Arab Revolutions

With a return to authoritarian rule only a few years after the initially successful 2011 revolution, some Egyptian DIY musicians have made it a point to avoid the political. These musicians consider the ordinary politics of discursive critique and public protest to be ineffective and have opted to continue the revolution by appealing to the ineffable properties of listening as a less ideologically driven way to produce social change. This article explores how and why the sonic ineffable is believed to be a more utopian form of politics. It argues that mobilizing ‘magic’ is a particularly positioned solution to political failure that obscures the relations of power it perpetuates. Building from 30 months of ethnographic research conducted in Egypt among DIY musicians between 2010 and 2017, it avoids a romanticisation of the ineffable, showing instead how utilising the ambiguity between the conscious and subconscious aspects of sonic experience is a political tool not removed from power.

In this article authors comprehensively analyze the internal factors and the geopolitical aspects of the Arab Spring. This phenomenon has seen the removal of numerous political regimes in its way, and it has had great impact on the political situation and democratic governance in the Arab world in particular, and the world in general. We highlight zone of interests, systems of alliance and regional geopolitical flashpoints in general, and the role of the U.S. as “prima player” in the region in particular. The Arab Spring led to regime change and democratic reforms, but, at the same time, its “furious power” has set fire to the civil war, social unrest and prolonged political crises. Short description and location: In English, with Romanian summary: http://studiamsu.eu/wp-content/uploads/04.rezumat_88.pdf  It is based on my MA thesis which I defended in the summer of 2015. Institution: Moldova State University, FRISPA, Department of International Relations, American Studies.

Although Syria, since the 1960s, has been dominated by a decidedly secular-nationalist regime, the 2011 uprising has demonstrated that the role of Islam in the country’s social and religious scene cannot be underestimated.
The uprising, which turned into a revolution and a civil war, created a deep schism among Sunni Muslim ulema who played an influential role in encouraging/discouraging protests. 
This book explores the views of M.S.R. al-Būtī, one of the most outstanding Muslim Sunni scholars of contemporary Syria (d. 2013). Al-Būtī opposed initial protests and considered the revolution as religiously illegitimate and politically motivated by foreign powers. His stance has  engendered much controversy not only in Syria but also in the Arab as well as the Muslim worlds.
Numerous scholars and authors have interpreted al-Būtī’s stance as full support of the regime and have cited his earlier position against the Muslim Brotherhood Movement in Syria in the 1980s. Others, however, have argued  that al-Būtī was an independent scholar who was following his ijtihad, be it for the benefit of the regime or against it.
Given that most of the writings on al-Būtī’s view on the revolution lacks a clear and comprehensive analysis, the book offers the first sustained treatment of this religio-political issue by exploring its multiple dimensions and various ramifications.

Previous studies have noted the dominance of official sources within the news process and their unique ability to shape media narratives. This research addresses the role and implications of news sources in contributing to the overwhelmingly positive portrayal of the anti-Mubarak opposition protesters within British and American newspaper coverage of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Furthermore, this paper will assess how the position of global political elites towards the protests in Egypt possibly opened up the editorial space within the news coverage of the revolution for the anti-Mubarak opposition movement to emerge as the dominant voice within the reporting.

يُعتبر كتاب "شبكات الغضب والأمل: الحركات الاجتماعية في عصر الإنترنت" مرجعًا بحثيًا هامًا وشموليًا للدلالة على الحركات الاجتماعية الشبكية في المنطقة العربية والعالم، ولا سيما أنه قدم تحليلًا وتفسيرًا للأنماط والأدوات والأشكال التي تعتمد عليها هذه الحركات الاجتماعية في التعبئة والحشد، إضافةً إلى محاججته بقدرة هذه الحركات على فرض عملية التغيير والإصلاح السياسي. يسعى الكتاب إلى تعزيز النقاش المفتوح بشأن الحركات الاجتماعية الشبكية. ففي الوقت الذي لم يتوقف فيه البحث في الحركات الاجتماعية أو الحركات الاجتماعية الشبكية منذ بداية الثورات العربية عام 2011، يأتي الكتاب دراسةً إضافيةً معمقةً لتعميق هذا النقاش، ومستندًا على مجموعة ضخمة من البيانات والتقارير التجريبية المثيرة للاهتمام والتي تبرز الفهم العميق لتطور الحركات الاجتماعية المعاصرة.

The task to reshape governments in the countries confronted with the Arab Spring prompts the question whether there are necessary conditions to realize a stable society that simultaneously seeks to eliminate the elements that have led to the uprisings. Acknowledging some constitutional rights seems indispensable in such a process. I argue that such a state of affairs is indeed the case, at least now that the ‘old’ justifications to differentiate between people do not suffice anymore. That is not to say that the countries involved will have identical laws in each respect, but merely that a common basis has to be realized, manifested in political and legal equality, so this given does not derogate from the fact that each country’s specific legislation needs to be shaped in the light of its own history. Such a basis has no ‘moral’ character, but is simply a necessary condition to prevent sedition.

This is a collection of Stefan Weidner's essays and op-eds covering the development of Islamophobic and right-wing attitutes in Germany between 9/11 and the so called Arab spring, complemented by some of Weidner's reportages form the Middle East. It was published in 2011 at Dietz publishing house in Bonn, Germany.

Based on empirical and theoretical investigation, and original insight into how a local protest movement developed into a revolution that changed a regime, this book shows us how we can understand political revolutions. Azmi Bishara critically explores the gradual democratic reform and peaceful transfer of power in the context of Tunisia. He grapples with the specific make-up of Tunisia as a modern state and its republican political heritage and investigates how this determined the development and survival of the revolution and the democratic transition in its aftermath.

For Bishara, the political culture and attitudes of the elites and their readiness to compromise, in addition to an army without political ambitions, were aspects that proved crucial for the relative success of the Tunisian experience. But he distinguishes between protest movements and mass movements that aim at regime change and discerns the social and political conditions required for the transition from the former to the latter. Bishara shows that the specific factors that correspond to mass movements and regime change are relative deprivation, awareness of injustice, dignity and indignation. He concludes, based on meticulous documentation of the events in Tunisia and theoretical investigation, that while revolutions are unpredictable with no single theory able to explain them, all revolutions across different historical and conceptual contexts be seen as popular uprisings that aim at regime change.

The book is the first of a trilogy, the Understanding Revolutions series by Bishara, seeking to provide a rich, comprehensive and lucid assessment of the revolutions in three states: Tunisia, Syria, and Egypt.

The definition of the Egyptian migration as a diaspora has been much debated and often denied. This article investigates the phenomenon of the Egyptian diaspora through an innovative approach based on the analysis of digital activity and the presence of Egyptian connected migrants. Following the methodology of the e-Diaspora project, we found a scarcely connected network of websites, with a large number of isolated nodes, little clusterisation and no authorities or hubs. The fact that the traditional approach of the e-diaspora gave few results prompted us to follow a new research strategy combining data from Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. In particular, thanks to the coincidence with the Egyptian revolt, we could investigate the mobilisation of Egyptian migrants for their voting rights on the micro-blogging platform Twitter. Through Twitter data, we identified links that were not visible through traditional Web mapping techniques and we could observe the emergence of a transnational Egyptian community debating and fighting for a common cause.

This paper examines Iranian visionary narratives related to the Arab revolutions based on the premise that they intertwine to constitute a 'grand narrative'. This narrative asserts the significance of Iran’s influence within the Islamic world and promotes Iran’s 'right' to lead it.

The present study investigates the discursive strategy employed by Egypt’s President Muhammad Morsi during his first six months in office. For this purpose, it applies Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theoretical conceptual framework to analyze speeches, interviews, decisions, decrees, and other actions of Morsi. This thesis proposes that Morsi, as part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s struggle to develop into the most important player on Egypt’s postrevolution political scene, initially tried to pacify society in order to attain hegemony. For this purpose, he applied a divide and rule strategy to break up the social antagonism of the 25 January Revolution and to impede the development of a non-Islamist—Islamist divide. He co-opted a vast range of unrelated social groups in his constructed identity of ‘the people.’ They inscribed their demands in his national rebuilding project of ‘al-Nahdah.’ To unite the different groups constituting ‘the people,’ he excluded the forces who posed a threat to his gradual reform programme from this identity. In reaction to an increase in protests and strikes and to a walkout from the Constituent Assembly by non-Islamists, Morsi unilaterally grabbed power to protect the Islamist dominated constitution drafting process. This move marks a strategic change. Morsi now represented ‘the majority,’ rather than all Egyptians. This drove a wedge between the ruling coalition and the opposition. What is more, this urged the splintered opposition to set their differences aside and join forces in an anti-Morsi bloc. The emergence of this counter-hegemonic alternative discourse posed the first serious challenge to Morsi’s hegemony.

Attempts to understand the wider context of the Arab uprisings in Morocco mainly focus on the dynamic created by the 20 February Movement, while the long history of increasing socio-economic struggle tends to be underestimated. This article argues that the political and democratic protests of the last two years and the history of socio-economic protests cannot be viewed as unrelated phenomena but must be understood as part of the same process. The account focuses on different disturbances, such as the riots in the phosphate mining region of Khouribga, to show the particular dynamic between civil democratic and socio-economic struggles.

ÖZET Geçtiğimiz yıllarda Orta Doğu'da ciddi çalkantılara sebep olan Arap halk hareketlerinin seyyar satıcılık yapan bir gencin kendisine yapılan haksızlığa ve içinde bulunduğu şartlara bir tepki olarak kendini yakması sonucu başladığı söylenebilirse de bu eylemin sadece bardağı taşıran son damla hükmünde olduğu açıktır. Kitleleri böylesine öfkelendiren ve bu öfke birikimini bir devrime dönüştüren asıl sebeplerin neler olduğu cevaplanması gereken sorulardır. Genel olarak ekonomisi iyi durumda olmayan Mısır'ın olayların öncesindeki birkaç yılda ekonomik göstergelerinin azalan bir hızla da olsa iyiye gittiği görülmekteydi. Ancak bu iyileşme toplumu tatmin edecek seviyede değildi. Genel ekonomik sorunlar ve büyük bir genç nüfusuna sahip olan ülkede özellikle gençler arasındaki yüksek işsizlik oranları Mısır halkında yaygın bir memnuniyetsizliğe sebep olmaktaydı. Ancak benzer sorunları yaşayan birçok ülkede bu tür sorunlara karşı protestoların sınırlı kalması ve olayların sistemi tümden değiştirecek kadar büyümemesi akla " neden Mısır " sorusunu getirmektedir. Mısır, tarihi boyunca gerçek anlamda demokratik bir seçimi nerdeyse hiç yaşamamış bir ülke olmuştu. 25 Ocak Devrimi'ne kadar hiçbir iktidarın seçim yoluyla değişmediği ülkede hoşnutsuz kitlelerin seslerini duyurabilecekleri, emniyet supabı işlevi görecek özgür yayın organları ya da iktidarın demokratik yollarla değişme ihtimali olsaydı sonuç farklı olabilirdi. Ancak talepleri karşılanmamış öfkeli bir kitle, bu kitlenin sisteme taleplerini iletebilecekleri demokratik yapının yokluğu ve hükümet kontrolü dışında kalıp katalizör işlevi gören iletişim araçları bir araya gelerek, kısa ömürlü de olsa Mısır'ın geleceği için umut verici olan Mısır Devrimi'ni gerçekleştirdi.

Secular arabic traditions have emphasized the potential of dreams to foretell the future.  Sometimes the prediction is seen as obvious and on other occasions elaborate systems of symbolic translations were consulted such as the tenth century Oneirocriticon of Achmet.
    In Islam, many of the foundations of the Koran were revealed to Muhammad in dreams. Muhammad ordered the practice of adhanthe daily call to prayer from the minarets and a central ritual of Islam to this day after one of his followers dreamed of it. The split of Islam into the conflicting factions of Sunni and Shi'ite was based partly on a dream of Mohammed, which the Sunnis used to justify their rights as his successors.
    The autobiographies of Muslim rulers often contain extensive dream diaries and examples of decisions obstensibly based on dreams.  When the Shah of Iran was deciding whether to seek a loan from Russia, he dreamed that a famous theological figure dressed in primitive Muslim garb approached the Shah and threw at his feet a sack containing gold and silver.  The interpretation of this dream was that the Shah shouldn't make any new loans with unbelievers but should trust that fellow servants of the faith would restore his finances. Sadam Hussein reported dreaming that Allah told him to enter and take back Kuwait just before the first Gulf War. Before the second Gulf War, he reported a dream that a snake came upon his path but he chopped off it’s head with a sword which he interpreted to mean western invaders would be vanquished.
    Because of this emphasis on dreams as foretelling the future rather than arising from the past, Arabs who are having PTSD nightmares of an event occurring each night--such as Kuwiati survivors of the Iraqi invasion or Iraqi survivors of the American invasion--experience even more anxiety over whether this will indeed occur again than dreamers in other cultures.
    The positive side to this emphasis on dreams foretelling the future happens when oppressed people dream of positive outcomes.  These are a source of much inspiration in arab society, while in western traditions they would be dismissed as "wish fulfillment" without the beneficial impact.
    We  collected dreams associated with events of the Arab Spring and discuss how they inspired and guided those taking part, and what dreams right now may have to offer the reshaping of the Arab world.

This paper analyses the articulation of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) into Turkish foreign policy (tfp) during the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, akp) era. R2P has particularly become significant when the uprisings turned into full-scale civil wars in Libya and Syria. Therefore, this study examines tfp towards Libya and Syria in the framework of R2P. It argues that there is a close correlation between Turkey’s support of R2P and recently increasing emphasis on the normative foundations of its foreign policy in general. It also discusses that Ankara has appeared as an active advocate of the norm insofar as it adopted a more ambitious policy agenda, particularly in the context of the Syrian civil war. However, this paper concludes that, due to Turkey’s pragmatic approach, R2P has turned into a justification tool in the discourse of tfp makers for their regional aspirations.

Almost ten years have passed since the Arab uprisings of 2011 turned the social-political equilibrium of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region upside down. Despite successful counterrevolutionary policies, protests continue to challenge the status quo. The main difference with the 2011 is

This article examines the historical evolution of Tunisia’s Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) from its beginnings in 1987, when President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali took power, until his ousting in 2011 when the party was outlawed. I argue that the RCD evolved from a political force with wide popular support during a short democratic era (1987–89) into a repressive interest group in the 1990s, when the regime cracked down on political dissidents and popular freedoms whilst rewarding party members with lucrative bene ts. In the 2000s the RCD adopted a quasi-ma osi structure that pro ted the Ben Ali family, which increasingly monopolized economic and political power. Tunisia’s transformation into a near dynasty marginalized many RCD members and its wider networks, a central dynamic to understand Ben Ali’s ousting in 2011.

Over the course of the last decade, the Republic of Turkey has started to appear more and more evident on the world's map, trumpeted its credentials as a rising power with an increasing role in several regions in the world, including the Caucasus, the Balkans and the Arab World, especially in the wake of the Arab Spring. While the Arab revolts had arguably caused an earth-shattering effect, not only in the region, but also in the whole world, they have revealed Turkey's real weight and its potentials, as well as hidden challenges. This paper tries to examine the changes in Turkish Foreign Policy under the Justice and Development Party since 2002, primarily towards the Arab World and Israel. It will also analyze the various theories dovetailed with Turkey's new

Les chrétiens ont historiquement été des vecteurs de modernité au Moyen-Orient et des dynamiques qui en découlent en termes de liens avec « l’Occident », d’apports culturels novateurs, de circulation des idées et de mobilité transnationale. Partant, on aurait pu s’attendre à ce que la mondialisation et ses corollaires leur soient favorables. C’est pourtant un sentiment de malaise, voire d’abandon, qui prévaut au sein de leurs communautés, qui se réduisent comme peau de chagrin dans leurs terres ancestrales, de plus en plus de leurs membres se résolvant à l’exil pour fuir conflits, autoritarismes, montée des islamismes, occupations, persécutions ou marasme économique. Dès lors, il s’agira d’appréhender les incidences de certains liens affinitaires noués entre chrétiens orientaux, puissances étrangères et réseaux religieux transnationaux, mais aussi les implications des systèmes d’alliances qui se font à leur détriment dans l’espace mondial et de la déterritorialisation des idées et des sentiments, sur lesquels ils n’ont pas toujours de prise immédiate.

The paper examines the connection between the events of the Arab Spring in Egypt and the longterm
activity of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2011-2012 Egypt's civil society was capable to mobilize itself in
the context of lack of political freedom and not only expand their revolt into a revolution, but continue it and
cross the event horizon, largely due to the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood that had been around all the time. It is an organization that has for decades been shaping Egypt's society for the sake of its political goals.

El activismo en el mundo árabe ha sido representado en la clandestinidad. Destaca el uso de la caricatura, que ha sido un elemento clave, debido a que a través de símbolos el caricaturista era capaz de convertirse en un activista de la pluma. No obstante, con el desarrollo del ciberespacio esa fuente de activismo marcada en el papel se tradujo a la red, haciendo que la caricatura cobrara aún más importancia al poder transmitir ideas de una manera más directa, al mismo tiempo que desarrollaba una forma de activismo virtual. Por ello, este trabajo pretende estudiar y analizar la historia de la caricatura árabe para ver su cristalización en una forma de activismo revolucionario, así como también pretende reflejar cómo se ha generado una comunidad virtual en torno a ello. Se ha usado una metodología cualitativa, empleando un método histórico que permita recolectar informacion sobre la historia de las caricaturas en el mundo árabe. Luego, se ha desarrollado un método visual etnográfico que permita estudiar el uso de las caricaturas usadas. Por tanto, los resultados y la discusión esperados son demostrar que la caricatura es una forma de revolución y activismo, que se ha afianzado con el uso de internet.

2021 marked the tenth anniversary of the Peaceful Popular Youth Revolution in Yemen. It was a year distinguished by a proliferation of scholarly and journalistic commentaries forming conclusions about the success or failure of the events of the “Arab Spring.” In the Yemeni case, most of these conclusions have been those of overwhelming failure. Peaceful protests in 2011 eventually transmuted into violence on an unprecedented scale in 2015, the revolutionary movement imploded, rival armies assembled, and a plethora of imperial sovereignties in the Arabian Peninsula jostled for supremacy in the country. In many ways, it is the quintessential story of a revolutionary tragedy: of aiming and failing, of ideals succumbing to reality, and of an authoritarian resurgence. And yet if we take a moment to observe how the revolutionaries in Yemen marked their decennial anniversary, an image of revolution comes to the fore that defies over-arching narratives of closure. In the midst of a war that has cost the lives of nearly a quarter of a million people, we heard references to a beautiful moment in 2011, to virtuous being and exemplary morals that survive the ages; and to an event whose essence will materialize once more. Along with these celebrations, we also heard accusations of betrayal, self-indulgence, rival and reinvented revolutions, and of free-riding elites. In this short piece, based on fieldwork in the early years of this event, recent communications with revolutionary friends, and reflections published to mark this anniversary, we suggest that traces of this revolution endure at a range of levels, from the individual self to the very discordance that underpins the current war. As another anniversary beckons, we propose that what erupted ten years ago continues to defy closure.

​نظم المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات، في الدوحة، ندوتين تناولتا واقع الحراك الشعبي وآفاقه ومآلات الانتقال الديمقراطي في السودان والجزائر، وذلك في إطار سلسلة الندوات التي تعقدها وحدة الدراسات السياسية في المركز. عقدت الندوة الأولى يوم 16 نيسان/ أبريل 2019، بعنوان "الحركة الاحتجاجية وآفاق التغيير الديمقراطي في السودان"، أما الندوة الثانية فعقدت يوم 20 نيسان/ أبريل 2019، وكان عنوانها "آفاق الحركة الاحتجاجية ومستقبل التحول الديمقراطي في الجزائر".

Using counterpublic theory as framework and situating the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as a
counterpublic, counterpublics being alternative, non-dominant publics who voice their oppositional
needs and values through diverse discursive practices, the goal of this study is to: (a) Examine, in the
context of the years preceding the 2011 Egyptian uprising, whether the Egyptian MB, as a
counterpublic, portrays a deliberative ethic/voice in its cyber rhetoric; (b) Explore whether traditional/
Western ideas of deliberation are upheld or challenged in the cyber rhetoric of the Egyptian MB; and
(c) Comment on the role of Ikhwanweb, as a counterpublic sphere, in providing the Egyptian MB a
space to demonstrate its deliberative potential. By looking for traits and evidences of deliberative ethic
in the Egyptian MB’s cyber rhetoric—in a ‘text’ produced by an Islamist organization functioning
within a secular/authoritarian socio-political ‘context’—the overarching purpose of this analysis is to
make sense of : (a) an Islamist organization’s role as a counterpublic and its deliberative potential in a
non-democratic setting; (b) the implications of this for thinking about deliberation between diverse
groups of social agents in non-democratic cultures; and (c) the role of the Internet in facilitating
counterpublics’ deliberative potential in authoritarian contexts. Thus, from a heuristic standpoint, this
study is an endeavor towards contributing to a key question that animates public deliberation: how can
we engage/engage with voices that hold (or are assumed to hold) anti-deliberative attitudes and/or
those that operate within non-democratic socio-political contexts?

This paper investigates how British and American newspaper coverage of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution framed the protest movement that led to the resignation of Hosni Mubarak as the President of Egypt. Previous studies examining Western media coverage of domestic protests indicate that news media often covered movements and protesters with the expectation of violence occurring, or whose motivations, aspirations, and actions were trivialised and marginalised, while Western media coverage of the Middle East and North Africa often contextualised the region's nations, peoples, and politics in ways that promoted negative stereotypes. In analysing British and American newspaper coverage of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, this paper demonstrates the opposite to be true through a content and framing analysis of relevant news stories (n=611). Results from British and American newspaper samples offer strong evidence for not only reassessing the dominance of the reportorial paradigms by which the news media covers political and social dissent, but also normative Western media portrayals of the nations and people within Middle East and North Africa.

Legal mechanisms governing the state of emergency can play an important role in authoritarian rule and post-revolutionary transition periods. Egypt has experienced the terror of a regime empowered by emergency law. In Tunisia, emergency law was not so much an issue before but rather after the Jasmine revolution. Given the importance of emergency regulations in both cases, this article provides brief process-oriented accounts of the constitutional reforms triggered by the Arab Spring. It furthermore takes a critical look at how Egypt and Tunisia have redesigned these norms in the latest constitutions of early 2014. On the basis of criteria regarding the rule of law and mechanisms of crisis governance in modern democracies, this article then analyses and evaluates the key elements regarding checks and balances pertaining to emergency regulations in the 2014 constitutions.

... This essay examines the state of the democratization process in Egypt as of early 1997, in the wake of the legislative elections of late 1995, the new Kamel El-Ganzouri government of early 1996, and more generally recent years of ... Abdalla, Ahmed. ... Cairo: Al Mahrousa, 1993. ...

abstract This article engages in the debate on urban contentious politics by returning to the Tunisian revolution. In the article, I chart movements provoked by neoliberal restruc­ turings, and show how these ultimately came together to form a mass movement demanding radical political change. I first describe the socio­spatial roots of the Tunisian revolution to understand its dynamics. Based on the chronology of the unfolding events I sketch the classes, social groups and movements that coalesced against authoritarian rule in early 2011. Although the Tunisian revolution started in rural environments, I focus more specifically on the role of urban social movements in the uprising to link questions of urbanism to what were clearly national revolts. Secondly, I outline the scope of neoliberal reforms in Tunisia by looking at the impact of these reforms to chart the resulting emer­ gence of contentious politics in response to the increasing violence that characterized all levels of economic life during this period. I also consider the resulting uneven development and the changing relations between the state and the different social classes. This enables me to reflect on the politicization of the city with the aim of opening up new opportunities for engaging with a more comparative and cosmopolitan theory about cities around the world.

In 2010, the most complex and dynamic situation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region was shattered by revolutionary movements, most commonly known as the “Arab Spring”. The uprisings of the Arab Spring led to regime change and democratic reforms, but, at the same time, its “furious power” has set fire to civil war, social unrest and prolonged political crises. The U.S. did not have a universal approach to the political crises in the Arab world, but it often varied and had multilateral lines. It implies a most complex approach in the decision-making processes, which consists of policies, strategies, mechanisms, leverages and instruments of influence in the Arab world. See the Table: the U.S. multilateral management approaches to the Arab crises, 2010-2014. A full general Bibliography is attached to that article. The full text is in English. It is a brief summary of my MA thesis which I defended in the summer of 2015. Institution: Moldova State University, FRISPA, Department of International Relations, American Studies.

Egypt's January 25 protests did not start as a revolution but as an angry popular movement against the practices of the Egyptian security agencies. These are the same masses that are claimed to have joined a new revolution: the June 30 Revolution. The protests of January 25, 2011 broke out in response to the momentum created by the Tunisian revolution, but they were also the result of an accumulation of political experience that was contextual to Egypt. The "Egyptian Mohammed Bouazizi" was Khalid Saeed, a young activist who died under torture and whose murder was followed by a statement from the Police and the Interior Ministry-very similar to statements that we are seeing these days-claiming that Khalid Saeed died after having swallowed a cigarette containing drugs. Subsequently, National Police Day was chosen as the date for Egypt's "Day of Rage".
The January 25 demonstrations were a protest against the practices of the Egyptian police and the security services, practices that at the very least resulted in beatings, torture, and arbitrary arrests, and at times ended in murder. Typically, these would be justified and covered-up through a web of lies, for murder and lies are concomitant to the culture of the security agencies that serve despotic regimes. What we are witnessing today are the very same security agencies at work, defiantly unchanged in their behavior, policies, practices, and ploys. This has been proven by these agencies' behaviors on several occasions throughout the transitional period, crowned by the horrific massacre that accompanied the breaking-up of the Rabia al-Adawiya sit-in on August 14, and the practices that followed the massacre.[1]
It would be logical to speculate that since the security agencies did not change, and since the first popular movement on January 25 was directed against them, their persistence in desisting reform constitutes an undermining of one of the most important aims of the revolution. Furthermore, if these security agencies were to act, their actions would likely be against the revolution's objectives. The difference between January 25 and today, however, is that the security agencies cannot, in theory, act without mobilizing and rallying the street because the January 25 Revolution has brought about a new entity called "the people's legitimacy".