When you travel in the Middle East you are bound to have multiple “Holy Moly!” moments.  My wife and I had one of those last Thursday.  Yet we weren’t touring the Temple of Karnak in Luxor, gazing upon the Khazneh in Petra in the late afternoon when the Nabatean capital seems to glow a rose red, or marveling at the ancient ruins of Ani on the Turkish-Armenian border.  We were in Turkey, in Istanbul, in Kadikoy to be exact, but it was not some Ottoman gem of a mosque or palace that caused our eyes to go wide.  Nope.  It was the Şükrü Saracoĝlo Stadyumu and the 52,000 fans of the Fenerbahce Sports Club’s football (i.e. soccer) team—it also fields basketball, boxing, table tennis, and sailing teams—who were near delirium even before their team took the field against Italy’s Lazio. Read more »

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already established himself as the most important politician of his generation. He has won two elections in a row with sizable majorities and presided over a period of remarkable economic growth and political change in the decade since his Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power.  Erdogan, whose charisma is apparent even to non-Turkish-speaking audiences and who has an innate sense of the Turkish public, now has a chance to move beyond his current lofty status to a truly historic figure.  Indeed, Prime Minister Erdogan has the opportunity to become the most significant Turkish statesman since Mustafa Kemal—who literally became the “father of the Turks” when the Turkish Grand National Assembly bestowed him the name “Ataturk” in November 1934.  Yet the Turkish leader is about to let a potential legacy as a transformative figure slip from his grasp. Read more »

Hani Sabra responds to Cynical Islamist’s response to me…

On January 16, Steven Cook wrote a blog post that asked, “Are Egypt’s Muslim Brothers Democrats?” By the end of the piece, it’s clear that he believes the answer is no. A week later, an Egyptian man—and I’m going to go ahead and bet that it was a man—who goes by the moniker “Cynical Islamist,” responded to Cook’s piece in an attempt to pour cold water on the arguments. Read more »

On the second anniversary of Egypt’s January 25 uprising, I decided to re-post some of my own work on Egypt.  I hope you continue to find these posts/articles useful.  Enjoy!

Five Things You Need to Know About the Egyptian Armed Forces, January 31, 2011 on “From the Potomac to the Euphrates.” Read more »

My friend who goes by the twitter handle @CynicalIslamist responded to my post about the Muslim Brotherhood’s democratic credentials.  It’s a thoughtful and articulate response.  Enjoy! Read more »

It may seem non-controversial these days to suggest that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) are not exactly forces for democratic change.  Much of Washington, which only last spring feted an FJP delegation carrying the message that all would be well, has fallen into an Egypt funk.  No one is longing for Hosni Mubarak, but the hope for a democratic transition on the Nile has dissipated.  Indeed, with a few exceptions, there are few in the policy or traditional academic communities who cling to the once-conventional wisdom that the Brotherhood could be a force for more open politics. The record is clear and as a result, the conversation has shifted to hoping that Egypt can stay afloat economically.  Still, not everyone shares the doom and gloom about the Brothers.  When I recently suggested on Twitter that President Mohammed Morsi, the FJP, and the Brothers had not been exactly faithful to the revolutionary promise of a more open political system and had used some of the same tricks as the Mubarak regime, I received a fair amount of pushback from some quarters.  One of my tweeps challenged me to prove it, chastising me for blindly accepting the narrative of Egyptian liberals and revolutionaries. Read more »

Markar Esayan says that Turkey’s democracy can only be consolidated if criminals of the past are held accountable, including officers of the Turkish Armed Forces. Read more »

It has certainly been an interesting few weeks in Egypt.  Just as I was taking off for vacation, President Mohammed Morsi had consolidated his power by ousting the military’s senior command, firing the chief of General Intelligence, and canceling the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ June 17 constitutional decree that gutted the powers of the presidency in defense and national security policy.  It is important to note that bringing the military to heel is a positive development because it helps create an environment more conducive to the emergence of democratic politics.  At the same time, however, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood—or more precisely, the Freedom and Justice Party—have made a number of questionable moves that raise concerns about the Brothers’ commitment to democratic change. Read more »

This article originally appeared here on ForeignPolicy.com on Wednesday, June 13, 2012. I hope you find it interesting and look forward to reading your comments.  Read more »

My friend, Karim Mezran, weighs in with a guest post today on an under-reported meeting between a prominent Libyan Islamist and members of Qaddafi’s entourage in Cairo.  What is going on Libya?

The recent meeting in Cairo between Ali Sallabi, an important figure of the Libyan Islamist circles, and Ahmed Qaddafi Eddam, cousin of the late Muammar al-Qaddafi and one of the most relevant members of the former strongman’s entourage, has provoked widespread controversy and criticism. The meeting threatens to become another divisive issue for the Libyan people.  Addressing this issue should be taken quite seriously, however, as it appears to highlight one of the largest problems facing the transition to democracy in Libya: the National Transitional Council (NTC). Read more »