The two poles of political Islam, Sunni and Shiite, and the sponsors of "revolutionizing" efforts and movements of "change" in the region, Turkey and Iran, have caught the same fever. In the former, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is no longer able to control the restless street by making use of force or threatening to resort to the army, or even by constantly reminding of the economic "miracle" he has achieved. And in the latter, the Supreme Leader is trying to absorb the waves of the "electoral earthquake" that has brought a moderate President to power with the votes of reformists and of advocates of change. The ruling religious institutions in Ankara and in Tehran are both no longer immune to the storm they themselves contributed to raising, despite the fact that this is so far taking on a less confrontational form than what they achieved in the Arab World. They had worked ever since coming to power on turning the latter into an arena for promoting their own models: Turkey in the image of moderation that hides a deep-seated desire for hegemony and for reviving the traditions of the "Ottoman caliphate"; and Iran by exploiting Arab Shiite minorities and implicating them in futile confrontations against their own societies. Indeed, the rebellion taking place against the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the streets of Istanbul, Ankara, and other cities, is no longer merely a matter of protests against trees being cut in a public park and a shopping mall being built in their stead, but rather has become, in view of the slogans that are being raised and chanted, a declaration of rejection of the gradual religious coup d'état being carried out against the secular state and its institutions, especially the army and the judiciary. It is also a rejection of the Islamists' strategy, which has closed the chapter of aspirations towards Europe, with the commitment it entailed to laws of transparency, democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression, choosing instead to become engaged in the former geographical sphere of the Ottoman Empire, with what this means in terms of exacerbating the ethnic, demographic, and religious problems that Turkey was already suffering from. It is a scream that says "enough!" to ten years of "Islamization" during which Erdogan has tried to change the face of Turkey as it had been defined by Atatürk nine decades ago. It is true that Erdogan came to power through the ballot boxes, but a 50.4 percent majority does not allow him to prey on everything that preceded him and monopolize decision-making without being held to account by the one half of the Turkish people who did not vote for him. Even if he manages to silence the protest movement temporarily, something has been broken between him and his people. In Iran, on the other hand, the new President has garnered the votes of 18 million electors and defeated by a broad margin the three conservative candidates, one of whom is Khamenei's "favorite". This means that the reformist movement for change, which was forcefully aborted four years ago by rigging election results and throwing its leaders in jail, has returned to impose itself with a force that no one can deny or elude, taking advantage of the current deterioration of the situation in the country at every level, as a result of international isolation, economic sanctions and poor management. The two religious projects, in Turkey and in Iran, had first clashed with the situation in the region before the confrontation shifted to their own interior. Thus, the Egyptian copy of the Turkish model, for example, did not succeed to impose stability, and the regime of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo remains powerless to convince the Egyptian people and the world of its ability to lead a country for all its citizens, while it persistently tries to change the latter's unifying identity. It also awaits a difficult test, with its fate on the line, at the end of the month. As for Iran, the proxy wars it has waged on several fronts have failed. It was unable to unilaterally control countries like Bahrain or Yemen and to isolate them from their Arab environment. Even its Lebanese agent Hezbollah, which partially succeeded because the Arabs had at first refused to antagonize a party that was fighting Israel, is now in the midst of a bitter confrontation with the rest of Lebanon's constituents and with all of the Arabs, after getting directly and openly implicated in the war alongside the Syrian regime. Can it be said that the two religious regimes in Turkey and in Iran are nearing their end? It is perhaps too early to reach such a conclusion, but they have certainly reached their peak and begun to slope downwards.
