Views of the turn of fortune from Tunisia

President Abdullah Gül is addressing Tunisia's newly formed constituent assembly. While deputies from all parties attend the session in full, his speech is frequently interrupted by applause. To Gül's words, "The flag that excites me most abroad after the Turkish flag is the Tunisian flag. With their crimson color, crescent and star, our flags are practically the emblem of our ancient brotherhood," the members of the Assembly all respond by standing and applauding.

That these words receive so much applause is of course related both to the special regard for Turkey and to a particular item on Tunisia's agenda these days. Some from the groups called Salafi have lately lowered the Tunisian flag on a university campus and raised a piece of black cloth in its place. This act, assessed by representatives of the Nahda movement as merely a simple provocation, is, for the other circles that can be considered secularist, a sign of a bigotry that Nahda too encourages.

From this incident there are clear signs of a psychological warfare operation we are very used to from Turkey. Although they are very few in number, the excessive reactions shown to their actions instantly put their actions on the whole country's agenda. Since it is quite familiar from Turkey, we can guess very well where this is heading. The sensitivity formed around the flag and President Abdullah Gül's words about the flag thus coincided very well.

Gül states that even if it develops in its own naturalness, that is, even if there were no one's provocation, the solution to such excessive interpretations or attitudes is not prohibition or policies of repression but open-democratic movements like Nahda.

The Tunisian National Constituent Assembly of 217 seats, formed as a result of the elections of 23 October 2011, is truly worth seeing. It is, for the first time in the full sense of the word, a "people's assembly." It truly represents people from every segment of society. There is no restriction on dress in the Assembly; there are the headscarved and the unveiled, the bearded and the beardless. The great majority consists of people who spent years in prison or lived in exile in the time of Bourguiba or Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Besides the coalition formed after the revolution, the relations with the opposition too proceed in a manner gentlemanly to the point of being strange from where we stand. Because almost all of them went through similar ordeals in the time of the dictatorship, their rivalry with one another also takes place at the level of a delicate observance of law. According to what Gül relayed, although they are from rival parties, in private sessions they do not hold back from complimenting one another for what they suffered in that period.

Moncef Marzouki, elected as President, comes from the left tradition. He worked for years as a human rights activist, during which he was subjected to various repressions by the Ben Ali administration and experienced prison and exile. He insists on not wearing a tie and gives the impression that he carries out the protocols of the Presidential office almost as if it were torment.

Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali is also, from the beginning, the most important number 2 man of the Nahda movement (formerly known as the Islamic Tendency movement), whose founder was Ghannouchi. In the years 1981-1984, when Ghannouchi was in prison, he ran the movement's chairmanship, and then ran the political affairs presidency. He himself was arrested in 1992 because of an article criticizing the military judiciary and sentenced to 17 years in prison; of the 14 years he served, he spent 10 in solitary confinement.

The Assembly Speaker Mustafa Ben Jaafar is also someone from the left socialist tradition with a career of human rights activism, trade unionism and law.

What is more interesting about the Interior Minister is that he has now become responsible for the prisons in which he was held in the past and whose torture points he knows very well.

In short, today's Tunisia reflects an environment in which the turning of the wheel of fortune plunges one into lessons to be drawn.

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The President explained that they generally refrain from using the concept of "model country" because of the discomforts it can create, but Tunisians say that they take Turkey as a model without any reservation.

Indeed, some of the members of the constituent assembly formed to make the constitution say that they are waiting for Turkey's constitution and hope to shape their own constitution accordingly. Yet, as far as can be seen, their likelihood of making a constitution looks far easier and far nearer than Turkey's likelihood of making a constitution. Moreover, they have no insurmountable red lines against one another on the new constitution.

There are indeed those who want to take Turkey as a model, but it turns out Turkey has no preparation for this.

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Tunisia has accomplished the political revolution, but it can be said to be only at the beginning of the road for the economic revolution. Although the level of education is high, the corresponding institutions and sectors of a service society that would provide employment for the educated segment have not been sufficiently formed. This has meant that the anger that exploded rested on a qualified social stratum.

Although it was unemployment that triggered the revolution, no progress has yet been recorded in the 14 months since the revolution took place. Even so, the excitement and happiness of having made the political revolution seem for now to have given the government an important grace period.

Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay and Development Minister Cevdet Yılmaz have come to Tunisia quite prepared and with concrete projects to develop relations to the benefit of both countries. Post-revolution Tunisia's economic development has also opened a very important path of opening for Turkey. Turkey's performance on this path will be worth watching in every respect.