Lessons in reality for Muslim leaders

The last few days and weeks have been a painful lesson for two of the Muslim world’s most prominent leaders – the old ways of governing don’t work anymore.

Both Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi are discovering their offices no longer carry with them the carte blanche authority to rule as they wish; that people who feel they have significant grievances will protest, and if they do it in sufficient numbers, the very legitimacy of the government will be under threat.

The two are not exact parallels: Turkey has a longer, if somewhat chequered experience of democracy and Erdogan has been in power since 2002 winning three elections in a row.

Moreover he remains reasonably popular – although opinion polls have shown that popularity has shrunk since his AKP Party won the 2011 election with almost 50 per cent of the vote. Many Turks give him credit for strong economic growth and rising middle class prosperity.

Morsi, on the other hand, was elected just a year ago, ending decades of one-party and military rule by a series of strongmen. Much more than Erdogan he is seen to be connected to the religious right. His Muslim Brotherhood Party, banned under the previous regime, won in a tight contest against secular opposition. But its victory rested on shaky ground.

As one commentator put it: “For years the Brotherhood was seen as a symbol of opposition to the regime; also many Egyptians voted for it simply because they were Muslims. Now they are beginning to realise just what a Government run by the Brotherhood can mean.”

Demonstrators who are currently turning out in their millions to demand Morsi’s ousting cite his failure to deal with security and the economic malaise, but underlying this is the fear that the country’s secular tradition is being undermined in favour of Islamic fundamentalism.

The same feeling exists in Turkey, although here the trend has been much more subtle. However, Australian businesswoman Hatice Sitki exposed it anecdotally while visiting Istanbul.

Dr Sitki found that references to Kemal Mustafa Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey and a champion of secularism, only a few years ago to be found everywhere in the city, had virtually disappeared, to be replaced by verses from the Koran.

Faced by massed protests, both men have reacted — in the sad tradition of Mummar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad — with indignation that the people are daring to challenge their authority.

The examples of Libya and Syria loom large — but the international community would desperately want to avoid the prospect of two of the Muslim world’s most populous and powerful States being plunged into similar chaos.