The Turkish Model??? Egypt after Mubarak

During the recent upheaval in Egypt, public opinion as well as various talking heads in Turkey uttered that Turkey could serve as a role-model for the Arab world, particularly given Turkey’s proven democratic experience and recent popularity on the Arab street. The director of the Turkish Research Program at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy Soner Çağaptay published a piece in the Hürriyet Daily News to that effect: “Turkish model for Egypt?”.[1]  In his op-ed, Çağaptay talks about “the ‘Turkish model’ of democracy-craft, i.e. the art of conducting democratic affairs, which in Turkey involves the military playing a stabilizing role during the transition process while Islamist parties moderate through political participation”.[2] 

Tayyip Erdoğan, in turn, made this statement: “We wish for High Coucil of the Egyptian Armed Forces that is in power in Egypt now, to act gently with common sense and to hand over the authority to the new administration to be formed in fair and free elections as soon as possible; and we wish the passage into constitutional democracy that is shaped by the will of people”.[3]  And here is TRNN’s Paul Jay talking to Professor Gilbert Achcar, whose research interests and publication topics include: the political economy and sociology of globalisation, the global power structure and grand strategy, empire theory and the unfolding of US hegemony globally and in the ‘Broader Middle East’, politics and development economics of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, the sociology of religion in general, of Islam and Islamic fundamentalism in particular, social change and social theory.

 

 

---

[1] Soner Çağaptay, “Turkish model for Egypt?” Hürriyet Daily News (04 February 2011). http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=turkish-model-for-egypt-2011-02-03. 

[2] Soner Çağaptay, “Turkish model for Egypt?”.

[3] “Turkey wishes constitutional democracy for Egypt” TRT-World English (12 February 2011). http://www.trt.net.tr/trtInternational/en/newsDetail.aspx?HaberKodu=f5b273de-8d88-4b4f-8d56-838efcee7ec4&title=Turkey%20wishes%20constitutional%20democracy%20for%20Egypt.