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Erdoğan’s brand is waning in the cities, the coasts, and among young people. Neither the new Erdoğan-shaped presidential system, nor his expansionist foreign policy are popular in these parts. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, chronic unemployment and inflation extinguished any hope of him bouncing back in the polls. Despite his total control over the state, mainstream media, and major capital groups, the president is unlikely to ever get much more than half of the popular vote.

The Erdoğan government now faced a question that all successful populist regimes must solve: What to do with the minority? They certainly can’t be granted free and fair elections, lest they attain the means to exact revenge. Nor can they be deprived of all their rights of representation, lest they be driven to revolt or treason. So how does a very slim majority of a country suppress the other half indefinitely? How does it rest easy, knowing that its hegemony is locked in?

The Erdoğan government surely knows that an attempt to “nationalize” all of the 30 million would be unrealistic. Rather, it seeks to separate the leftists and Kurds among them and brand them as terrorists, then turn around and securely pull the center opposition into the nationalist opposition.

Kuwait’s government took steps to mitigate opposition wins by enforcing new laws barring those who criticized the emir or religion from running. During the short campaign season Kuwait’s courts annulled the candidacy of dozens of opposition candidates. The government also turned a blind eye to illegal tribal primaries that took place in several electoral districts in Kuwait to avoid further agitating tribal opposition. While these primaries had taken place in previous elections, this time the results of many of them were posted on social media without fear of repercussion. Despite these measures, opposition candidates returned from four years of boycotts to capture almost half of the parliament’s 50 seats. In fact, only 20 MPs were re-elected by polls whose turnout reached 70 percent.

these results indicate a deep dissatisfaction with the government’s policies. These frustrations are shared by citizens across the Gulf Arab countries, whose governments have struggled to react to the economic fallout of low oil prices. Kuwait is unique, however, in that its politics are relatively democratic. Kuwait’s parliament can introduce legislation and interrogate government ministers. These powers allow citizens to challenge the government through formal institutions and amplify the importance of parliamentary elections in Kuwait as opposed to other Gulf Arab countries

The new parliament’s opposition is diverse—including Islamists, nationalists, and leftists—but likely to unite around common economic frustrations

The deputy head of Sudan's opposition Umma Party was sentenced to a week in prison on Sunday for demonstrating against the president, a party official and a lawyer said, as activists protested against emergency laws imposed last month.

Mariam Sadiq al-Mahdi, also a daughter of Umma leader Sadiq al-Mahdi, was among 16 people detained while demonstrating in front of Umma's headquarters in Omdurman, across the Nile from the capital Khartoum, defence lawyer Khalafallah Hussein was cited by Reuters as saying.

Another of Sadiq al-Mahdi's daughters, Rabah, was also arrested and fined 500 pounds, according to Hussein.

This controllable prosecutor-general, against which almost the entire prosecutorial corps protested and nearly succeeded in firing, was used quite clearly at will to go after the private media and the opposition as a direct extension of Morsi and the Brotherhood, while substantially legally shielding the Brotherhood at the same time.

In another breach of revolutionary consensus, Morsi and the Brotherood tightened control over state media and retained the nationally rejected role of information minister, already abolished briefly after the toppling of Hosni Mubarak. State-owned papers and channels were subjected to appointments of allied or controllable leaderships. The media often ran familiar propaganda-esque headlines that seemed taken out of the Mubarak days. Furthermore, the press did not provide neutral and balanced coverage of events, and state TV was almost always forced to host a Brotherhood guest on every talk show, or at the very least not host an opposition figure on his own. Reports of guest blacklists also began to surface once more. Charges of “insulting the president” and “contempt of religion” began to pile up against media figures, often made by Brotherhood allies rather than directly by the Brotherhood (though the presidency did press some charges before retracting them under local and international pressure). Morsi and the Brotherhood seemed to care very little about fixing the problematic legislative framework for media, and gradually appeared to find it handy, especially with a prosecutor-general that was under full control. 

Although the original claim was that the Shura Council would only rubber stamp consensus legislation until the lower house would be elected, it was turned into a full parliament. It discussed far-reaching and controversial drafts, including: a non-governmental organization law that was widely seen as capable of stifling civil society in Egypt; divisive electoral and political rights laws that were criticized as favoring the Islamists; and even a disastrous judicial reform law that would have axed around 3,500 existing judges in an already choking legal system. The latter draft was openly seen as a move to get rid of judges that were problematic to the Brotherhood’s expansionary plans, while there were wide fears of intentions to replace them with a new generation of more sympathetic judges or outright Brotherhood members.

a poster held aloft at the Bakırköy rally: Seni bilen hayran, bilmeyen düşman. “Those who know you are your followers, those who don’t are your enemies.” What struck me about this slogan was that it perfectly summed up the strength of the political message Erdoğan is espousing. It is a mantra that encompasses both support and resistance; it presupposes, even requires, opposition, while simultaneously dismissing that opposition as illegitimate

his narrative becomes even stronger the more he is seen to be under attack by his “enemies.”

Erdoğan’s slogan of the “national will”—a concept that sounds deeply creepy concept to many people—is far more compelling and less nebulous to many Turks than notions such as “the separation of powers” and “the rule of law,” particularly given that law itself has been tainted by the motives of the Gülenists.

It is true that this president did not win by a vast margin, but there is no requirement in a liberal democracy that that be a condition of electoral success. And even if, as the protesters have also insisted, he has been acting largely on behalf of his Freedom and Justice Party rather than the country as a whole, that by and large is how politics works in liberal democracies. There is much rhetoric about “the nation” and “the people,” but electoral democracies work not in favor of all citizens but rather of special interests represented by the party that wins in the elections. 

The trouble, as I see it, is that the pro-democracy movement has not thought critically enough about how the grand alliance against Morsi has come about and how the aims of that alliance conflict with their own aims. They seem to take it for granted that, having been on the winning side in the conflict with the Morsi government, they can now successfully confront the army and its civilian allies (i.e., big business, the media, the judiciary, etc.).

there are so many forces already arrayed against them that there was not much scope for the Morsi government for independent action. Morsi could have tried military officers for crimes? You must be joking. He could have restored a bankrupt economy in a world where powerful institutions and governments, who have their own political agendas, control the flow of capital? He should have reduced poverty in a country dominated by a powerful neoliberal elite? This is not where the real evidence of their incompetence lies–especially considering the short period of one year in which he was president. In my view, their total incompetence, their total stupidity, lies in not anticipating, to begin with, that they would be demonized if they acquired governmental authority. And demonized they were, with a vengeance. Part of this can be related to the crude secularist ideas that dominate most Cairene intellectuals. They were also highly incompetent in their inability, or unwillingness, to reach out to parts of the opposition. In any case, in my view they should never have aspired to the presidency–first of all as a matter of principle, and secondly because the uprising had created colossal practical problems which would be extremely difficult to address by any government. Winning an election does not mean that you are strong, as the Muslim Brotherhood thought it was. It means you are responsible for failures of the state and economy. And, despite their electoral win, the Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party are and were always weak. One of the things of which they were often accused was that they wanted totalitarian control of society, that they were on the verge of getting what they wanted, which is absolute nonsense, of course. They did not have such control, they could not acquire such control, and there is no real evidence that they wanted such control. This is one part of their stupidity: To be seen to behave as though they had real control of the state.

Ennahdha insists that a new government should be grounded in legal legitimacy. Moreover, it holds that forming an apolitical government would marginalize Tunisia’s October 2011 electoral experience, dissolving a democratically elected government and replacing it with the old top-down ruling style of the past. This would effectively turn Tunisia’s political clock back to January 13, 2011 -- the night preceding Ben Ali’s escape to Saudi Arabia.  Conversely, the opposition argues that no legitimacy derived from an electoral victory could ride out the murder of political leaders for which it claims Ennahdha is responsible, or the incompetence it argues Ennahda has displayed in running the state. “Their compliance with political violence and perpetual attempts to ‘conquer the state apparatuses’ is conspicuous and intolerable,” said Hamma Hammami, spokesman for a major opposition front, Jabha Chaabia, in an address to protesters in front of the NCA building last month. “We will continue to mobilize the people to occupy governorates and bring down the traitorous government and Constituent Assembly.”

In February of this year, following the assassination of leftist politician Chokri Belaid, the opposition succeeded in pushing one government into resignation and forced Ennahdha to make tough concessions and ultimately withdrew its ministers from heading the foreign, justice and interior ministries. Remarkably though, the quota of political pressure on Ennahdha did not abate as the opposition kept boosting more demands adding more confusion to the ongoing struggle for a genuine consensus with the Troika.

Ennahdha’s biggest vulnerability has been its failure – either because of lack of will or inability -- to push the judiciary into faster substantial reforms. Ennahdha has likewise failed to reverse the rotten arsenal of laws through which those past abuses were carried out, leaving Tunisia’s old regime-era penal code intact

Two years after launching their historic revolution, Egyptians are more divided than ever, and as the weekend’s deadly clashes have shown, violence has become the rule rather than the exception at Egyptian protests

deep and growing fissures in Egyptian society along generational, class, and sectarian lines

the election of the country’s first civilian president last summer and the adoption of a new constitution last month have only deepened the atmosphere of polarization and mutual delegitimization that has dominated Egypt’s transition since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak

Kuwaiti civil society is one of the most vibrant in the Gulf, hence its early rejection of the GCC Internal Security Pact, which was interpreted as yet another attempt to silence dissent in their own country. Many Kuwaiti activists resented Saudi hegemony, which the pact is meant to strengthen not only in the small emirate but the other ones, too. It is evident now that criticizing Saudi Arabia is taboo, the violation of which definitely leads to perhaps several years in prison. Kuwaiti apprehensions were not unfounded but they couldn't do much about the treaty that was ratified by their parliament. Several opposition groups boycotted the elections that eventually produced a docile body. On the other side of the border, there was no debate or controversy related to the pact as Saudis are completely disenfranchised. The only consultative council they have is appointed by the king and has no power to discuss security pacts with the GCC or other countries.

there is more to the recent detentions at the request of Saudi Arabia than simply freedom of speech. Regardless of their ideological affiliations, all the detainees belong to tribes that have historically lived between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Also all the detainees have gone beyond their Bedouin way of life to acquire education, political visions and determination to be part of states established when they were lacking skills. The governments of most GCC countries prefer the tribal Bedouin population to remain as part of folklore. Their ancient tents, camels and coffee pots are a reminder of a pure Arabian heritage, lost under the pressure of globalization, foreign labor populations and the ethnic diversity of the coastal states. So Gulf leaders, including the Kuwaitis and Saudis, prefer the Bedouin to be in the museum and the folklore heritage festivals rather than in public squares, demonstrating against corruption and calling for true citizenship

Today, not only Saudi Arabia but also Kuwait have to manage a different citizen, namely the "tribal moderns” who speak the language of human rights, freedom of speech, civil society, accountability, anti-corruption, elections and democracy. Such slogans are written on placards, chanted in demonstrations in Kuwait and virtually circulated in Saudi Arabia, as demonstrations are banned.

Erica Chenweth begins “Trends in Nonviolent Resistance and State Response: Is Violence Towards Civilian-based Movements on the Rise?” (Global Responsibility to Protect[1], July 2017) with the following rather discouraging statement, at least if you’re a protester: Through 2010, nonviolent mass movements tended to be surprisingly effective in removing incumbent leaders from power or achieving territorial independence, even when they experienced some repression from the government. However, since 2010, the success rates of nonviolent campaigns have declined by a staggering rate (about 20% below the average)

She speculates that the cause of the this decline is due to Authoritarian Adaptation: the ability of authoritarian governments to adopt more politically savvy repressive tools may be part of the reason for the decline in success rates in the past six years.21. Authoritarian leaders have begun to develop and systematize sophisticated techniques to undermine and thwart nonviolent activists.

Dana R. Fisher, Kenneth T. Andrews, Neal Caren, Erica Chenoweth, Michael T. Heaney, Tommy Leung, L. Nathan Perkins, and Jeremy Pressman in “The science of contemporary street protest: New efforts in the United States” (Science Advances, October 23, 2019). This is a fascinating article, which I encourage all big data fans to read in full. From the abstract: This article reviews the two most central methods for studying street protest on a large scale: building comprehensive event databases and conducting field surveys of participants at demonstrations.

the motorcycle-riding, leftist, feminist, pro-LGBTQ Canan Kaftancioglu, Istanbul district head for the Republican People’s Party (CHP).

Kaftancioglu is widely recognized at home as a key factor in her party’s success battling President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. She is both a public iconoclast and a tireless behind-the-scenes worker—and at 48 years old, a symbol of generational change in a party traditionally dominated by older men. Her style of politics is an implicit rejection of the nationalist faction of her own party

Since becoming Istanbul district head 2018, she’s poured energy into teaming up with other opposition parties, mobilizing young professionals, and developing a new approach—grassroots in organization, conciliatory in tone—to win over segments of the population that had previously often been ignored by the party.

About 100 Egyptian nationals living in Qatar have been asked by Doha authorities to leave the country within a few weeks time, according to an Egyptian opposition figure based abroad who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.  The move by Qatar comes after Egypt requested that the figures — all of whom are affiliated with Islamist groups — be delivered to Egyptian authorities, said the source.

Qatar has given the Egyptian nationals notice to leave the country amid a diplomatic rapprochement between Doha and Cairo that has blossomed over the past year. 

Helping bridge the distance between Doha and Cairo are the increasingly strained relations between the current Egyptian administration and its long-standing Gulf backers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as well as a number of economic investment opportunities, with potential for Egypt’s need for foreign direct investment to soothe its distressed balance of payments to align with Qatari interest in a number of key strategic economic sectors, including agriculture and telecommunications. 

the elections have afforded the regime room to breathe

For the moment, the state seems confident that it commands the loyalty of the silent majority. For years, polls have found that most Jordanians are politically conservative, holding positive impressions of the king and royal family and darker views of political parties -- including the Islamists. Jordan has long been regarded as an oasis of stability compared to its neighbors who have faced invasion, foreign occupation and insurrection. Polls and interviews indicate that Jordanians put a high premium on a sense of security, the maintenance of which is of course a mainstay of regime rhetoric.

The opposition, on the other hand, draws its strength primarily from concerns about the economy and complaints about corruption in the cabinet and Parliament. Many in the opposition also note the state’s well-documented history of using “political reform” as a sop to critics. [3] In tough times, the regime pledges to open up the political system, but then offers changes that do little to alter the established power structure.

Egypt's feuding politicians renounced violence on Thursday after being summoned by the country's most influential Muslim scholar to talks to end the deadliest unrest since President Mohamed Mursi took power. It remains to be seen whether the pledge to end confrontation will halt a week of bloodshed on the streets that killed nearly 60 people. Opposition groups did not cancel new demonstrations scheduled for Friday. But participants at the meeting, including leaders of Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood and its secular rivals, described their joint statement as a major step towards ending a conflict that has made the most populous Arab state seem all but ungovernable two years after an uprising toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Al-Azhar, one of the main seats of learning in Sunni Islam worldwide, has tended to keep itself above Egypt's political fray. Its extraordinary intervention follows a warning by the army chief on Tuesday that street battles - which erupted last week to mark the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled Mubarak - could bring about the collapse of the state.

The secularists are nonetheless likely to continue to press for inclusion in a national unity government, a call also backed by the hardline Islamist Nour party in an unlikely alliance of Mursi's critics from opposite ends of the political spectrum. The Brotherhood rejects a unity government as an attempt by Mursi's foes to take power they could not win at the ballot box.

the stances of your administration have given political cover to the current authoritarian regime in Egypt and allowed it to fearlessly implement undemocratic policies and commit numerous acts of repression

Statements that “Egypt is witnessing a genuine and broad-based process of democratisation” have covered over and indeed legitimised the undemocratic processes by which the Constituent Assembly passed the new constitution, an issue which has in turn led to greatly heightened instability in the country. Calls for “the opposition [to] remain non-violent” and for “the government and security forces [to] exercise self-restraint in the face of protester violence” have allowed the police and the current Egyptian administration to shirk their responsibilities to secure demonstrations and to respond to the demands of the Egyptian people, and have allowed them to place the blame for violence and instability on protesters themselves. Urging “the opposition [to] engage in a national dialogue without preconditions” undermines the ability of the opposition to play a real role in the decision-making processes of the country, as these “dialogues” seldom result in anything more concrete than a photo-op with the president.

when these statements come from the world’s superpower — the one most able to have a positive or negative impact on policies in Egypt and the region, not to mention the biggest donor and material supporter of the Egyptian regime for the past 35 years — they become lethal ammunition, offering political protection to perpetrators of murder, torture, brutality and rape.

Germany's leading newspapers have together offered their support to Turkish opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, which has been raided by authorities, with the publication of a guest editorial.Thirty-seven German newspapers and their websites, including Spiegel Online, Die Welt, Die Zeit and Sueddeutsche Zeitung, ran the article on Tuesday as German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited Turkey.

"When the existence of civil society is threatened, then democracy is also threatened.”

he broad-based opposition movement has continued to subvert the Islamic Republic's ideological, political, and religious symbols and occasions through a range of sophisticated and creative means.

The false dichotomies of secular versus Islamic, and/or imperialist versus anti-imperialist which at one point may have applied to Iranian political discourse, are not applicable to the current national opposition movement in Iran.

Urgent necessities of a domestic nature have determined the timing of Operation Peace Spring that Turkey launched Oct. 9 along the Syrian border east of the Euphrates against the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has been building a self-rule in the region thanks to US protection and military support.

the operation came in the wake of the local elections earlier this year in which the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered major losses. The economic crisis bruising Turkey proved a major factor in the party’s debacles in big cities in the March 31 polls and the June 23 rerun of the mayoral vote in Istanbul, giving impetus to rupture trends within the AKP.

Ankara is greatly concerned over the prospect of a new refugee influx from Idlib that would further entangle Turkey’s Syrian refugee problem. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had warned in September that Turkey cannot tolerate another refugee wave atop the 3.6 million Syrians it is already hosting

Though the choreographed optics are intended to placate the community, pictures of Assad meeting with the distressed and offering shallow assurances are unlikely to offset the sight of cataclysmic flames devouring their homes. In a video shared on Twitter, an Alawite man films a fire surrounding his home. He sarcastically thanks the state for enabling its spread “because it’s irrelevant if we live or die.” In another video, a group of Alawites is seen criticizing government officials for their indifference, including a minister, whom they claim arrived for a photo op then subsequently drove off to avoid answering questions. The demographic’s small size and geographic concentration guarantees that word of such transgressions spreads quickly. The author’s Alawite sources on the coast echo these frustrations and claim they are widespread. They angrily questioned why neither the state nor its Iranian and Russian allies had assisted, especially given the proximity of the latter’s airbase at Khmeimim to the coastal mountains. 

On Oct. 9, state media’s Alikhbaria broadcast a video depicting a handful of Syrian soldiers struggling to put out small fires. Owing to severe water shortages, the troops were forced to use tree branches in lieu of hoses or buckets of water. The video was later shared on Twitter, where it elicited a mixture of mockery and condemnation from opponents of the regime. However, Alawite overrepresentation in the military means that these visuals denote a sense of loss and despair to the community.

The armed forces make up a key pillar of Alawite identity and have for nearly a century constituted their main institutional vehicle for attaining upward social mobility and prestige. The community’s loss of more than one third of their men of military age fighting for the regime against an overwhelmingly Sunni armed opposition has further entrenched this interdependence

the major issues that have dominated the first year of Emir Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al Sabah’s leadership and the prospects for Kuwaiti politics, which is once again in a state of ferment with no clear resolution in sight

Sheikh Sabah’s time as ruler was marked by an initial period of political deadlock that saw six parliamentary elections and more than a dozen cabinets come and go between 2006 and 2013, and then a calmer spell that culminated in the election of the National Assembly in November 2016, which became the first in nearly 20 years to serve its full four-year term.

The fact that Kuwaiti politics was less stormy between 2013 and about 2019 did not, however, denote that any of the contentious underlying issues had been resolved, such as the relationship between the mostly appointed cabinet and the elected (and strongly populist) MPs