Arab public opinion and the world system

There are already signs of this. Palestine is a case in point. Arab countries cannot ignore the public sentiment about Palestine. It is true that some regimes use Palestine as a smoke screen to keep the masses under control. They give fiery speeches about the plight of the Palestinians but do very little to ease it. But there is a limit to face-saving measures. When a disgruntled and distrustful public begins to raise serious questions about the legitimacy of their rulers, it goes beyond being a simple matter of opinion; it becomes a political reality.

Those who think the Arab world only cares about Palestine fail to see that the public debate in Arab countries extends to virtually all the major issues of the current international system. Yes, the Arabs feel more passionate about Palestine than any other issue because they see in Palestine their own mirror image, i.e., their own injustice, humiliation, misery and hopelessness. But they see Palestine also as a failure of the international system. It is the inability of the current world system to establish justice and the rule of law, many believe, that has led to where we are in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. The same argument can be made in regard to other problem areas around the world.

This is what I call the internationalization of the Arab public opinion: Arabs no longer see their state of affairs as an isolated case. Instead, they first make a “world-system” analysis and then move into their specific cases. Watch Al Jazeera or the Doha Debates, surf the Arabic Internet or attend any major conference in the Arab world and you get a good dose of the analyses of global politics, power plays, emerging powers, economic interdependence, the failure of the big states, the rise of China and India and so on. This is a very different mode of looking at things than, say, the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser or Hafiz al-Assad, when Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism supplied the Arabs with a single-reference framework, which was a reified notion of Arabness. In a world of increasing globalization, such neat identities do not speak to the realities of the world. Arabs see the world more nuanced than through ethnicity and regionalism.

The debate about Turkey in the Arab world moves along the same lines. Arabs still have mixed feelings about the Turks. Varying degrees of intensity, love, respect, admiration, suspicion, mistrust and even dislike are part of the Arab perception of Turks today. But it is clear that the “Turk” is back in the Arab public debate. From the political elites and activists to civil servants and the media, Turkey is part of various analyses, comparisons and contrasts. Turkish foreign policy as well as soap operas, the history of Turks and Arabs as well as their future have become the fixed elements of daily conversation.