptian history in the coming period will treat the Rabia Square massacre as a historical turning point.

The insensitivity of the international community to such a massacre will be remembered as one of humanity's greatest shames. Despite the continuing lawlessness and massacres of the Sisi regime after the coup and its steadily increasing pressure on all opposition groups, above all the Islamic circles, the insensitivity of the Western world to what has happened will shape the thinking and conscience of future generations growing up in non-Western worlds.

The circles that agitated for the coup provoked the people against the Morsi administration with the arguments that there would be a petrol shortage in the country and that power cuts would begin. In reacting today to the energy bottleneck, the power cuts and the petrol queues under the Sisi regime, these coup agitators are in fact showing that, in the process leading to Morsi's removal by a coup, "the matter was not a tree."

That the changes of power that emerged as a result of the mass demonstrations that began in Tunisia at the end of 2010 and spread to the countries of the region have, after 5 years have passed, been replaced as a result of various external interventions by civil wars or dictatorial regimes is a historical rupture; in other words, history's going off its rails. In what historical interval these rails will be reconnected to the route of democratization is for now uncertain.

The effect of the Sisi coup in Cairo, which is also the seat of the Arab League, is quite great in the reversal of the region's democratization. The brutal and bloody suppression of opposition groups that try to express their discontent with the existing regimes through democratic demonstrations and democratic political programs lays the ground for the formation of the sociological atmosphere sought by marginal movements of ideas in the region. And it appears that the Western world is not at all bothered by this situation.

Sisi seems unable to keep the promise of security and stability he gave to the imperialist Westerners either. The unrest in the country is growing day by day. On the other hand, in parallel with this unrest, the Sisi regime too is increasing its dose of harshness.

According to a report released by the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, from the date of the Sisi coup to May 2015, 36,500 people have been caught and arrested. In April 2015 alone, 163 Egyptians disappeared in one way or another. The reaction of Western countries to this has been to overlook, for the sake of their economic interests, a dictator who is the murderer of thousands of people, whose hands are bloodied, and to host him with great hospitality.

One of the instructive examples is Germany. The fact that the German press and politicians, who do not shrink from describing the democratic regime in Turkey as "dictatorial," ignoring the experience of democracy that has continued, albeit intermittently, since 1876, welcomed Sisi as a legitimate head of state because of the 9 billion dollar investment Siemens will make in Egypt and did not raise the matter of the coup, shows that the colonial vein in the Western world is still quite pronounced and effective.

The Sisi regime had convinced the Western world, which cannot rid itself of the vice of evaluating matters from the perspective of economic interest and the unconditional protection of Israel, not with the rhetoric that it would establish a democratic or liberal regime in Egypt but with arguments of security and stability. Western countries, being quite disturbed by the Muslim Brotherhood's democratic, violence-rejecting style, were inclined to believe these arguments. Because the demand for "deciding one's own future" rising in the Arab world could have resulted in the liquidation of the neo-colonialism taking shape in the Arab world.

Situations such as the support of dictators in place of democratic regimes, and the silence toward the regime that did not shrink from using chemical and biological weapons against the civilian population in the civil war in Syria, closed off democratic paths of opposition and thereby opened the way to the marginalization of the masses. The most prominent of these marginal groups is the terrorist organization DAESH.

At the point reached, if the struggle against the terrorist organization DAESH is perceived only as striking a number of locations with aircraft, and in the meantime killing civilians "by mistake" as in Atme, the problem cannot be brought to a solution. If there is a sociology behind the terrorist organization DAESH, it should be said that one of its most important elements is the failure to support the development of democratic regimes in the region.

If the Coalition Forces fighting DAESH today had been able to show the courage to stand against the coup carried out against the first head of state in Egyptian history to come to office by election, everything in the region today might have been very different. Shadi Hamid expressed this truth, with somewhat different and quite pragmatic arguments, in his article published in Foreign Policy by saying that "the Egyptian coup has become a gift to DAESH." Viewed from this framework, it is seen that the terrorist organization DAESH was manufactured directly by Westerners, and is now being treated as an instrument that provides legitimacy to whoever fights it.

The only country that represents the principled and moral dimension of the Western world is Turkey. Turkey's not having an imperialist / colonial past plays a role in the formation of this situation. Turkey prefers to approach developments in the region in the context of the requirements of democracy. Therefore it maintains that security and stability can become lasting only after the formation of legitimate democratic regimes. Looking at examples such as Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Syria, building democratization seems impossible. Perhaps everyone needs to give this "impossible," that is, democratization, a chance. For this, what needs to be done is to create an appropriate sociology. The way to create this sociology among the peoples of the Middle East passes through the overthrow of the coup administration in Egypt and of the Assad regime. If Westerners really want to fight DAESH, they should start from here. Perhaps in this way history can return to its normal course.