Change in the Arab World: has the future come?

The theme of the Al Jazeera Forum, being held for the sixth time this year, is: the change taking place in the Arab world, the actors of the change, and the nature and future of this change. Fine papers, one better than the next, are presented in brainstorming sessions held with guests invited from all over the world. From each of the countries in the belt of revolution, on which everyone's eyes are fixed, the leading actors of the revolution are invited both as speakers and as subjects of the discussions. Among them are human rights activists, civil society figures and opinion leaders from every country, names that have come to the fore in Facebook and Twitter communities, and of course representatives of numerous youth movements. From Tunisia Rached Ghannouchi, Moncef Marzouki, Malek Hadraoui; from Egypt Fahmy Howeidy, Tarek al-Bishri, Asmaa Mahfouz, Islam Lotfy Shalabi; from Palestine Osama Hamdan; from Libya Abdulkarim Abusha; from the US John Esposito are some of these names.

Former Brazilian president Lula da Silva and Foreign Minister Prof. Ahmet Davutoğlu delivered the opening speeches on the 2nd day.

What da Silva related from his 8 years of presidential experience in Brazil contained important emphases that will shed light on the Arab world's present searchings. There is an astonishingly great parallel between the path Brazil followed under his leadership and the path followed by the AK Party in Turkey. The child of a poor farming family with 8 children, who had not attended university, his rise from laborer to trade union leader and from there, after three elections, to the presidency...

After becoming president, in foreign policy he connected Brazil, whose face until his time had been turned only toward the US and Europe, for the first time with the Middle East, Latin America and the other neglected regions of the world. The economic result of this was that the country rose within a short time to be the seventh largest economy in the world. Domestically too, by developing education, especially university education, he included a significant part of the population in the system and took measures toward spreading prosperity to the people. One of the interesting measures he took, similar to those in Turkey, was the aid he gave to educated families, and his delivering this aid by depositing it especially directly into women's accounts. For precisely this reason, da Silva said, Brazil was one of the countries least affected by the economic crisis that began in 2009 and is still continuing. That is, as a result of parallel policies, the crisis grazed Brazil too in passing.

One of da Silva's more impressive emphases was what he said about democracy and the transfer of offices. Because of his highly acclaimed successes, he was offered an extension of his term of office. Of course this offer, which required a constitutional amendment, he rejected by giving a historic lesson: the first condition for democracy to work is that everyone obeys the rules and that no one regards himself as indispensable for any role. The opposite understanding can easily lead a country to dictatorship, and has not this been the problem of the Arab world all along?

After da Silva, Davutoğlu's speech was also full of striking observations. He built his speech by examining the question chosen as the title of this year's forum. Has the future (istikbal) arrived? Yes, it has arrived, indeed it has in fact even arrived late.

According to Davutoğlu, the past of the Islamic world is the history of two great abnormalities that tore this world to pieces and paralyzed its will. The first was colonialism. The colonial powers, creating artificial countries and dividing them among themselves, tried to undo the Islamic world. The second abnormality was the Cold War, which loaded the borders between Islamic countries with the weight of the border between the two blocs, and relations were thus kept at a minimum level for many years. Today's revolutions, and perhaps the new intensive relations strategies Turkey embarked upon from even before them, are bringing these worlds together again and rendering the artificial borders between them ineffective. Thus, if the past of the Islamic world was a history of abnormalities, the future that has now arrived is becoming a history of normalities.

The impression I had at the Al Jazeera forum, which I had attended before as well, I get all the more this time. The Arab world has for quite some time been experiencing a genuine enlightenment. The revolutions cannot be understood simply as an outburst of anger, nor as a wave of masses unaware of themselves set in motion by chance by Facebook or Twitter. Behind them lies a tremendous intellectual and strategic consciousness, an accumulation you may call, if you wish, an Arab-Islamic Enlightenment or renaissance. The intellectual accumulation, self-confidence and capacity for self-expression of the young people speaking make themselves felt at every level.

If one of the actors of the change is the new social media, there is no doubt that a much earlier and more effective actor is Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera is aware of its own role and does not neglect to continue seeking to make this role more productive and more "beneficial."

Arab dictators too are aware of this role and can be direct targets. In the middle of the forum came the news of the martyrdom of Al Jazeera reporter Ali Hassan al-Jaber, who was attacked in Libya while on duty. This is the best indication that the role the channel plays is no joke...

Al Jazeera's director general Waddah Khanfar, who is at once an activist, a philosopher and a powerful orator, declared Jaber a "martyr of truth" and, on this occasion, underlined the mission of Al Jazeera, or of honest media, in change: Truth. When you show only the truth, no matter whom it suits... Even if it does not suit you, truth is what in the end will serve everyone.