The Arab Spring and the anniversary of the 25 January Revolution in Egypt

Exactly seven years ago, the Arab world was shaken by a broad social movement that expressed demands for freedom, democracy and dignity rising from the deepest layers of society. The revolutionary atmosphere this movement created came to be called the Arab Spring.

The Arab Spring began on 17 December 2010 in Tunisia, when a street vendor named Bouazizi, seeing a slap from a female municipal officer as the last straw that overflowed his cup of patience, set himself on fire. The Tunisian people saw Bouazizi's self-immolation as the last drop that exhausted their own patience, and the peoples of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria subsequently joined the process triggered in Tunisia. Egypt was in fact the most important stone in this process, which spread through a domino effect. With its historical, geographical and cultural position, and with a population approaching 100 million, Egypt's joining the process made Cairo the capital of the Arab Spring.

On 25 January 2011, Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled the country single-handedly for 30 years, thought he could no longer resist the young people's demands for a change of order, voiced in the slogans of bread, dignity and freedom, and threw in the towel. He was followed by Abdullah Saleh, who had likewise ruled Yemen for 32 years. Muammar Gaddafi, who had ruled Libya for 40 years, thought he could resist this wave with violence. This made the crowds even angrier, and he paid for this stance with his life.

The wave reached Iran and Jordan as well, but these countries took a more political attitude toward the demands of their own peoples and, by responding at first in a way that took the demands into account, broke and softened the waves. Nothing followed after that. Undoubtedly, the country worst affected by this wave of social demand was Syria. Although the Syrian people at first wanted not a change of regime but merely some reforms, Assad, fearing that this wave might sweep him away, and following the counsel his evil friends gave him, thought he could ward off the wave by responding with the harshest possible response. With the help of Iran and Russia, who assisted him along the path he had chosen, and later of the US, he turned his country into a complete killing field. There were no people left in his country to govern, but he himself remained at the head of the country.

As of tomorrow it will be the 7th anniversary of the day on which the Arab Spring culminated in a revolution in Egypt. Of course, the spring in Egypt lasted not much more than two and a half years; after the new constitution process, the parliamentary and presidential elections, when a democracy, for better or worse, had begun to settle in, it turned into a heavy deep-winter in early July 2013 with the bloodiest and most cruel coup in its history. Former General Haftar, imported to Libya from America, with the support of Egypt's coup-maker and the UAE, followed the same path with his coup that seized the air force, and has since stoked the division and civil war that continue in Libya to this day. In Yemen, again, with Abdullah Saleh, who was supported by the same axis, dancing with the Houthis, the gains of the revolution there too were turned, through a coup and a civil war, into a situation worse than before.

As for Egypt, as of tomorrow it marks the 7th year of a people's revolution that remains in minds and hearts as a hopeful memory.

A scene from the latest situation: Sami Annan, the former Chief of the General Staff, who last Tuesday announced his candidacy in the presidential election against the coup-maker Abdulfattah Sisi, was arrested yesterday solely because of this move. Even though Annan was Chief of the General Staff in the Mubarak era, it is evident that a fear arose that in the race he could gather all the angry votes against Sisi and that this could topple Sisi through the ballot box. That is, of course, if there is any possibility of honest elections in a country ruled by Sisi. That one is seized by this panic even though it is known that there is no such possibility is, of course, telling.

Because the process called the Arab Spring has reached this end that we have described in summary, that is, by looking at its results, assessments are being made that this process was planned and carried out from the very beginning by certain parties precisely to obtain this result.

This result, yes, is by no means a cheering situation. But why would the parties in question, that is, the US and Israel, or those who have run these countries' dictators from the start, have felt the need to resort to this path in order to obtain today's result?

Which of the old regimes had stepped out of their word, and how exactly do the rulers governing these countries today render their masters more service than the old ones did?

Did Mubarak, Abdullah Saleh and Gaddafi not obey their masters without objection?

So what could they possibly have gained by planning the Arab Spring process, in return for the markets, the peace and quiet, and the many material gains and trade they have lost through the instabilities into which the world has been dragged for seven years? There is no reasonable answer to this question. Because an approach that avoids assessing all sociological developments within their own dynamics, that looks for a hidden hand behind every event, and that explains the beginning of all events by their outcome cannot reach a sound inference.

The truth is that the Arab Spring was a social explosion that could not be foreseen. For the rulers of these countries and the countries allied with them, it was a complete social disaster, an earthquake.

There is no doubt that this earthquake was beyond anyone's control. But once it occurred, certain parties afterwards took a series of measures to control this event, in which the danger of a new world being built outside their control had emerged. The measures taken will, slowly if surely, be their catastrophe. Because these measures yield no result other than bloody and brutal coups, the dragging of countries into instability, and the condemnation of peoples to poverty and misery under oppression and despotism.

In the end they may seem to have saved the day, but none of these measures will suffice to extinguish the torch of the Arab Spring.

That torch has been lit once. Today it has become the hope, goal and dream of people in places they cannot reach.