When the Arab Spring erupted, some people in the region became charmed by the Turkish model. Recep Tayyip Erdogan acted like someone who had the magic formula. It seemed that his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu found solace in this after his "zero-problem" project with neighboring countries had failed. But the promotion of this model soon collided with the conflict of dynamics and sensitivities in the theaters of the venerable "spring." The Arab Spring clashed with the news coming from Syria, which drowned in a protracted devastating war. It then received a deadly blow when President Mohamed Morsi was ousted, in what could be considered half a revolution and half a coup. Then neither did Libya embrace the Turkish model, nor did Yemen, while the Tunisian ordeal remains open to all possibilities and dangers. Events proved that the Turkish model was not a mantle that could be borrowed by merely introducing minor amendments to its measurements. Indeed, the model had many things to do with Ataturk's longstanding experience, economic progress, and the maturity of the Islamists gained from their difficult waltz with the army charged with protecting the secular legacy. Neither the armies of the countries struck by the spring resembled Ataturk's army, nor their institutions resembled those of the Turkish Republic. Any coolheaded look at the countries whose tyrant rulers or the pillars of their stability were toppled by the spring prompts one to believe that these countries are lurching toward the Iraqi rather than the Turkish model. In present-day Iraq there is a constitution that was approved by the people, yes, but this constitution does not solve the problems between institutions and does not provide guarantees, and can be easily disrupted or circumvented. And while elections are held in Iraq on time, they do not help the country emerge from the crises afflicting it. Iraq's political process has consumed a lot of time and money, but it did not prevent the aggravation of the inter-communal crisis among Iraq's components. In Iraq, too, there is a regime that practically leans on the strongest community in the country, fighting successive confrontations with other communities. In Iraq, huge amounts of money were spent to rebuild the army, yet its existence did not cancel out militias that booby trap, bomb, and assassinate. In Iraq, there is a government whose legitimacy is supposed to emanate from the ballot boxes, but this does not invalidate the fact that a segment of the citizens feel marginalized because of its policies. And in Iraq, there is a flag that is supposed to flutter over the entire map, but the flag of Iraqi Kurdistan flutters along with it over the Kurdistan region, based on the constitution, while there is the flag of al-Qaeda, which seizes any vacuum to rear its head. Is this the closest model to the realities of the region and its countries then? The strong central government is now a thing of the past. Change has begotten a flimsy state coexisting with what looks like a permanent civil war on its soil: Flimsy countries and flimsy maps; declared and undeclared federalism, but on the basis of permanent hostility rather than cooperation; ethnic or sectarian blocks competing over the state's institutions, exhausting them and disrupting them; and an ill social fabric that allows al-Qaeda and its ilk to infiltrate the country to carry out explosions and fragmentation. The deterioration could reach such an extent that al-Qaeda could even become entrenched in part of the map, declaring its state there amid a series of raids, bombings, and funerals. This assessment has nothing to do with any tendency to be pessimistic. It is enough for anyone to follow what is going on in Yemen, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, and Tunisia, to reach the same conclusions. Either a fragile state or no state at all; fatigued states and eroded states; and partisan, regional, or tribal fervor, are but some of their features. Some fear that there could be decades of disintegration, allowing all repressed sectarian passions and secret dreams to express themselves in deadly violence. Some believe that the removal of tyrant rulers does not necessarily mean treading the path to democracy. Instead, countries could fall into a different kind of tyranny, the most dangerous of which being an idea that forbids any dissent and that considers dissenters traitors who may be killed. Flimsy states are witnessing conflicts that are spreading beyond their borders. They are witnessing cross-border sectarian alliances. They are witnessing fragmentation, interferences, and proxy wars. This explains tense regional relations. It also explains the confusion of the policies of major countries regarding conflicts that usually take the form of civil war, even when they purport to have big slogans. The scene also leads to confusion in the relations between major powers and the countries concerned with shaken balances in the region. The predominance of the Iraqi model means that the region is likely to see more conflicts and losses, and more disintegration, poverty, terrorism, and outward migration. It is a favorable environment for the growth of fundamentalism and the aggravation of the panic among minorities, and therefore, the attractiveness of suicide solutions. Such a climate allows al-Qaeda to creep into the cracks in the maps, and inflame the hot spots within them and along their borders.
