Clash between Tunisia and Turkey over Erdogan's latest statements

Turkish President Erdogan has openly criticised the latest political move by Tunisian President Kaïs Saied, who on the last Wednesday of March dissolved the national parliament. Erdogan's statements did not sit well with the presidential palace in Carthage, which on Tuesday summoned the Turkish ambassador to Tunisia. Tunisian Foreign Minister Othman Jerandi also held a telephone conversation with Ankara. 

On Monday 4 April, Turkish President Erdogan in a press conference called the dissolution of the Tunisian parliament a "discredit to democracy", something that has alerted the Tunisian government, which responded by accusing Erdogan of interfering in national affairs and trying to destabilise the region and the constitutional process that President Kaïs Saied has begun. 

In the words of Tunisian Foreign Minister Othman Jerandi, Erdogan's gesture is "an unacceptable interference in Tunisia's internal affairs and contradicts the fraternal ties between the two countries and the principle of mutual respect in relations between countries," he declared in a statement issued by his cabinet. 

The same statement stressed Tunisia's independence and sovereignty vis-à-vis Turkey, in a possible reference to the two nations' shared past.  It should be remembered that what is now the Republic of Tunisia was for more than three centuries, until 1881, a territory under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, which until the 20th century extended over North Africa, before the stages of Western protectorates.

President Saied, who had already paralysed parliamentary activity on 21 July 2021, again disrupted the proceedings of the house of representatives by dissolving the assembly when it voted 121 votes against the president's reforms. Saied then dissolved parliament and announced a "profound constitutional reform" to "amend the mistakes" of the 2014 constitution, which he himself helped draft. 

Erdogan's criticism is no coincidence, according to local media outlets such as La Presse and pan-Arabists such as London's Al-Arab. The opposition to Saied has the support of Turkey and Erdogan acts as a supporter of its leader, the Islamist Rached Ghannouchi. The Islamist Ennahda Renaissance Party was the most widely represented party in the parliamentary chamber, with its leader Rached Ghannouchi presiding over the assembly. Ghannouchi, who has been summoned by the Tunisian judiciary, along with his Islamist party are the focus of some blame for the country's political instability. 

Following the Arab Spring in 2011, which began in Tunisia, Ghannouchi's Islamists are attempting to seize power in the country with the foreign support of Turkey. One of the voices denouncing this situation is that of Zuhair Maghzawi, secretary general of the Popular Movement party, who in statements to the Al-Arab media regretted that "Tunisia remains the last stronghold of the Islamists. The last card Ennahda has to play is Turkey".

The Ennahda party has been linked to Salafist and radical Islamist groups since its foundation, making it one of the main dangers to secularism and progress in Tunisia. Until its 2016 congress, the party's ideological basis was the establishment of a pan-Arabist caliphate, as the researchers of the Alternativas foundation make clear in their analysis in their paper 'Politics and Islam. Contemporary debates and visions in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe". 

Progressively, Rached Ghannouchi has made efforts to contain the Islamist facet of the party, which has caused differences within the party. 

For the time being, as Ghannouchi's judicial appointment indicates, it can be expected that Kais Saied still has enough support and strength in the country's various institutions to hold on to power and begin his constitutional reform in the coming months. But popular protests and instability continue to grow in Tunisia, leaving an uncertain future for Tunisia's democracy.