Arab Spring
Historical context of the Arab Spring, its causes, impact and consequences.
The publication Decade after the Arab Spring: Turkey, Lybia & Syria primarily analyzes the modern political science phenomenon of the 21st century, which is called the Arab Spring. The project addresses the complex implications of the Arab Spring towards Europe and the European Union in a clearly predefined timeline since its outbreak, evaluating its consequences after ten years and the resulting issues aimed primarily at Lybia, Syria and Turkey.
The Arab Spring, as a revolutionary wave of demonstrations, protests and unrest, redefined the European Union’s existing geo-strategic concepts and security and foreign policy towards the Middle East and North Africa and Turkey, and demanded a new flexible, prompt and coherent EU workshop concept.
The desire for freedom often needs an external impulse to fully surface and turn into a real revolutionary zeal. As revolutions overthrew authoritarian governments, a scenario of redrawing the political map of the region began to emerge. The triggers of the revolutions varied from country to country, but the main causes were comparable in some regimes.
In Tunisia, the street vendor Bouazizi set fire in despair due to economic diffculties and corrupt local authorities. In Egypt, a young businessman, Khaled Saeed, was arrested and tortured to death by police. The deeply resonant incident mobilized young people to protest against the brutality of President Huseein Mubarak’s regime. People in Sudan have demonstrated againts al-Bashir’s autocracy, while in Algeria, mass protests have erupted against President Bouteflik’s fifth term in power.
The revolutions mentioned demonstrate a common cross-cutting dynamic: the absence of a single leading force, which has led to the mobilization of various groups, including young people, women, workers and intelligentsia, all of whom have played a key role in the protests. The catalyst for these events in Tunis was the overthrow of Tunisian dictator Ben Ali in january 2011 (he has been in power since 1987). The revolutionary spirit soon spread to Egypt (Mubarak ruled from 1981). The revolutianary waves continued with mass protests by the Sudanese people and overthrew President al-Bashir’s regime in December 2018, which he ruled since 1989. The Arab Spring launched reforms in Morocco and finally the Algerian population forced President Bouteflik to resign in 2019 (he was in power since 1999). The popular revolutionary slogan « Ash-sha’b yurïd isqat an-nizam – « the people want to overthrew the regime » sounded in the squares of these countries, was the slogan of defiance against long-standing authoritarians regimes.
Study published by the Patriots for Europe Foundation