BY OMER TASPINAR
SABAH - US President Barack Obama made his decision and chose Egypt as the place to visit in order to make an important speech to the Islam world. This situation isn't so pleasing for Turkey, because it would be more correct to make such an important speech in Istanbul. But now it's Egypt's turn to get excited about Obama. As far as I can see here, the Egyptian people seem to be very happy. An Egyptian friend of mine who's also a political scientist made a joke about it, saying to me that as Turkey is European, he has chosen Egypt.
Joking apart, Obama's preference about Cairo is now a very important matter of prestige for the Mubarak administration, which has felt a serious competition between Turkey and itself about leadership in the Middle East. On the other hand, many people criticize Obama for choosing such an authoritarian country like Egypt. A great many people, mostly the human rights and democracy lobby in Washington, think that such a speech should be made in a more democratic country. When the 'democracy in the Middle East' is mentioned, one remembers the era of Bush. As you can remember, when the Bush administration insisted on democracy in the region, the Muslim Brotherhood got the best of Egypt and the Hamas in Palestine.
So the dilemma faced by Obama is understandable. One of the most difficult questions which confuse Obama, who has come into power to clear the mistakes that were made in the era of Bush, is whether the democratization in the Middle East would always be beneficial for Islamic movements. It seems always the Islamic parties will come into power, if the elections in the Middle East are held freely and democratically. The political movements with the broadest base which are oppressed by oppressive regimes in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia all have Islamic roots. If genuinely democratic elections are held in the future, most of these movements could win a victory.
This fear can be defined with the term 'one man, one vote, one time.' In other words, there is such an anxiety that elections will be held once, Islamic ones will win and no more elections will be held. On the one hand, Washington requests democracy, and on the other, it's scared that democratic elections would cause theocracy. But this fear of democracy suffered by the US strengthens the status quo and deepens the problem, because the authoritarian systems supported by Washington consider the mosques as the only opposition. This way the authoritarian regimes strengthen the Islamic movements more.
So what is the solution? If both the autocracy and democracy serve Islamic movements, what should the US do? The solution is based on not considering the democracy only as a preference, but starting a process of institutionalization through rights and freedoms, namely, constitutional principles. There is only one alternative, that is, gradual political openings and gradual democratization, instead of holding the elections immediately. In this process, the aim should be creating a free political domain for the opposition and thus the political Islam shouldn't be the mere alternative anymore.
Of course these democratic openings shouldn't be 'cosmetic.' As my democratic and liberal friends in Cairo always say, Egypt hosts hundreds of weak non-governmental organizations. The authoritarian Mubarak regime loves these organizations very much, because the regime can easily keep them under control. The libertarian constitutional reforms and thus real political parties should be strengthened, instead of cosmetic organizations. Of course, Turkey has the most serious democratic experiences about all these issues in the Islam world. Thus we shouldn't get stuck in concepts of 'model' or 'moderate Islam' when the US shows us as an example, but we should explain the importance of 'gradual democratization and institutionalization'.