The elected president who staged a coup against himself in Tunisia

There are currently two styles of politics, two axes of politics, in force in the Islamic world. The first is a style of politics in favor of democratization, one that puts forward the will of peoples. The other is a style of politics based on autocratic regimes, one that in particular tries to strangle democratic processes with counter-revolutions and coups.

The history of these two styles of politics is in fact very deep, and generally the style of politics of the whole of the Islamic world, perhaps including Türkiye, is the second. But the silent democratic revolution experienced especially in Türkiye since 2002, and subsequently the Arab Spring that began in 2010, started to turn the democratic politics in question into a serious option. When over time this option began to create a serious sense of threat in the autocratic regimes, they began to stop it with counter-revolutionary processes.

Tunisia is the place where the Arab Spring began. In fact we could go back a little further and even say that it began in Türkiye. But we can distinguish the process in Türkiye from the process that began in Tunisia on 17 December 2010. The Arab Spring, which began in Tunisia in 2010 and quickly spread across the entire Arab world with a domino effect, was unfortunately stopped by the intrigues of the old style of politics, by its counter-revolutions and conspiracies, first in Syria, then in Egypt, Libya and Yemen. But the price of stopping the revolutions nowhere took the form of the establishment of an alternative order. On the contrary, every place where counter-revolutions took place is today in complete chaos. The peoples, for having embarked on an adventure of democratization, were punished, as it were, mercilessly, and continue to be punished.

Here is Syria, here is Yemen, here is Egypt and Libya... Recently, winds of a second spring have begun to blow in Libya thanks to Türkiye. With the contribution Türkiye made at the request of the Libyan people, the coup supported by the same axis was prevented there, and a political process that can embrace the whole Libyan people and leave Libya to its own people has begun to operate.

Still, Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, was also the only place where a democratic order had, for better or worse, settled and was working. It was the only place where the spring continued, the last fortress of the Arab revolutions. For that reason, a very special importance was attributed by the coup-making forces to the toppling of that fortress. For these forces, even the existence and survival of a democratic model brought out by the Arab Spring was a sufficiently disturbing element. For that reason, a separate importance was given to ending the democratic process in Tunisia with a coup.

It was no secret that for a long time there had been special efforts to strangle the revolution in Tunisia with a coup. For this there was in fact a program implemented step by step. First, the demonization of Ennahda; the creation in the people of a strong impression and weariness that the democratic-parliamentary process had brought the people no prosperity; the plunging of the country into security crises; the organization of artificial street demonstrations, etc. All these steps were ultimately taken to prepare the ground for a coup. Even so, it could not be expected that the army would directly intervene and take over the situation.

Perhaps things could have been made difficult by other means, but using an elected president for the coup really shows what an intriguing business the idea of a coup is. A president whose own legitimacy and power rest on the people's vote staging a coup against a likewise elected parliament is above all an assassination against the electoral process. Such a coup cannot be in favor of a country, nor even in favor of an elected president in that capacity. Because such a coup also seriously destroys the president's own legitimacy.

This coup, which began with the president's suspending the parliament, bases itself on Article 80 of the constitution. That article points to some measures the President may take if he deems it necessary, which necessity refers to situations such as the country's entering an inextricable crisis, becoming ungovernable, being caught in a serious security crisis. But there is neither such a crisis or ungovernability in the country, nor is such a decision ever taken without consultation with the country's other politicians. A significant portion of the government in office to run the country had in any case been appointed again by President Kais Saied himself, and yet he, behaving toward this government almost like an opposition leader, was obstructing its work, including through actual interventions.

It was in fact not unforeseen that the intention of Kais, who took extremely strange actions, was to produce chaos out of the situation he himself created and seize the government; yet it was still not thought he could do it, because when he was already president and in a position to work comfortably with the other political actors, his resorting to such a path means first of all a coup against himself. Of course, for this he must have had an entirely different agenda, and it is understood that he does.

Kais Saied is in fact a profile resembling, for example, our Ahmet Necdet Sezer. Until the day he was elected nobody knew him properly. Just as Sezer's only reference was a speech full of democratic messages given at the opening of a Judicial Year, what formed a reference for Saied was likewise only a speech or two containing messages that were national, anti-French-colonial and committed to the Palestinian cause. How these formed a reference for him is plain. From the moment he came to power, Saied began to surprise with a performance of representing France rather than his own people. His most recent visit to Libya was an unexpected one; those who wondered about the reason were astonished when they soon learned that this trip was solely within the scope of a kind of ambassadorial mission on behalf of France. Because France, which does not have good relations with the current Libyan administration, was thus putting the Tunisian President to work as a mediator.

The aim of this coup, which in the end could never have been taken in the name of the Tunisian people and for the benefit of the Tunisian people, is to end faith in democratic processes and to make the Tunisian people thoroughly regret the zeal for democratization that had seized them.

That an elected-by-popular-vote president is used as a tool for such an assassination on behalf of France, the BAE and SA, who are the actors of coup politics against the politics of democratization, shows the dimensions of the intriguing mind that produces coups.

But beyond this, we are once again facing a clear example of hypocrisy: that the so-called modern democratic world's preference in the Islamic world has never been democracy, and that it has always been in cooperation with coups and anti-democratic forces.