Fourteen years ago, on January 14, 2011, Tunisians filled Habib Bourguiba Boulevard, central Tunis, with cries of freedom and honor as they celebrated the ouster of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He fled the country and announced his resignation after 28 days of incessant violence that was demonstrated by public “activities” in almost every city of the country, due to the deadly suicide of the fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi in the town of Sidi Bouzid.
The victory of the Tunisian people against their longtime oppressor and his debilitating and corrupt regime was a surprise, so spectacular that it sparked Arab uprisings across the region.
In major cities from Yemen to Morocco, millions of people hungry for freedom joined Tunisian “occupiers” on Bourguiba Boulevard to celebrate the overthrow of their dictatorship and call for their release. With the achievement of the Tunisian people of “karama” (honor) and “hurriyya” (freedom) a new movement was born that put the whole region on the path of revolution “tahrir” (liberation).
More than ten years later, the legacy of these uprisings, which came to be known as the “Arab Spring”, is very mixed. Another Arab country, Syria, which began its revolution in Tunisia on March 30, 2011, armed rebels succeeded in ousting dictator Bashar Al-Assad last month, after 14 years of a devastating and losing war. In other countries of the Arab Spring, including Tunisia, the change came quickly but has been short-lived with authoritarian rule, repression and conflict re-entering the picture immediately after the initial success of the rebels.
All this, of course, does not remove the moral and political power of the 2011 riots. The cultural symbol of these changes – such as the extraordinary victory of the people who remained silent against some of the most protected countries in the world – has a lasting power.
The new moral and political forms of public life that emerged behind these revolutions continued in Tunisia and the rest of the Arab world. The political structure of the state prior to 2011 was dominated by the political corruption of the rulers who were given the position and the contempt and excessive pressure by the power of the administration and the practice of alienation. These changes inspired local people to want to talk about their governance and change the way we talk about and analyze post-colonial Arab relations.
Until today, January 14, 2011, it is a historical moment that ignited a moral fire, a cry for freedom, so to speak, for many people living in the Arab world. It infiltrated the hearts, minds and minds of young Arabs who were caught up in the noise of a better future. The Tunisian revolution and the subsequent ones in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria and Yemen attracted attention, confidence and moral strength due to the destruction of all the previously considered invulnerable, people-driven regimes.
However, we cannot deny that the flags of freedom and honor placed on the ruins of the regimes that fell were soon replaced by coups.
After the overthrow of authoritarian regimes in 2011, the appeal of the rebels lost its luster in many Arab Spring countries. This did not happen because of the idea of evolution itself which has fallen into disfavor among the Arab people who were “dwellers in the courtyards”. It was not because human rights activists, including those promoting electoral democracy (or the founders of “Islamic democracy”, such as Tunisia's Rachid Ghannouchi), were given enough time to prove or disprove their importance. In fact, the swing of the revolutionary pendulum from Tunisia to Egypt resulted in the “revolutionaries” being forced to defend themselves and forced to abandon their “revolutionary” interests. Of course, over time, revolutions and revolutionaries have gradually declined in every way.
In places like Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen with their newly gained independence, political parties began to deviate from the original intentions of their democratic origins. Resurgence of old forms of political power, economic and social conflicts, armed forces and systemic conflicts between deep-rooted protestors and civilians led to the split. Meanwhile, the economic disparity between the rich and the poor that sparked the early cries for freedom and dignity has not changed. This multifaceted problem caused people to start changing things, for example, the complete breakdown of the system of authority that was removed.
The result has been the creation of the so-called Arab Spring quasi-democracies which are said to be “hybrid regimes”, with mixed regimes, with less ideology that the Arab street called for during the Arab Spring uprisings.
Today, the prisons of some of these “democracies” hold political activists accused of “subverting the power of the state” – coercive charges that many consider to be a thing of the past after the 2011 terrorist attacks. The rule of law, which it was one of the essentials of the revolution, it has been abandoned, and the only law is being enforced against the people who should support the country from the open, if not the democratic parliament. Instead of using their skills for the benefit of the government, they are rotting in prison for the crime of threatening the authorities who gained control of the government after the revolution. Such a purge casts doubt in the minds of the people as to whether a revolution that would bring about the complete destruction of the old system of governance would be possible.
Under such democratic reforms, where freedom of assembly, participation, competition and opinion are constantly at stake, the elections lose credibility. Low voter turnout reflects the lack of democracy in elections held in places like Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia.
In many countries of the Arab Spring, the political opposition has the same weaknesses and democratic weaknesses as the rulers, which leads many voters to believe that elections are worthless even if they are fair and free. Inter-party democracy remains weak, if not non-existent. Those who lead political parties and civil society organizations tend to stick to leadership and oppose democratic change of positions. As a result, those who made the 2011 revolution – the people – are losing interest in the electoral process.
Of course, the blame for the breakdown of democracy since the 2011 terrorist attacks should not be placed on the deep ranks or political leaders alone.
The Arab regime has been revived and the strengthening of the revolution has been carried out in several cases in the last 14 years through the agreements that the Arab governments made with the authorities and Western organizations from the United States and the European Union to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For example, in countries such as Lebanon and Egypt, the IMF helped to keep dictatorships alive by providing money to the governments, reducing any hope the people might have had of finding new leaders or revolutionaries, who would solve their economic and political problems. .
Arab Street has not forgotten August 2013 I want to kill peoplewhich saw soldiers kill hundreds of people following democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi. They are no longer indifferent or unaware of the Western-backed Israeli massacres in Gaza and Arab countries that have not been able to end for 15 long months.
The Arab people are increasingly aware that their countries with intelligence or would-be military rulers are no longer dangerous watchdogs or migrants. They protect the borders and want to ensure the “stability” that is important to regional and western leaders.
This is perhaps the most important and lasting legacy of the Tunisian revolution and the spread of the Arab Spring. “The King” was not defeated, of course. But they have been revealed. Like the king of vanity in the famous history of Denmark, the nakedness of the Arab countries and their rulers has been impossible to hide. There are no clothes. There is no cover. There is no “democracy”, commercial politics, power sharing or free citizens. The riots have built a new relationship between the government and the people in the Arab world and let the cat out of the bag: the King has no clothes.
Fourteen years after the revolution in Tunisia, democracy is still missing in Tunisia and in many Arab countries. But so are the clothes of all kings, and the Arabs have noticed. The legacies of the gang are still there.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect Al Jazeera's influence.