Cauldron of Conflict

The “Arab Spring” of 2011-12 has profoundly changed the Middle East, but much is misunderstood about its effects.  First, it did not produce, other than in Tunisia, lasting liberalization and more democracy in the states of the region. Second, the Arab Spring was not just “Arab,” but it also had an Iranian element in the popular reaction to the rigged 2009 elections, as well as a Turkish element in the Gazi Square protests in 2013.  Furthermore, the Arab Spring did not all take place in 2011-12 but over a longer period.  Finally, ‘aftershocks,’ such as popular protests this year in Iraq, continue to be seen, and a definitive assessment of the phenomenon and its impact will have to await more time.

But what we can say, as one analyst put it recently, is that the Arab Spring replaced ‘deep states’ with weak states.  By deep states one means those semi-democratic (Turkey, Iran) or non-democratic (Syria, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen) states with engrained bureaucratic, military, intelligence, and business interests subtly dominating a supposedly constitutional system.  In all but Iran, those ‘deep states’ have been decisively weakened.  Libya and Yemen have collapsed, Syria is in tatters, and Egypt is politically and economically at a dead end with ever-increasing Islamist challenges including insurgents associated with al Qaeda and ISIS.  The deep states survived in Iran, Bahrain and Turkey, but the election of reformist President Rohani in 2013 in Iran, and the initial defeat of President Erdogan’s party in the June 2015 Turkish parliamentary elections, demonstrate that even those two relatively homogenous states (among the few true states along with Israel in the region) have much to fear from their own populations.