The subject of the Al-Jezeera Forum, the sixth of which was held this year was the transformation in the Arab World, the actors of the transformation, the nature and future of the respective transformation. In the brainstorming meetings held by the guests invited from all over the world very fascinating papers were presented. The actors of the revolutions from each country in the orbit of the revolution and at the focus of the world were invited both as speakers and as the subjects of the discussions. There were many human rights activists, civil society and opinion leaders, people whose name came forth in Facebook and Twitter groups and many representatives of youth movements from each country among them. For example, from Tunisia Raşid Gannuşi, Muncif al-Marzuki, Melik Herdavi; from Egypt Fahm Huwaydi, Tarik al-Bişri, Esma Mahfuz, İslam Lutfi Shalabi; from Palestine Usame Hamdan; from Libya Abdulkerim Abbusha and from the USA John Esposito were there.  

 

Former Brazil President Lula de Silvia and Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Prof. Ahmed Davutoğlu made the opening speeches. De Silva’s speech in which he referred to his 8 years of experience as president contained significant emphasizes that would set light on the current search of the Arab World. He stated that there is an astounding parallelism between the route that Turkey followed under the Justice and Development Party and that Brazil followed under his leadership. He talked about his election as a president after three elections following his rise from workmanship to the leadership of a syndicate as a son of a poor farmer family with 8 children and he also touched upon the fact that he was not even a university graduate.

 

He stated that he had correlated Brazil which was given only to the US and Europe till his presidency with the Middle East, the Latina America and other neglected regions of the world. The economic consequence of this was the rise of the country as the seventh biggest economy in the world in a short time. He also mentioned that he had developed the access to education specifically the university education and thus integrated a significant portion of the population to the system and taken measurements regarding the expending of welfare to the public.  De Silva also stressed that one of his interesting and similar measurements with Turkey was the aid delivered to the educated families and particularly depositing it directly to the accounts of women. He stated that due to all these Brazil was one of the least effected countries by the economic crisis which began in 2009 and still continues. In other words, as a result of parallel policies, the crisis was tangent to Brazil as well.

 

Another emphasis of De Silva was his words regarding the democracy and assignment of positions. He mentioned that he had been proposed to extend his office term due to his appreciated successes, but of course, he had rejected this proposal which required a constitutional amendment by teaching a historical lesson: the first condition of democracy is that everybody shall obey the rules and no one shall perceive himself indispensible for a role. Otherwise, the contrary understanding may take the country to the dictatorship and this was exactly the problem of the Arab World all that long.

 

Following De Silva, the speech of Davutoğlu was also full of interesting observations.  He built his speech on the question chosen as the title of the forum this year. Has the future come? Yes, it has come and it is even delayed.  

 

According to Davutoğlu the past of the Islamic world is a history of two abnormalities which ripped this world into pieces and paralyzed its will. The first of these was colonialism. The colonial powers dividing the countries and creating artificial boundaries tried to dissolve the grout of the Islamic World. The second abnormality was the Cold War and it loaded the burden of the boundaries of the two respective blocs on the already created boundaries. Thus the relationship among the Islamic countries remained at a minimal level for a long time. These revolutions and Turkey’s new and dense strategies regarding relationships with these communities bring these communities together and inactivate the artificial boundaries. Therefore, although the past of the Islamic World was the history of the abnormalities today the future that has come will be the history of normality. 

 

In this forum I exceedingly got the impression of the previous forums of Al-Jezeera which I attended. The Arab world has been experiencing a real enlightenment for a long time. Thus the revolutions cannot be understood just as an explosion of anger; it cannot also be understood as a wave of a group of impertinent people activated via Facebook and Twitter coincidently. There is a huge backlog with an intellectual and strategic consciousness which can be considered as an Arab-Islamic Enlightenment or Renaissance. The intellectual background, self confidence and self-expressing capability of the speaking youth make themselves felt at all levels.    

 

While one of the significant actors of the current transformation is the social media, there is no doubt that the Al-Jezeera has been a more influential actor for a longer time. Al-Jezeera is aware of its role and keeps searching for the fertilization and “benevolence” of this role. 

 

Arab dictators are also well-aware of this role and Al-Jezeera may sometimes be their direct target. In the very midst of the forum we got the news regarding the martyrdom of Ali Hasan el-Cabir, a news reporter of Al-Jezeera, who was doing his job in Libya. This is a very good indication that what the channel does is not a joke.

 

The General Director of Al- Jezeera Waddah Hanfar who is both an activist and a philosopher and who is also a very powerful prolocutor declared Cabir as the “martyr of truth” and thus he underlined the mission of Al-Jezeera or a honest media in this transformation: the Truth. the truth shall always be serviced; it doesn’t matter whose book it suits. The Truth is something that will eventually serve everybody though it may not suit one’s book at the very moment.