Turkey as an Alternative Model for the Arab Spring Countries
Hanefi Yazıcı

Abstract
Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, whether or not the “Turkish Model” will be the best democratic model for the countries in the Middle East has become one of the crucial discussion issues. However, it has caused misperceptions because of the misinterpretation of the model. This article claims that the full application of the “Turkish Model” to Middle Eastern countries is not possible due to cultural and political differences, however, despite these differences, the “Turkish Model” is a good alternative for several areas such as the state-religion relations, economic development, and advanced democracy. The first part of this article addresses the differences between the Arab Uprisings and the Gezi Park Protests in Turkey. The second part assesses whether Turkey is changing its axis under the rule of AK Party. The third section evaluates that the crisis in Syria is different from other Arab Spring countries. The fourth section analyzes the new Turkish Foreign policy for the Arab Spring countries. The last section evaluates the military coup in Egypt and tries to understand whether the Arab Spring will turn into Arab Winter. In this respect, it is obvious that the reasons which provoked the Arab Spring must be analyzed in details. Therefore, the paper assumes that foreign policy is not independent from domestic affairs and aims to analyze the Arab Spring countries in terms of relations among secular and Islamic blocks in the region.

Full Text: PDF