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Tunisia's Ennahda movement Looks to AKP for Credibility |
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Monday, 28 November 2011With its Islamic roots, ties to religiously conservative constituencies and widespread popularity, Tunisia's Ennahda party is being compared by many to Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Tunisia's Ennahda party, led by Rachid Ghannouchi (right), won more seats than any other party during the October elections. [Reuters]
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Ennahda came out of the October 23rd elections -- the results of which were finalised November 14th -- with the most seats for any single party. It fell short of a majority, however, and must thus form a coalition in order to establish an interim government and assembly that will write a new constitution.
As a bellwether for the post-revolution transitions in the Arab world, all eyes have been on how Tunisia's once-banned Islamists will function in a democratic state with a strong secular tradition similar to Turkey.
Eager to assuage Tunisia's wary secular constituencies, as well as foreign audiences plugged into the country's political future, Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, has welcomed his party's comparisons to the AKP as evidence of its commitment to liberal democracy.
"I think they are inspired by the idea of being an Islamist party that is operating globally, while not being ostracised," Melani Cammett, an associate professor of political science and the director of the Middle East Studies Programme at Brown University, told SES Türkiye.
From a political standpoint, both parties have championed democracy and pro-business messages, rather than focus on their religious bona fides.
"Ennahda supports free enterprise, but also safety nets, and they would argue that they are mildly social-democrats," Marina Ottaway, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Middle East Programme, told SES Türkiye.
Like their counterparts in Turkey, Ennahda has deep support throughout Tunisia, as opposed to the secular parties, who did quite well in certain areas, but lacked the political penetration of their electoral and ideological rivals in others.
"The secular parties did do well in pockets and along the coast, but Ennahda is the only party that won a seat in every district throughout the country, which is like the AKP," noted Daphne McCurdy, a senior research associate at the Project on Middle East Democracy.
"Ennahda transcends some of the societal divides and they are able to bring together liberals, intellectuals and the religious conservatives from the poorer interior," she added.
Despite their electoral success and widespread popularity, segments of the opposition remain wary of Ennahda's Islamist past and suspect that the party has a secret agenda to radically transform the character of Tunisian society -- a situation which mirrors the view of some anti-AKP secularists in Turkey.
Campaigning on an anti-Ennahda platform backfired on Tunisia's more secular parties and it was those who expressed a willingness to work with Ennahda that fared the best electorally.
"They make the accusation that the staunchly secular groups are adopting the French model of secularism, which calls for the exclusion of religion from public life and they claim that this concept is an alien form of secularism and an alien ideology," according to Cammett.
The French model served as the model for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk when he formed the Turkish Republic in 1923, and debates about this very issue have plagued Turkey since its founding.
The same issue, Cammett says, may plague Tunisian politics for the years to come.
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Monday, 28 November 2011
By Aaron Stein for SES Turkiye in Istanbul
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