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“Dictatorship always tries to keep things secret,” he explained. “These kinds of testimonies are against forgetting. They will preserve memory for the country and serve as a way to guard such things happening in the future.”

Ridha Moumni, a curator of the exhibit, insists it is not political, but a matter of history. Yet he is displaying events that Tunisia’s dictators sought to suppress.“We have a very rich heritage that no one knew about,” Mr. Moumni said. “Our goal was to show that Tunisian modernity did not start with independence or colonization.”

it provides a history lesson on the significant reforms of the era — the founding of the army, the drafting of a constitution and development of diplomatic relations — that helped forge a nation

Among the original documents on display, one abolished slavery in 1846 — before the United States did so

a constitution drafted in 1860 that recognizes the rights of all citizens, including Christian and Jewish minorities, and census registers, in Hebrew and Arabic, belonging to Tunisia’s ancient Jewish community

Another discovery is the diversity of Tunisia’s leaders — from the Christian foreign minister, Giuseppe Raffo, to a Circassian general, Kheireddine Pasha, and the former slave Mustapha Khaznadar, who married into the royal family and rose to become the bey himself.

He was elected to parliament in 1989, becoming speaker from 1990 to 1991. He then ceased to play a role in politics and disappeared from public life

From 27 February to 13 December 2011, he administered his country’s affairs during the crucial first part of the interim phase that saw the election of the Constituent Assembly charged with drafting a new constitution

Essebsi founded the liberal Nidaa Tounes Party, which won a majority in the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2014 against stiff competition from the Islamist Ennahda Party. Essebsi then served as president of Tunisia until his death on 25 July

While he often came under the glare of his political adversaries for his affiliation with the former regime, he was nevertheless widely recognised as a patriotic leader who put his country’s national interests first as he navigated the political fluctuations at home and kept his country aloof from the political squabbles in North Africa and the Middle East.

Despite his major differences with the Tunisian Islamists, Essebsi was able to sustain a form of consensus, albeit fragile, for several years with the main exponent of this trend, the Ennahda Party.

In keeping with his progressive outlook, Essebsi championed a controversial bill granting Tunisian Muslim women the right to marry non-Muslims and an equally controversial bill calling for gender equality in inheritance rights that he had submitted to parliament in August 2018. He also had to deal with the thorny question of the election of members of the country’s Constitutional Court, interrupted as a result of partisan disputes and rivalries. Neither the inheritance rights nor the Constitutional Court question has yet been resolved

“Bourguiba did good things, but he also did some bad things,” said Jaloul Ghaki, president of the Tunisian Association of Amazigh Culture. “He sent us to school. He made sure we got an education. But his vision of Tunisia didn’t leave much room for our difference.” Ben Ali continued the basic contours of the policy, Ghaki says. “He suppressed the Amazigh language to preserve the unity of the country, as if the unity of the country depended solely on a common language.”

Tunisians don’t just eat and dress Amazigh. They also speak Amazigh. Modern Tunisian Arabic is full of Amazigh words (especially names for animals, such as fakroun for “turtle” or allouche for “sheep”). Many Tunisian place names, like Tataooine (which lent its name to a planet in the Star Wars movies) and Medenine, are of Amazigh origin. The name of the very country probably has its roots in Amazigh. Historians trace the word “tunes” to Amazigh inscriptions of the sixth century B.C., though it’s still unclear what the original word meant.

some accuse him of leading a separatist movement, while others attack him for advocating for the use of a language other than Arabic, which, they say, is “the language of heaven and the Quran.” “A lot of these accusations are rooted in ignorance,” he said. “Many people in Tunisia do not know that there is an Amazigh community. We once organized a peaceful protest in downtown Tunis. Some guy came to us told us to go protest in our own country. He thought we were Algerians or Moroccans.” Other Amazigh told me of Arab neighbors who accuse them of trying to break up the country, up to and including involvement in alleged Western conspiracies to undermine Arab civilization.

Grine, of the Amzigh club, said she would like to see it taught as an optional language in schools, alongside other foreign tongues such as Hebrew, Turkish, and Korean.

Mouldi Fehem, a member of the PDP, one of the parties present at the event, disagreed with the representatives of the coalition, stating that it was normal for parties who share similar views to gather and express their opinions, especially now with the “advent of religious extremism.” “We are all here because we want to protect people’s freedoms and rights,” he said. When asked about attendees who shared close ties with the RCD, he replied, “We should not let our desire for revenge take control over us; we should first see who really was accountable for the crimes committed by the former regime.”

The transitional justice system is not working well, and unless something is done the previous clan will take over again.

Tunisia could be the most "laique" eligible country , more than many other arab and some european countries. Women emancipation and civil family laws are an example. Education rate is very high, and the gdp per capita is good.What's missing : transparency, freedom and real democraty.Please don't think that the regime of Ben Ali is the bastion againt extremists .. the unique bastion against all extremists are education , freedom , respect and well being. Fighting extremists by guns , fire and jail is a complete failure. Please note that the modern governments in maghreb countries have destroyed the islamic in-country traditional institutions known by their moderation and their knowledge of the religion whick maked the influence of "eastern islamic schools" like wahabism from saudi be predominant on the new era of staellite channels .. which is not very good news for all of us ..

“Bourguiba did good things, but he also did some bad things,” said Jaloul Ghaki, president of the Tunisian Association of Amazigh Culture. “He sent us to school. He made sure we got an education. But his vision of Tunisia didn’t leave much room for our difference.”

Ghaki said some accuse him of leading a separatist movement, while others attack him for advocating for the use of a language other than Arabic, which, they say, is “the language of heaven and the Quran.” “A lot of these accusations are rooted in ignorance,” he said. “Many people in Tunisia do not know that there is an Amazigh community. We once organized a peaceful protest in downtown Tunis. Some guy came to us told us to go protest in our own country. He thought we were Algerians or Moroccans.”

Published in the first few months after the 2011 uprising, Ben Mhenni’s book is the most euphoric of the four testimonies. Much of the narrative is a celebration of the power of cyber dissidence, which Ben Mhenni defines as a combination of citizen journalism (blogging and filming events) and on-the-ground activism

Convinced that the stultifying bureaucracy of political parties made them incapable of meeting the demands of the leaderless Arab Spring revolt, Ben Mbarek sought to create autonomous regional cells of civil rights activists throughout the country. Their job would be to address each region’s specific political needs

This testimony is more chronological and personal than Ben Mhenni’s. It constructs the author’s life teleologically as a journey from bourgeois indifference in suburbia to grassroots activism in the country’s downtrodden interior. It also documents Ben Mbarek’s co-founding of the civil rights network, Dostourna, which marked her renewed faith in “the power of citizens.”

Like Ben Mhenni, Ben Mbarek celebrates the politicizing power of social media, crediting Facebook for encouraging the rise of citizen journalism, which sparked her political (re)awakening. As she argues, it was thanks to citizen journalists from besieged cities that she finally felt connected to the leftist cause long championed by her father.

While acknowledging how her parents’ history of resistance as members of the UGTT prepared her for a life of activism, Ben Mhenni attributes much of her political development to the “real-world” friendships she established with cyber dissidents in the Tunisian blogosphere.

As a professor of philosophy, Belhaj Yahia champions the values of the Enlightenment and believes in the vital importance of dialogue. Accordingly, her text probes the origins of the discord between Islamists and secularists, in order to understand the tensions marking the post-Ben Ali period

she analyzes the “schizophrenic” discourses of her diasporic family members and the “narcissistic wounds” of old dissidents, who are now mimicking Ben Ali’s authoritarianism. She also critiques the regional and class disparities perpetrated by the old regime

Belhaj Yahia believes she is the product of a moderate and worldly national education, which is currently under threat in Tunisia. She locates this threat in the state’s gradual abandonment of public education and the resurgence of conservative ideologies

Her book ends with a call for other Tunisians to publish their own self-reflections, in the belief that writing and reading autobiographical accounts can pave the way for more understanding between the different factions comprising Tunisian society.

Fakhfakh’s book is a fictionalized diary written between January 14, 2011, the day of Ben Ali’s ouster, and May 18, 2015

Each diary entry is comprised of two parts. The first part is a summary of national and regional events with a brief commentary from the author; the second part is a biography of a pioneering Tunisian woman

As the author notes throughout the book, state attempts to propagate an institutional-form of feminism have devalued women’s history

The author worries that women’s achievements are constantly erased, in order to accommodate the ego of male leaders, like Bourguiba. She is also concerned that the rise of political Islam may eventually obscure Tunisian women’s “legacy of freedom” even further

Fakhfakh embraces the narrative of “Tunisian exceptionalism,” in which Tunisian women are presented as the most progressive in the Arab and Islamic world. This nationalist mythology about Tunisian women is common, even among Tunisian intellectuals, and is used as a means of differentiating and elevating Tunisian women above Arab and Muslim women more broadly. The inherent divisiveness of this narrative is problematic, and is left unexamined in Fakhfakh’s book

the Revolution did not bring the Islamists to power, rather they seized power in the context of the elections that followed. Notably, it is by shifting debates into the field of identity that they could win these elections, while parties, notably the left, failed to build a single and audible speech in the confusion that reigned

the revolution did not take place in a “fallow” social field or a tabula rasa. The national movement and the struggle for independence contributed to the formation of political and administrative elites. Bourguiba's long reign was not only terror and could not prevent the development of a strong trade union movement, or of a feminist movement still active despite its appropriation under the Bourguibist regime, who built an image of liberating the country and its women,[3] and then under the Ben Ali dictatorship, who used it as an excuse to earn its stripes of modernist despotism, fighting against the Islamist threat. This wealth of mobilization and the social movements’ vigor has had a paradoxical fate: they have produced highly recognized characteristics of modern Tunisia (notably secularism and the status of women), while being the victims of a repression

the extent of the crackdown on leftist movements from 1968 to 1978, under the Bourguiban power, which eventually struck the Islamists, led to the implementation of a "selective" education of contemporary history in primary and high schools, and the Benalist propaganda simply replacing that of Bourguiba

the constitution of the party led by former Interim Prime Minister, Beji Caid Essebsi, Nida Tounès. Such an agglomeration of political forces would have been unimaginable a few years earlier. Indeed, this party brings together many of the former partisans of Ben Ali’s regime - and Bourguiba’s – and, like Essebsi himself, a fraction of the post-communist left under the banner of the struggle against the Islamists and for Tunisia’s modern identity. There are those who have been adversaries for a long time, employing a platform that takes great care to remain on the side of national identity (especially vis-à-vis the outside world), of "progressivism," and of modernity, to avoid social and ideological issues. He stands in front of Ennahda as its mirror image. The emergence of such a force, unknown in terms of electoral score and what this might represent, shows the effect of "retrospective treason" produced by the passage from a revolutionary situation to a new context of electoral democracy. Meanwhile, it gave neither the time nor the effort to develop social positions establishing democracy. The press is weak and most often simply amplifies the voices of political actors without deepening the issues. Associations are quite present but very few of them have taken up the question of democracy, with the possible exception of those who were involved during the campaign

The union has also reaffirmed its independence and willingness to engage itself "alongside civil society and the Tunisian people in its diversity to defend not only the working masses, but also and above all, the Republic and its institutions.[6]” It is not surprising that the UGTT is the only prevailing force. It relies on its 517,000 members, its territorial coverage, and its history.

Here, there seems to be a form of necessary betrayal of the "democratic revolution”—difficult to perceive and to decrypt, bitter to those who experience it, but which certainly does not amount to one party’s representative takeover over the rest.

there has been a sharp increase in polarization between the Islamists and secular groups. Many secularists are convinced that Ennahda is working to undermine the country’s tradition of tolerance, especially through the apparently permissive stance it has taken to acts of violence by Tunisian Salafists, who are at once a smaller and more radical group than their Egyptian counterparts

the Leagues to Protect the Revolution. The Leagues are effectively a kind of militia, clearly now peopled by adherents of Ennahda even if not under the movement’s formal control, and they have been involved in a string of violent incidents. The most notorious of these was an attack on a regional branch of Nida Tounes last October in which the local party coordinator was killed. Chokri Belaid was among those who saw Ennahda as having created a climate of tolerance toward these attacks. In a TV interview recorded shortly before his killing, he charged Ennahda with having given a “green light” to political violence, and said that “Ennahda mercenaries and Salafists” had tried to break up a meeting of his supporters last weekend

The importance of restraining political violence between now and the next elections cannot be overstated. What happens next in Tunisia could have repercussions across the Middle East and North Africa. The European Union and other outside groups with a stake in Tunisia’s transition should send a clear and unambiguous message that turning a blind eye to political violence is incompatible with democratic principles

Bourguiba had decades to build a state and populate it with his supporters

Tunisia must adopt a long-term policy of reforming the deep state

mandated to investigate all human rights violations from 1955, shortly before Tunisia’s independence from France, to 2013

62,000 complaints

a dozen more hearings covering various human rights violations during the presidencies of Habib Bourguiba from 1956 to 1987 and Ben Ali, from 1987 to 2011, such as torture, abuses against union rights, sexual violence against women imprisoned for political reasons, and violations of economic rights

transferring cases of egregious human rights violations to specialized courts, which the transitional justice law and subsequent implementing legislation established but which have not begun hearing cases

Tunisian authorities have not investigated or held anyone accountable for the vast majority of torture cases, including notorious cases resulting in death in custody

parliament’s approval, on September 13, 2017, of a law on “reconciliation in the administrative field,” which offers blanket impunity for civil servants implicated in corruption and embezzlement who did not benefit personally

“You can feel that the priority of the state isn’t to create an independent judiciary,” he says, noting that the government isn’t taking seriously the advice and suggestions of judges for how to approach reform.

Corruption is a particularly sensitive issue. In a 2013 survey by Transparency International, more than half of Tunisian respondents said they perceived the judiciary to be corrupt or extremely corrupt. And the fact that there have been very few prosecutions of old regime figures — despite considerable evidence of their involvement in systemic malfeasance — has helped to tar the image of the entire justice system.

relations between judges and the police, who cozily coexisted under the old regime, are now experiencing serious friction as the interests of the two sides diverge

Judges who enjoyed relative freedom from criticism in the old days now find themselves under newfound attacks from human rights advocates, who accuse the judiciary (and the police) of using the country’s harsh anti-drug laws to harass government critics. Zammit says that virtually all judges are in agreement that the law is overly strict, which is why they routinely issue only the mandatory minimum sentence to drug offenders. “If you don’t think someone should be prosecuted for marijuana, don’t criticize the police or judges,” Zammit says. “Change the law.” And that’s the job of elected lawmakers, not judges.

a sort of social persecution of men and women who look religious — something that could further exacerbate Tunisia’s terrorism problem. Alienation pushes these people to the margins of society, making them psychologically fragile and more receptive to radical discourse targeted against the state. “How do you expect people to feel when they’ve been subjected to this sort of treatment?” said Ghaki. “They’ll feel hatred and a desire for vengeance.”

experiences frequent harassment by police and security personnel because she wears a face veil, the niqab. She said she once had to wait 45 minutes before she was allowed into a hospital. Though she offered to show her face and allow the security personnel to check her identity, she said they made sure to humiliate her before letting her go inside to visit her ailing relative.

While people have gotten used to seeing women wearing the hijab in Tunisia’s streets, niqabi women and bearded men are the country’s new scapegoats. Chaima said that she was once called a terrorist by a group of people in a passing car. “It’s not easy to be who we are in Tunisia,” she said. “Some people want to let us know that we have no place here.”

a group of lawmakers tried to exploit the rising fear of terrorism by proposing a law that would make it illegal for women to cover their faces in public. The draft law drew comparisons to a controversial 2010 law passed in France under president Nicolas Sarkozy. This is no coincidence. France is Tunisia’s former colonial power, and French law, culture, and values have had a profound impact on modern Tunisian society, particularly among the upper classes.

Decades of forced secularization under the Bourguiba and Ben Ali regimes made people less accustomed to the sight of traditional clothing and long beards. Displays of conservative religiosity are less common than in other countries in the region, and thus tend to draw scrutiny.

This kind of treatment inevitably contributes to the alienation and sense of exclusion felt by many of Tunisia’s most vulnerable people. It should be no surprise if some of them actually end up joining the terrorists who society has already classed them with. Sometimes it seems that the security forces aren’t even trying. Ahmed Sellimi, another of Mona and Tarek’s brothers, went to a police station one day to try to convince them to stop the harassment. “Why are you here?” asked the agent he addressed. “Why don’t you just go the mountains with the rest of the terrorists?”

because of the rising influence of orthodox interpretations of the faith, stambeli artists are careful to stress the monotheistic, Islamic essence of their practice

The origins of stambeli music resemble those of American jazz (even though the two genres don’t sound alike). In both cases, the musical traditions of former slaves combined with the diverse cultural influences of their new environments to create something radically new. Whereas slaves arriving in Louisiana mixed their music and practices with European, Caribbean, and American ingredients, slaves arriving in Tunis during the same period fused their animist practices with North African versions of mystical Sufism and orthodox Islam. Mounir Argui, a theater director and music producer who works with Bidali, says that the metal castanets that play such a prominent role in stambeli performances evoke “the sounds of chains and shackles” that the slaves once wore, while the chanting recalls the “moaning.”

the Tunisian state never prioritized the preservation of stambeli, focusing instead on the art and culture it considered highbrow

Many Tunisians see stambeli as an alien phenomenon associated with blacks, who are already widely viewed as not quite Tunisian. In post-revolutionary Tunisia, where asserting the Islamic character of the country has become an important political symbol for some, the pagan origins of stambeli also cause suspicion

As long as some Tunisians continue to see freedom of religion and freedom of art as mutually exclusive, the rare traditions like stambeli that manage to straddle both will find little space

The Tunisian Coast Guard picked up 31 Tunisian youths on Sunday, a day after stopping three attempted crossings and seizing five small boats and a large sum of money. A total of 188 migrants, 56 of whom were Tunisian, were saved, while 11 other attempts to embark on the journey to Europe were stopped, according to the Interior Ministry.

dozens of migrants, most of them from Tunisia, reached the Italian island of Sardinia over the weekend

Among the 1930s cultural and intellectual figures given place of pride are Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and John Steinbeck. Guernica is reproduced in an inset about Picasso, illustrating the artist’s hatred of war. (47) A lengthy excerpt from the Grapes of Wrath concludes with Steinbeck’s denunciation of depression-era America: “And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.”

The book places added emphasis on the harsh terms imposed on Germany at Versailles. Prefiguring the later treatment of Al Qaeda terrorism, the intention appears not so much to justify Nazism, but rather to present injustice as the causal force behind violence and cruelty in world politics.

Early Cold War era decolonization also provides an opportunity to celebrate Atatürk’s role as an anti-imperialist hero for Muslims and the entire Third World. (122-123) “Turkey’s national struggle against imperialism in Anatolia struck the first great blow against imperialism in the 20th century,” the authors write. “Mustafa Kemal, with his role in the War of Independence and his political, economic, social and cultural revolutions after it, served as an example for underdeveloped and colonized nations.” Atatürk himself is quoted as saying, in 1922, that “what we are defending is the cause of all Eastern nations, of all oppressed nations.” Thus, the book explains that “the success of the national struggle brought joy to the entire colonized Islamic world, and served as a source of inspiration to members of other faiths.” The section ends with quotes from leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and Habib Bourguiba about how Atatürk inspired them in their own anti-imperial struggles or was simply, in Nehru’s words, “my hero.” An accompanying graphic shows Atatürk’s image superimposed over a map with arrows pointing to all the countries, from Algeria to Indonesia, whose revolutions were supposedly influenced by Turkey’s War of Independence.

The foundation of the UN is immediately followed by a discussion of Israel under the heading “Imperial Powers in the Remaking of the Middle East.” (80-81) The Palestine problem, students learn, is the principal cause of conflict in the region. It began when the Ottoman Empire, “the biggest obstacle to the foundation of a Jewish state,” grew weak, leading to the creation of Israel.

Next comes a discussion of the post-war financial order and the International Monetary Fund. Students learn that “the IMF’s standard formula, which recommends austerity policies for countries in economic crises, generally results in failure, chaos and social unrest.” (81-83) An excerpt, which students are then asked to discuss, explains how the IMF prescribes different policies for developed and developing countries.

only in the context of the Cold War origins of the EU does the book engage in any explicitly religious clash-of-civilizations style rhetoric. The idea of European unity is traced back to the Crusades, while a quote about the centrality of Christianity to European identity appears under a dramatic picture of Pope Francis standing with European leaders. (112) The next page states that the EU’s treatment of Turkey’s candidacy, coupled with the fact that “all the countries within it were Christian” had “raised questions” about the EU’s identity.

the Holocaust instead appears here as one among several examples of Western barbarity

The authors also offer a balanced treatment of the fraught domestic politics during the period from 1945 to 1960 when Turkey held its first democratic election and experienced its first coup. (138-142, 144-146) They focus their criticism on the negative impact of U.S. aid, arguing that Washington intentionally sought to make Turkey economically and politically dependent, then sponsored a coup when these efforts were threatened.

Selçuk Bayraktar, the architect of Turkey’s drone program, said that as a student “I was obsessed with Noam Chomsky.” [16] During the 1980s and 90s, America sold Ankara F-16 jets and Sikorsky helicopters that were used to wage a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in southeast Anatolia. No one was more critical of this than left-wing scholars like Chomsky.[17] Now, Ankara is selling Bayraktar drones to Ethiopia, where they are being used to kill civilians and destroy schools in another violent civil war.

The narrative of national independence also helps smooth over Turkey’s Cold War domestic divides. Students are introduced to the ‘68 Generation and left-wing leaders likes Deniz Gezmiş as anti-imperialists protesting against the U.S. Sixth Fleet in support of a fully independent Turkey. (185-186)[9] In this context, Baskin Oran’s work is again cited, this time quoting Uğur Mumcu on the role of “dark forces,” presumably the CIA, in laying the groundwork for Turkey’s 1971 coup.

The book also offers a relatively neutral treatment of political activism during the ensuing decade, suggesting that rival ideological movements were all good faith responses to the country’s challenges. On this, the authors quote Kemal Karpat: “Both right and left wing ideologies sought to develop an explanation for social phenomena and a perspective on the future. A person’s choice of one of these ideologies was generally the result of chance or circumstance.” (202) Thus the authors imply that while foreign powers provoked or exploited these movements, the individual citizens who participated in them can be given the benefit of the doubt. Interestingly, the book takes a similar approach in discussing the 2013 Gezi protests: “If various financial interests and foreign intelligence agencies had a role in the Gezi Park events, a majority of the activists were unaware of it and joined these protests of their own will.”

Turkey’s real struggle in the 21st century, as in the 20th, is against dependence on foreign technology

a book which begins with a portrait of Atatürk ends with a photo of the Bayraktar TB2.

the book’s biases are less in the realm of wild distortion and more reminiscent of those that plague ideologically infused nationalistic history education in all too many countries

its exaggerated critique of European imperialism may be no more misleading than the whitewashing still found in some European textbooks

At moments, Contemporary Turkish and World History is better aligned with recent left-leaning scholarship than the patriotic accounts many Americans grew up reading as well

Throughout the 20th century, America defined itself as the world’s premier anti-imperialist power, all while gradually reproducing many of the elements that had defined previous empires.[11] Today, it often seems that Turkey’s aspirations for great power status reflect the facets of 20th century American power it has condemned most vigorously

Turkey’s marriage of power projection and anti-colonial critique have been particularly visible – and effective – in Africa. Ankara has presented itself as an “emancipatory actor,” while providing humanitarian aid, establishing military bases, selling weapons across the continent.[13] In doing so, Turkish leaders have faced some of the same contradictions as previous emancipatory actors. In August 2020, for example, members of Mali’s military overthrew a president with whom Erdoğan enjoyed good relations. Ankara expressed its “sorrow” and “deep concern.”[14] Then, a month later, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu became the first foreign official to meet with the country’s new military leaders. “Like a brother,” he “sincerely shared” his hopes for a smooth “transition process” back to democracy

Amidst the polarization of the Erdoğan era, what is striking in this book is the authors’ efforts to weave together the conflicting strands of Turkish political history into a coherent narrative. Illustrating Ernst Renan’s argument about the role of forgetting in nation-building, this account glosses over the depth of the divisions and hostility between rival historical actors, presenting them as all working side by side toward a common national goal

certain themes dominate Contemporary Turkish and World History. At the center of its narrative is the struggle for global hegemony, in military, economic, technological and artistic terms