Arab Spring

Arab women living in Turkey have established a union to help ensure that citizens live in harmony in Turkey and to find solutions to their social and economic problems. 

The Arab Women's Union announced its foundation in a statement on March 8 with the support of the Arab Cooperation Council and Arab communities' women's associations.

A conservative, Islamist-backed law professor looked set to assume Tunisia's presidency after polling agencies suggested he overwhelmingly won Oct. 13's runoff election in the country that unleashed the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprisings.

One of the reasons why the Arab Spring succeeded in Tunisia was the fact that the country has strong similarities with Turkey, rather than the rest of the Arab world, according to Safwan Masri, Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development at Columbia University. 

How nice were our dreams when we were entering the "information age." All totalitarian regimes, left and right, had fallen. The correctness of democracy and the market economy were certainly proven. 

The "Arab Spring" had elevated this optimism all together; "Muslim democracy" concepts started being debated. 

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said, "We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes…" He continued, "Instead, our focus must be on defeating terrorism and destroying [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant], and we will." 

While Trump was explaining the new foreign policy concept, he also made a historic confession.  

Ambassador Feridun Sinirlioğlu, a former Undersecretary at the Foreign Ministry who is Turkey's new "point man" at the U.N., believes the Middle East has to move toward a secular and democratic future.

 I came to the "capital of the world" for a panel at Columbia University on a new and highly interesting book: "The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions." Penned by the prominent academic Michael Walzer, it is a book that explains how the secular parties that founded most post-colonial states were soon challenged and even defeated by a religious revival.

Islamists have betrayed all hopes of being a part of democratization processes in Muslim countries. Turkey is no exception. Far from it, Turkey is the most significant example of that betrayal because it was once the most hopeful.

The Turkish government's Syria policy was based on the assumption that the U.S. and the West would put their weight behind toppling the Bashar al-Assad regime in the fall of 2011, as in Libya earlier in the same year. 

Clashes between secular and Islamist political forces came out into the open in many places after the Arab uprisings of 2011. The revolts lifted the lid on tensions that had long bubbled under the surface, though in places like Turkey the divide had defined politics for many years.