The Arab Spring, Syria and France's dirty laundry

We are leaving behind one year of the Arab Spring, which is being lived with its ups and downs. The self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian university-graduate street vendor, in protest at the ill treatment he received from municipal officers, pulled the pin on an Arab world that had become ready to explode.

On the very anniversary of this event, which took place on 17 December 2010, the global and regional effects of the Arab Spring were laid on the table at a symposium organized over the weekend by the Öz Orman İş Union. The symposium, attended by many academics, journalists and activists from the lands of the Arab Spring and from Turkey, became one of a series of important events these days within the framework of Turkey's interest in this spring.

It was a meaningful symposium in terms of ensuring the continuity of interest in this subject, and especially of securing the active participation of a workers' union in this interest. In my view, the union representatives' attempts to explain themselves in showing interest in this process "as a workers' union" were unnecessary. Of course they must not neglect the matters related first and foremost to their field of duty, but workers' problems today are not independent of the effects of the unjust world order that has brought the Arab world to the point of revolt. Nothing could be more natural than for unions to take interest in the more historical and global course of labor beyond its day-to-day problems. Historically it has been so; even though this historical interest has at times, owing to very far-fetched theoretical views, been cut off from realities and put at the service of migrations that steer the process in a form of over-determination, this never prevents unions from taking an interest, in the context of the history and meaning of labor, in what goes on in their near and far surroundings.

While trying to determine the global and regional effect of the Arab Spring, one must never lose sight of the fact that the process is continuing. The spring is not passing without storms, even hurricanes. More serious signs are coming every day that the military administration in Egypt does not want to hand over its powers in any way, even though the results of the first two rounds of the elections now under way have been received. The senseless and merciless violence displayed over trivial incidents seems aimed at creating suitable opportunity zones for derailing the revolution by inviting counter-violence. In a significant part of the Egyptians who took part in the symposium as speakers, this situation feeds a concern that the military will not easily relinquish its powers or its tutelage.

Whether the Egyptian army is pursuing this policy for the sake of keeping these powers in the name of its own class existence, or in the name of the US, to which it is very closely related and on which it is dependent, is also a serious question. The question of how the US consented to this, although it has no interest, indeed an open loss, in the visible results of this process that looks like a spring for the Arabs, still stands. That is why every problem originating from the military is perceived as the US finally entering the stage.

The regional effect of the Arab Spring makes the region's demands on the road to democratization unstoppable. If it is carried through to its end, it is very clear that these peoples will find themselves. For the US, Israel and the EU, however, what this means is the coming to power of Islamist political parties. However much this is at times attempted to be soothed with sensible assessments, it sets serious concerns and antipathies in motion.

That Islam, a rising star in the West as an object of "fear" and "hatred," should shine as the strongest carrier of democracy leads to serious disappointments. This is a somewhat strange situation, of course. Western public opinion is not ready to see that Islam turns out not to be the kind of threat alleged. They want to see the kind of "cut-and-hang shariah" they constructed in their Orientalist imagination. Yet Islamic parties say "freedom," they say "justice," "development," "democracy," "human rights," or at most "light" or "virtue." It is hard to produce a story of great danger from politics organized around these values. By contrast, the stories of xenophobia and Islamophobia growing ever higher in the West every day tell of far more real dangers.

The spring process is leading to a meeting, a fusion and possible common cooperation among the Arab peoples. The borders and distances put in place among them with artificial nation-state identities, which have made each country a colony of other countries, are becoming ineffective and meaningless with the winds this spring blows. In each of the countries, a will to independence through democratization is increasingly beginning to crystallize. With independent governments that bring the people's will to the fore, a re-examination of all international relations will also become inevitable.

It is not prudent to expect such a spring to blow winds of happiness toward America, Israel and Europe. That is why they are doing everything in their power to try to derail the revolution. After the unarmed revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt, the role that the US and especially France, which inserted themselves into the ranks of the revolution via Libya, are trying to play today via Syria as well is nothing other than this. If hundreds of thousands of people died in Syria, no one would care. To expect France, which has in no way concealed that the only thing it looked to in the Libya intervention was oil and other natural wealth, to be mindful of humanitarian concerns in Syria today would be naive.

Yet Turkey's view of this region is not like the others', nor can it be. The US and France can always come together again with the Syrian administration and continue from where they left off. It is better understood today that in this process they were trying to put Turkey in an offside position. That the Sarkozy of the same France is today playing the Armenian bill card is entirely related to this.

Frankly, these are efforts aimed at eliminating the indisputable gains for Turkey of its intention and effort to reduce its problems with its neighbors to zero.

All of them will be efforts in vain. The spring has now begun, and there is no question of these countries' futile efforts stopping it. It is also not possible to keep Turkey away from this spring climate; Turkey lies right in the middle of that climatic belt. Raising the subject of genocide will not benefit France either; on the contrary, the more this subject is raised, the more the dirty laundry of France or of others will be spread out in the open.