Ramin Jahanbegloo, one of Irans preeminent intellectual figures, attends the conference ‘Peace, Democracy and Human Rights in Asia’ held under the auspices of former Czech president Vaclav Havel on September 11, 2009, in Prague. Other guests of this conference are Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, former President of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Frederik Willem de Klerk, Rabiya Kadeer, head of the World Uighur Congress, Robert Menard of France, former Secretary-General of Reporters Without Bord and others philosophers and disidents.AFP PHOTO MICHAL CIZEK (Photo by MICHAL CIZEK / AFP)
The President’s Letter
This text, in the form of a letter, was sent to Reset by President Giorgio Napolitano whom we had asked to contribute to a special section marking the fiftieth anniversary of Luigi Einaudi’s death on October 29, 1961. The special section dedicated to this founder of the Republic appeared in Reset no. 127 and included articles by Enzo Di Nuoscio, Paolo Heritier, Paolo Silvestri, Corrado Ocone, Flavio Felice, and excerpts from Einaudi’s correspondence with Luigi Albertini. After I met with Napolitano early last September, the pressure of events forced him to postpone writing until recently. Although much has changed since last October, recalling what Einaudi can teach us remains important above and beyond an anniversary. Einaudi was president of the Bank of Italy from 1945 to 1948 and president of the Republic from 1948 to 1955, but his legacy also includes his writing, his work as economic columnist for Il Corriere della sera until 1925, and his teaching at the Bocconi University where Carlo Rosselli was his assistant.The heart of the matter that we wanted Napolitano to take on is the crisis of Italian politics and the reasons why the values espoused by a father of the Republic as important as Einaudi are no longer evident in the Italian ruling class except in a very few cases. This was also an occasion to reflect on Italian reformism (a tradition that our President represents in all respects) and on lost opportunities across the entire political spectrum.Napolitano’s letter takes full advantage of this occasion and offers many useful suggestions about work—both inquiry and action—that we must continue. We thank him for this.In a letter to the President sent after our conversation last September, I quoted the work of the recently deceased historian Tony Judt. The President refers to this quotation in his text, so I’ll repeat it here: “During the long century of constitutional liberalism…Western democracies were led by a distinctly superior class of statesmen. Whatever their political affinities, Leon Blum and Winston Churchill, Luigi Einaudi and Willy Brandt, David Lloyd George and Franklin Roosevelt represented a political class deeply sensitive to its moral and social responsibilities. It is an open question as to whether it was the circumstances that produced the politicians, or the culture of the age that led men of this caliber to enter politics. Today, neither incentive is at work. Politically speaking, ours is an age of the pygmies” (Ill Fares the Land, Penguin Press, 2010, pp. 164-165). In the same letter, I mentioned that reading the Einaudi-Albertini correspondence (published by the Corriere della Sera Foundation and excerpted in Reset) reveals the magnitude of the work undertaken by earlier statesmen with such great scientific, political, and moral rigor on a daily basis. “This strengthens my conviction,” I wrote, “that the gap Judt speaks about is quite dramatic.” I asked the President to reflect on the issues raised by Tony Judt’s “open question.”
Giancarlo Bosetti, Editor of Reset-DoC
Elections in Iran have always had a contradictory meaning. On one hand, they have always been less than free and fair, even when the polls were basically correct, (meaning not materially rigged), because of the vetting of candidates by the Guardian Council. On the other, they have been a flexible mechanism measuring the relative strength of the different components of the regime. Not a democracy, certainly, but a sort of pluralistic oligarchy.
Two months have elapsed since the Moroccan premature parliamentary elections of November 25th gave an unprecedented victory to the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD). The latter won 25% of the seats of the 295 seats of the Moroccan parliament. A victory that many observers of the Moroccan and Maghrebi affairs considered historic, given the unprecedented transparency, and quasi-total impartiality of the “Mother of Ministries”—the nickname of the Interior Ministry during the reign of Driss Basri because of its octopus-like shape and involvement in every aspect of the Moroccans’ life—who supervised these elections. Despite some activists’ lamentation of the negative impartiality of the authorities, none cast any serious doubt on the honesty of their results. This article endeavors to answer some of the pressing questions about the Moroccan political paysage in order discuss the internal circumstances and political calculations that forced the Makhzen—the street name of the whole regime—to cohabit with the victory of PJD despite the relentless war the same regime is waging against the Sufi Justice and Charity Brotherhood. We will also try to see the ability of a PJD-led coalition to effectuate the political change desired by the majority of citizens in the country. [1]
The political landscape of the Arab world has been dramatically transformed by the events of 2011. After decades of sterile politics and engrained authoritarianism Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria have embarked on a courageous journey aimed at fostering inclusive societies based on the rule of law and accountable governance. While we are only at the beginnings of what will be a long and arduous process, it is hard to believe that things will ever go back to the way they were. From Morocco to Bahrain the Arab public is on the march, and representation through elections is what they demand.
The revolutionary atmosphere is everywhere in Tunisia. According to some, the real revolution has only just begun, and in the widespread chaos, there are many who have clear ideas both about the future and about Tunisia’s identity. It is sufficient to glance at Facebook, where on many ‘walls’ one can read messages such as: “We are Muslims not Islamists.” “We are moderates and not extremists.” “We dream of democracy.”
“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.” It was May 1st 2003 when, speaking these words on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, President George W. Bush declared the end of military operations in Iraq and began to talk about security and reconstruction. So-called reconstruction soon revealed its darker aspects: car bombs and sectarian clashes, Abu Ghraib and a still impassable Green Zone surrounded by a T-wall.
From the very first weeks it began to be apparent that the SCAF was increasingly hostile to the reform movement and to the many organisations that occupied Tahrir square and demonstrated in favour of social justice, individual rights and democracy. Confronted with demonstrations, calls for immediate and radical reforms and trials of members of Mubarak’s regime – that certainly worried part of the Egyptian public opinion – the SCAF presented itself as a bastion of stability, taking a leaf from the book of the regime of the now deposed President Mubarak. This growing tension between the SCAF and the Tahrir square demonstrators soon produced ugly results, in terms of a very high number of arrests, trials before military courts, assaults to the demonstrators, and an increasing number of casualties.
By Giancarlo Bosetti
Nilüfer Göle, a Turkish intellectual born in Ankara in 1953, is a world-renowned authority on Turkish and Muslim sociology. She began her studies in Turkey and completed them in Paris under Alain Touraine. After completing her doctorate in France, she became a professor at Boğaziçi University, then returned to the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales as the director of studies, dividing her life between Paris and Istanbul, where her husband, economist Asaf Savas Akat, teaches at Bilgi University.
By Nicola Missaglia
Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, famous for having been the fifth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran between 1997 and 2005, is an Iranian Shiite intellectual, philosopher and theologian who belongs, without doubt, to the varied world of Islamic reformism.
Ferhat Kentel (Sehir University, Istanbul), interviewed by Nicola Mirenzi30 November 2011
The Kurdish conflict has re-emerged as a key issue in Turkey. On October 19th the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, inflicted an extremely violent attack on the Turkish state, killing 24 soldiers (the highest number of victims in the past few years) in the southeast. The AKP government’s reaction to the event was extremely harsh. Turkish President Abdullah Gül promised to “reduce to the same tears” those who had carried out the attacks. And that is what happened. Ankara launched a massive attack not only in Southeast Turkey but also across the border into northern Iraq, where the Turkish governments says Kurdish separatists take refuge and organize their attacks.
To understand the recent flare-up in the conflict and its links to Turkey’s constitutional re-writing process, Resetdoc spoke to Professor Ferhat Kentel, a sociologist at Sehir University in Istanbul.
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