The elections in Syria are not a joke but reality

Bashar al-Assad, who for exactly ten years has given the Syrian people nothing but blood, death, torture, tears, hunger and misery, also staged an election theater as if mocking, in the most insolent way, the concept of democracy and the will of the people. In an election whose result was known, two more candidates, who had probably voted for him as well, appeared to compete. Even for the sum of these two candidates, even if only for show, even for the sake of the democracy game, no more than 5 percent of the votes were "allocated." Announcing the result, the Speaker of the Syrian People's Assembly, Hammouda Sabbagh, said that incumbent President Bashar al-Assad had won the election with 13 million 540 thousand 360 votes, corresponding to 95.1 percent of the votes.

Of course, what reason and logic could attach to any side of an election that is a tragic comedy from start to finish? Since it is said that a total of 14 million 239 thousand 140 people voted, it appears that more than the pre-war number of Syrians went to the ballot box. You may ask where so many Syrians were found and taken to the ballot box, but some voting footage that appeared on screens makes the most ridiculous declaration of the obvious. There are all kinds of tragicomic images, from a soldier pressing his own fingerprint on dozens of ballots and putting them in the box, to an official casting votes in place of the voters in line and handing the ballots over to the voter only to put them into the box, and indeed only such absurd images can explain the emergence of so surreal a figure.

We opened the subject, for instance, with this number of Syrian voters taking part in the election; let us continue from there. How many Syrians do you think live in the areas of Syria that Assad currently controls, and where therefore the ballot box could, at best, be set up? We made this count roughly before. In the ten years since the crisis began in Syria, 4 million have migrated to Turkey, a total of 3 million to Lebanon and Jordan, 1.2 million to Germany, and nearly 1 million to all the other European countries combined. There are currently also some 5 million people living outside the Syrian regime's control in Turkey's Operation Peace Spring, Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch zones. Likewise, the US-protected regions inside Syria are also areas outside the Syrian regime's control, and since no fewer than 2-3 million people live there, in total at least 15 million Syrians live outside regime control. Since Syria's population before the crisis was 22 million, if we also account for the population growth in between, it is clearly understood that no more than 7-8 million citizens currently live in the regime's areas of control. And this figure is the entire population. Yet the election results say that even the number of people who voted alone was 14 million 239 thousand. Unless other citizens were imported into Syria from outside, this figure is nothing but another scene of the election farce.

Truth be told, in many regimes of the Arab Middle East, a show democracy is made to appear to exist through, again, show elections. Of course, elections are generally staged as show theaters whose results are determined in advance. As a matter of procedure they are run to legitimize the continuation of the existing administration, and the election results are comically recorded in the ruling power's column at levels above ninety percent. This style of election has been so embraced that it has become the subject of jokes among the people. For example, it is told that a US president who won his elections with at most 51 percent, wanting to emulate Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's dictator of 30 years who constantly won elections with 99 percent, asked for his help in his own election campaign. Of course Mubarak does not turn down the call for help and sends his team to support. And when the ballot box results are opened, it turns out that Hosni Mubarak has won the US presidency too, with 99 percent.

In another joke, a voter whose opposition flares up right at the ballot box gets worked up and casts a "no" vote. But on the way he is seized by fear, goes back to the ballot box and tells the officials that he wants to check his vote in case he mistakenly cast the wrong vote. The officials, in an angry, paternal manner, tell him, "Fine, we already corrected your vote, but don't let it happen again." In Syria's latest elections, thanks to social media, it was seen that these jokes are not jokes but reality itself, and that even reality expresses very little of it.

The interesting and regrettable side of the matter is that all of these negativities carried out in these regimes are presented under the cloak of democracy. Even more regrettable is that the Islamic criticism of these regimes ends up appearing at the same time as a criticism of democracy. Because these images are presented as democracy to the people living under these regimes. Then, when asked whether Islam and democracy are compatible or not, which Muslim can be expected to answer that Islam could reconcile itself with these vulgarities?

Looking at these practices, it becomes inevitable for the Islamic movements under these regimes to adopt a radical hostility to democracy in their discourse. As if these regimes were democrats, and as if democracy were embodied in the practices of these regimes. Of course, once democracy is made the enemy, the model that Islamic movements point to in the current situation becomes a non-democratic form of government. In fact, in this way the Islamic movements in question, unwittingly, discursively strengthen the existing despotic regimes even more. This constitutes one of the Islamic movement's most paradoxical situations regarding democracy. Islamic movements try to vent the grudge of the oppression they suffer from the existing despotic regimes through their oppositional discourse against democracy.

Yet in whichever of these countries a development occurs in the direction of real democratization, one also witnesses a greater development of the administration in the direction of the society's values. This too needs to be noted separately.