Democracy

Azmi Bishara, General Director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue on the topic “Did Democracy Lose this round? And Why?” on November 28, 2016.

Opening remarks by Mr. Khalil Jahshan and Ms. Randa Fahmy, followed by Dr. Azmi Bishara's morning Keynote Adress at ACW's first annual conference (2016), Democracy in the Arab World: The Obama Legacy and Beyond.

It is not Arabs alone who are caught in the crises of Syria and Iraq, whose Arab identity and unity are at risk. Iran is also facing a real crisis there. Iran is so drained in these two countries that it has had to take action to address the state of restlessness among Iraqi Shia Arabs. One can only imagine what Iran's position in Iraq will be like a decade from now.

It is a known fact that many essentially political and social conflicts, and rivalries over power, have been deliberately framed in a sectarian manner to mobilise people on the basis of sectarian identity, and thus re-shape said identities and manufacture them where they do not exist. 

Most Arabs, like people everywhere, just want a better life and to live in safety. Terrorism, as dangerous as it is, is a transient phenomenon that does not constitute a social-political alternative to existing regimes.

The Turks, a people who have long suffered from military rule, have only bitter memories of coups. In their political culture, the Turkish people consider military coups, regardless of the lure of their discourses and slogans, an assault on their will and right to choose their rulers.

Dr. Azmi Bishara

One way or another, we thought that 2011 finally debunked the oft-repeated claims of Arab exceptionalism as an "explanation" for reluctance to begin a democratic transformation.

Tunisia is facing immense challenges. Its experiment is surrounded by grave risks, most of which are socio-economic in nature. True, the political landscape of Tunisia is yet to settle on a stable form. However, this is not the main threat to the fledgling Tunisian democracy.