 Testing, am I ready to go? Can you hear me? Yes? Okay. I guess it's still good morning. Thank you so much for being here this morning and for your interest in the Arab Spring. It's impact and implications. It is quite an honor to have you and I am honored to be again part of the World Economic Forum for the first time in Vienna, but quite a regular from Davos to the regional meetings in the Middle East, Turkey and beyond. And New York where I reside. So the Arab Spring, the way we're going to handle this conversation, basically we want to see how will the popular uprisings in the Middle East and in North Africa, how will they reshape political agendas and business strategies both within and beyond the region. I am honored to have a wonderful panel here and I'll start by introducing them one by one. We have the President of Latvia Radis Zatlers. Thank you very much for being here, Mr. President. We have next to him Khalid Abdullah Janahi. He is the Honorary Chairman, Vision 3 from the UAE. And next to him we have Mr. Mustafa Kamil Nabli, the Governor of the Central Bank of Tunisia. Then we have Ahmed Oren and he's a Chief Executive Officer Ilaz Holding Turkey. And last but not least, we have Tareq Yusuf. He's the Dean of Dubai School of Government from the UAE as well. Welcome, gentlemen, Mr. President. How hard are transitions? How easy? What are the greatest expectations in terms of the length of such transitions and the biggest disappointments? Give us a parallel, if you will. You have an experience there. Representative of Singing Revolution, you will usually call these processes in a nice, emotional words. Like Arab Spring, we had the Singing Revolution more than 20 years ago. And I was a part of that. And we were the first in transition that's the advantage of Arab Spring. You have definite examples, patterns, experiences, pitfalls, all what we got in this process. But what is similar? The similar is the will of people for change. The will towards democracy, towards freedom of speech, political freedoms, religious freedoms, and of course, free movement of people around the globe. So these inspirations and this will has been expressed in a very visible way. We saw the people in Cairo and all the globe understood these people want change and they need assistance. Of course, we had the same things. We had the Baltic chain of people connecting free Baltic capitals and we had a lot of demonstrations in a peaceful way where we started a transition. Is it easy or not? It isn't easy. What are the main goals? We have to set up definite goals and that's relevant also for the Arab world. At first, of course, we all know the theory, the institution building, the building of civil society. That's a basis. But we have to create definite goals and after these first we started we had definite goals joining EU, moving towards European values, moving towards European system of life and very important in that stage. Is it over? It will not be over. I will tell you later on other questions that it's still going on. And what are the ills that continue through the transition corruption? Is corruption one of them? You see, I will say yes. Because when you have a transition, the start of the transition in society you have some people who are more active in the previous structure of power. And they really are the first to participate in transition and to really keep the power. That's a very easy motivation. They want to keep the power and it is still there 20 years later. That's very interesting. I think we're witnessing something similar in the Arab Spring. We'll get back to that. I want to read to you something that I will quote out of an article, an op-ed that was written by the GAC on Europe, which is the Global Action Committee. As you know, the World Economic Forum has established this very important series of GACs to deal with regional issues. And one of them is this one. The title is Europe Must Rise to the Challenges presented by the Arab Spring. I want to read to you the first sentence. Europe's response to the Arab Spring has been lacking in ambition, imagination and generosity. Do you agree? The political answer or the... I want the real answer on your mind. I know you speak your mind. Maybe in order to respond to that question, let me try to explain what is it that we see now in Asia, the biggest challenge now. It's related to two kind of paradoxes. The first paradox is that one of the causes of the revolution as we well understood now, but it's not the only one, but it's major one, is that there was a huge gap between the expectations of young people who are getting educated, not getting jobs and not getting better opportunities, and the reality of the economy that was growing at a relatively slow rate to deliver on this expectation, so this gap was big and that contributed to this uprising and the revolution. Now, the paradox is that during this transition period now, this gap is increasing. Instead of getting smaller, it's getting bigger because the expectations go up, people have made the revolution, the young people especially, and then they want to see some concrete things happening to them, but the economy is going down. The economy is going down for a number of reasons that we can discuss if you want, but the fact is that this period is a period of increasing gap and therefore of increasing tensions. The second paradox is that at the same time that revolution is supposed to lead to better prospects and better opportunities in the medium term. In the short term, the uncertainty is such that private investment businesses are not ready to invest now. They are going to wait for the future. So we're kind of combined that we need to bridge these two paradoxes and I would have thought that's where the external support can come in. The way to resolve that tension partly at least is for external support to come and help bridge that gap. And unfortunately this help has not been forthcoming. We have not seen much significant support except for the additional one. We are told go to the World Bank, go to the IMF, go to this and that. That's fine, we do go to the IMF, we go to the World Bank and so on, but is that only the only solution? And my message is no, it's not the only solution. This democracy in order to succeed, they need to bridge these gaps that I talked about and they need it now, not after the next election, not after the election after that, not after next year, not in two years. It's now that is needed. Otherwise it puts in jeopardy the whole process itself. Let me take this on two levels. The external support that you are hoping to get, clearly it's not only from Europe, but also from the Arab region or it should be because others would say, why should only the Europeans or non-Arabs come in with it? Are you getting any such support from Arab countries? And secondly, and that's a separate question but because I want to go back to the issue of Europe, the problem of migration and immigration, do you have a strategy or any proposal to the Europeans so that they could deal with the issue of immigration, so that they can just find a solution rather than lock the doors and start to become very defensive? That's a question to me or to Europe. Well, pose it to Europe if you will and then I'll get to it. I can answer. You see, the assistance is very important. When we were in our position 20 years ago, the first what we need is security and it was created by really moving towards NATO and NATO is a successful alliance and you see this question is out of agenda today. It's still in a different shape. As institutional building, you need really governments to help you to build different institutions but it's not also the main part because the recipients must really define what assistance they are ready for because if you just offer the assistance, it's wasted of time and the third is the civic society and then NGOs and international organizations played a very great role. And if we look at the great excitement that Facebook and Twitter played a great role in Arab Spring, that Facebook and Twitter is not going to govern the states but they can be useful to creating civil society. Very good. To you then, back to you, both the questions and the comments and reaction to the President's observations. I think what the President says is right. Clearly the recipients and the countries Tunisia has or Egypt or whatever has to define their needs and what they need and so on. That's clear and implementation has to bring in all components of society. It has to be the private sector, the NGOs, the government has to build this. I mean all of this is absolutely right and Tunisia is trying to do that under very different circumstances but this does not mean that because this is what I'm hearing. This is what I'm hearing from Europe for instance. We're hearing that money is not a problem. You need to build the institutions. You need to do this and you need to do that. We need to coordinate. We need to have the international institutions. We need to make sure that the money is going to the right places, that it's not lost. We agree 100%, 1,000%. But still for this to work you need resources and resources. We are not talking only about government resources. We are talking about private investors. We want private investors to come in and to show that they are betting on the success of this revolution. We want the civil society to come in to work with the civil society and so on. So it's a broad base to poor that is needed. We are seeing some of it but it's very very weak, very little compared to the challenge to have. Especially that we are dealing with, our friend will talk about Libya and so on. Libya it has its own implications for us and we are bearing the whole burden of the side effects of the Libyan revolution on Tunisia and there is no support for it. We are not seeing any support and it's very, very costly to us. So in this country to what the president is saying in the case of Latvia, there is support of Europe, there is anchoring and so on. In our case, what is happening Libya is really going the other way. It's making life more difficult for us. Khalid Junahi, you come from Bahrain you are a businessman. Business traditionally in the Arab world had really been in bed with regimes in a very big extent and suddenly they are scrambling. They don't know where to go. What about the business role in terms of these transitions? What are the basically the frameworks of responsibilities that you need to be as business people part of this evolution rather than just sort of ducking and waiting till the storm passes. Thank you. First of all, let me just apologize on behalf of the Iberian Airlines because they didn't bring my luggage or anything off the shelf as you can see my body doesn't get anything off the shelf. My apologies for not wearing a suit and a tie especially in the presence of Raghada. Coming to your question, I think before I hit into that, the way you describe the business community is just like describing Obama and Cameron and the others because they don't know what they are doing because they are in bed with the regimes and they don't know what to do and they were basically flying from one side to the other sort of connotation because it makes me feel very very bad. But I think it's important just to before we go into that, let's get some perspective from what Mustafa said and what from the President said because I was just listening very carefully to the two. I think the issue of everybody is looking at what's going on now. Some people say it's fake what's going on. Some people will say, some people will feel every night when they sleep, this is a fake thing happening in this part of the world. Some people without missing Nile Ferguson saying these people don't deserve democracy, they don't know what democracy is all about. It's the slammest issue. So we have that aspect happening too because he got 2008 correct so he thinks he's getting this one is correct. That's totally irrelevant because what we're missing and I think it's a very very important point that we're missing here is that we have people, we have 350 million people going to 400 million people Southern or 500 million people in Europe since we're sitting in Europe here. 400 million people soon. We have these 400 million people. They have three things that they just basically say we don't want this anymore. Forget democracy. Forget everything else. These are three words with three no's in front of them. We don't want no suppression, no repression, no oppression. Does anyone in the world altogether from Obama to a business person like myself disagree on that? That individuals in this world should not have suppression, oppression and oppression. Forget democracy. Forget every other aspect that people are talking about. We are not ready for it. We need support. We need help. And all that is sideline. I think it's very important that we agree on those three that the people they don't want this. Now I'm coming to you. But come to the point because otherwise I have to cut you off again. This is important. I think the business community you're right. I mean we were in Davos. We had a similar session about Tunis and what was going on for Arab Spring because Tunis was happening already happened and Egypt was in the making. In Davos this year the business community from the Arab world talked about what was going on in Egypt because everybody was worried about sidestipping or saying something which would upset somebody in Egypt upset Jamal Mubarak or upset somebody like that. You are right. The business community has been in bid with the regimes and that's why the business community we don't have truly. I mean I have to accept this and look at the mirror and accept it as an Arab that the majority of us in the Arab world we made our business by basically being close to the governments. So what's now? Now time has come that we sit back and say we have to what Mustafa said, we have to invest and your point about where the money should come from I think the money from the Arab world should be basically spent in the Arab world before it goes out. We have over a trillion dollar of cash of the Gulf sitting in the United States why the hell we're keeping buying bonds of the United States rather than spending it in Egypt spending it in the Saudi Arabia first going to Saudi, going to Egypt going to Yemen, look what's happening so we need to spend the money before we go on us for assistance from Europe and elsewhere, European Bank for Reconstruction everybody else let's spend it in our own part of the world before we ask the others. Now one reason the money is out, this is the point, one money the reason is that the money is out because lack of confidence from our people who are running the countries they prefer to put the money out because for a rainy day like now it is like the skies are really gray and it's going to be a rainy day so it's better to have the money out so when we're kicked out we have the money out so I think it's very important that the business community we have to spend the money and I've had actually just to come I've been five times in Egypt I need to interrupt you, I can't give you more time of an opening statement than others I need to interrupt you at this point I love it when you interrupt Yes I know, you're used to it the Arab Spring Turkey has been impacted in the sense that some would argue that the Adogan government is reinventing itself as a result of the Arab Spring do you agree? Of course I do, Turkey is sitting in a very unique position but before I come to that my business is news gathering it's a news agency and we've been operating in the Middle East and North Africa since 1996 of all those years everything we heard in the region whenever we went to do businesses we do that now it's changed there's a hope, there's a difference attitude that yes we can do this not the Obama campaign but it's much broader than that but it's not enough all these tools that are available now the Facebook and Twitter they've been helping to that tipping point that happened in Tahrir Square and elsewhere but today there's reports that the Egypt tourism income will be down 35% this year and it's going to continue to go down what happened was enough to change just one thing but it's not enough to sustain anything so the money that has to be spent the rule of law that has to be established the internal assistance that has to come between the Arab countries which is not happening at this moment all are necessary to see that this change is not going to be affecting others like Turkey which is going through this flow of immigration at the time from Syria and losing businesses in Libya and losing tourism between Egypt all of these and will spread to Europe but to prevent it all is to really help those young people that made this happen to become part of the system so they can rebuild the country otherwise we will face one thing which is a very messy non-working democracy versus a pretty well decent working autocracy and to choose between them is going to be a big failure you have elections coming up I think this Sunday in Turkey and it is being said that the election for the ruling party has been challenged because the relations of the past were with the regimes that the Arab world is calling for their ousting from Libya Libya's Ma'am al-Qaddafi to Syria's Bashar al-Assad etc etc so do you think that this election is going to reflect a new doctrine an adjustment of the doctrine that it is immune, that Turkey is immune and it's going to export its example as the Turks like to say that that Turkey is a good example to be exported to the Arab Spring this election is going to affirm that whatever Turkey has been doing was the correct thing this will be the third term for the same government and they will be the single ruling party again in the parliament Turkey is a good model but that model is not something that it can just export and turn it into something overnight and apply anywhere else even with the Arab Spring everything happening in these countries are unique to themselves, nothing happening in Egypt is not the same with Libya or Tunisia or whatever the next country is but Turkey proved something that a democracy can work including all kind of people from different backgrounds it could be whatever the reasons and backgrounds they have Turkey is working closely with all these changes happening in the region Turkey is a plan for Libya Turkey is working with Egypt after the elections I think Turkish Foreign Minister will be on the road again to work closer with and Turkey obviously established close ties with Syria Turkey has teams in Syria talking to Bashar Assad almost every week now I know of the fact that it is happening with the Foreign Minister in our newspaper a couple of weeks ago to talk about this Turkey is helping them to understand what is working in Turkey and how much you can apply to that maybe not all but some so that the system can continue to work maybe later in the discussion you will tell us if you think that there will be an overthrow eventual overthrow of secularism in Turkey or not but we will get back that is not going to happen, that is a great answer quick answer directly you come from Libya Libya has received international support the Libyan Revolution has received international support also regional GCC countries started it the Arab League supported it went to the Security Council NATO is launching operations Libya has been luckier than the other countries in the Arab region that have been over going or undergoing the change in the Arab Spring is this satisfactory is this enough or you want more you can never say it is enough but what you can say is that I think Libya wasn't indeed fortunate and as a Libyan I am extremely appreciative of what our neighbors have done and especially of the leadership shown by Europe I think this was a function of many things there was a sense of moral responsibility to doing something in Libya especially after a number of European governments spent the last decade actively rehabilitating Qaddafi and openly ignoring his brutality and open violations of human rights so there was an historical legacy there Libya is also in the neighborhood of Europe Libya matters it's got financial resources immigration flows come through it there are immense oil interests at stake but perhaps more importantly Libya benefited from the fact that in fact the Europeans felt a bit guilty their slow response to Egypt and Tunisia their reluctance, their hesitation I think played a role especially when combined with the open brutality of Qaddafi and the immense dislike that people in the world had for him so we did benefit at the right time at the right moment from what seemed to be a clear and present danger in an area where the Europeans can in fact play a role especially with the Americans being in the back seat so a mixture of circumstances not a single one of them matters more but I would say in many ways Libya has done more to reaffirm for the world the relevance of Europe and the notion that Europe can play a role in open international arena including in the United States Syria or Tunisia or Egypt had done so and in many ways we collectively benefit from this if Mohammed Qaddafi hangs on as he's saying that he's not leaving do you think do you fear this will lead to the partition of Libya I don't think there will be a partition of Libya I don't think the Libyans want it or will put up with it nor will the Europeans or the outside international systems at large want to see a partitioned Libya I think the discussions or the debates over a partitioned Libya took place sometime in the late 1940s early 50s that was over half a century ago I think there is an agreement on the end game there is an agreement on the end goal but Libya faces a difficult challenge in the transition after Qaddafi leaves Libya is not Egypt or Tunisia there are no political institutions no parties no civic society there will be a lot of building from scratch and I look to the Europeans for help here I look to the countries of Europe that emerged after 1989 and rebuilt their political and economic systems almost from scratch once communism collapsed for lessons and for inspiration on what Libya can in fact do Mustafa Nabli I think today there is going to be a very important meeting in Tunis basically looking at the potential roadmap for Tunisia what are your concerns what do you want to be sure to be secured for the future of Tunisia what do you see happening actually is it the rehashing of old guard or is it actually the coming in of the new guard what's happening now is a democrat transition to have to reduce the uncertainty as we go forward people want to see how things are going to move forward next three months, six months here so people want to see in terms of political roadmap what are the next steps who is going to be in charge in six months, who is going to be in charge in a year so that people can make sense of what is happening people want to see what's happening to the economic policies, what's happening to the economy and so on and the meeting today is one of those meetings which are critical because it is going to help clarify the roadmap of the next year or so in terms of the political transition there has been a debate taking place over the date of the next elections for the constitutional assembly the date that was fixed was for July 24th and for technical reasons the newly established independent electoral commission has said that it cannot deliver fair transparent elections in that time frame so they asked to postpone it some people do not agree so there has been a debate on when should the elections take place so the meeting today is between the different parties political parties, government electoral commission, everybody sitting together and trying to work it out to agree on the next steps when are the elections going to be what are the next government is going to be and the constitutional assembly is going to deliver its work in terms of constitution so the idea is to have this meeting to arrive at the consensus which clarifies the roadmap for the next six months to a year in terms of political President Zatla do you have a specific advice for Tunisia as it is today considering the roadmap for the future there are several road maps available as I said the experience of Eastern Europe the experience definitely of Baltic states as a communist we didn't have any parties we didn't have any NGOs we started with NGOs and the parties followed you have the western Balkan experience which are still on the road towards the European Union and you see on the example western Balkans how much damage the war or military conflict does to development they are at least 10 years behind and I think I like the idea of Turkey being a leader because there is no democracy of Islamic democracy European democracy, American democracy of African democracy is just democracy people adapt to the basic values and values of democracy but a definite example like Turkish Islamic democracy now I mean it will be controversial but you see it's easier to understand for the region because the regional approach is very important we had the same we all on the Baltics had the same goal to go so we are cooperating and the same time we were helping each other the same time we really pushed each other forward but one more lesson we have learned if you look at the three countries Belarus Latvia and Estonia 20 years ago they were on the same starting point and how different are the results even being in NATO and European Union both Estonia and Latvia has still different results and therefore it's very important to learn from these lessons to see why it happened why Latvia is still fighting corruption today and Estonia isn't and why Estonia is a highly developed country it's a definite correlation between the welfare of the country and the transparency and freedom and as well as in an economic environment the president mentioned the Turkish model to be exported to the Arab world do you agree or would you rather have the Iranian model I want to have a model which is the model of the people in the country itself the people I believe in one vote for the constitutional setup in all the Arab countries once that's set up that would legitimize the governments the rulers around the Arab world today so I think one man one vote on the constitutional perspective now if it's Islamist everybody's worried about Islamism in Egypt so be it, I mean they've been put aside for such a long time they are the only prepared people who are going to come to the elections in September if it goes on in September they will get 30 to 40% of the seats and if Mr they'll be getting what? 30 to 40% of the seats they will get that, I mean the Muslim brotherhoods I'm talking about Egypt now I mean the Egyptians differ with you they think they'll get 20% at most I don't know where your fingers come from I think they'll be smart to keep it at 20% but I think if they want to get 30 to 40% they will get 30 to 40% but they'll be smarter to keep 20% in order actually not to do what Arbakan did in Turkey since we're going to learn from Turkey and what Erdogan did afterwards which was the right way of coming in through later on so I think the Muslim brotherhoods will come through they'll be the biggest power in Egypt and the reason I'm talking about Egypt because Egypt is the pivotal country in the Arab world what happens in Egypt is going to affect all of us in the Arab world will it affect really the Gulf states that GCC countries or are the GCC countries immune of the Arab spring given that they are monarchies they're not constitutional monarchies they are absolute monarchies you come from that region you come from Bahrain tell me about the... Bahrain almost went through the Arab spring and then didn't and tell me if you think these Gulf states are immune of the Arab spring No one is immune from the person as I said at the beginning no one wants repression those three words whether they like it or not all across the Arab world all the rulers, the 22 countries in the Arab world they have to accept that's going to be a reality from now on and even from Europe and United States they have to accept that's not a fakeness on this thing people, the people power in the Arab world is now reality, is not a myth anymore so we are there, we're saying hey, we are not good enough for democracy we're going to be Islamists, fine, forget all that we are not interested in that what we want basically is we don't want autocracy that's what we don't want, so everybody in the Arab world regardless where it is, they are not immune from this and one thing by the way we're talking about rulerships I mean everybody talks about what happened in Tunis and what happened in Egypt and later on elsewhere there's been leaderless revolutions or revolt and I suppose, surprisingly that's not it's an awakening if you will no, that's not very surprising because we don't have leadership per se for the past 30 to 60 years in different Arab countries we've not had leadership we've had rulerships across the board so you don't expect these revolutions to be lead by anybody people will take advantage of it like what happened in Bahrain was taken advantage of by Iran for organizing so different places people take advantage but they are leaderless today let me try to get a couple of questions from the floor then come back and forth could somebody help me with raising their hands very high so that you will be given the microphone first, please and introduce yourself kindly Mohammad Jafar from Kuwait I think Dubai will be immune for a simple reason I think they have the processes and they've developed the human capital that will allow them to weather the storms or not to be included in that storm if you look at the civic education in Dubai and how citizens behave you find that there's a difference to how citizens behave in other nations if you take Yemen for example so I think there could be exceptions and it's not because of oil but because of tolerance, vision but maybe that would be the only exception alright and I want to take three or four observations and questions from the floor then come back to the panel can I see some hands up yes please kindly Lindsay Howard International Bank of Azerbaijan we've spoken a lot about the Middle East could we turn back to Central Asia it's a very different region it's not the Middle East it's the former Soviet space it's not Asia it's its own region could some of the speakers address what they see as the impact the differences and similarities of the conditions in these countries do you have a person in mind that you'd like to answer this question uh oh is this planted can we please have the mic thank you very much now from Austria but having been living in Turkey in the Balkans for the last 11 years I just want to maybe put a note of caution having worked in the Balkans and as President Sattler's described it's a very different region which had a very clear goal so the whole countries emerged from war, from conflict there was a lot of money to give the example so about more than 2 billion euros were spent on assistance and none of the Arab countries would get similar amounts and still we are now talking 10, 15 years since the conflicts and there are lots of issues from institution building, rule of law citizen state relations even there is this objective of European Union membership and the difference between Latvia and Belarusia is exactly that Belarusia did not have that objective and so the revolution went astray left and right so the question is what kind of objective can the European Union offer or what kind of objective could the Arab countries themselves create to give the revolution a goal otherwise it will sort of drift left and right and maybe leadership will emerge but maybe not thank you, I take two more questions and observations first row here please Jochen Bermont from Bermont S Management we are German investing in Russia for years and former Soviet Union what would the panel think about the idea of the incentives in the Middle East of course it could be incentive for European Union memberships not just for Turkey but for Israel, Lebanon, Tunis how about Russia if Russia adopted the Aki community and decided to be really democracy as it announces, Russia could be a member and the Middle Eastern, Central Asian countries also have the incentives could the European Union go beyond its crisis and think bigger again thank you one more, yes over there hi, my name is Alex from SoundCloud I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you see technology having played into the most recent events and if you think there's anything if you think technology has played a large part if there's anything we can do to speed up the advancement of technology to let more people be part of things like this with your permission Mr President I'm gonna start with Tarek I don't issue of technology and the use of technology and the youth not only use the youth's impact into this Arab Spring to be addressed if I may come back to you because most of the questions are to you actually but I'll start with Tarek and then I'll go to Ahmed and then to you Mr President thank you Raghida I think I've spent the last five years thinking, writing and being a part of a number of research looking at youth in the Arab world we covered as many areas as we thought were relevant and important except one the role of technology in particular the role of social media not only as a a social tool or as a news transference tool we completely underestimated the power of the social media to immersion the space to make news in the case of Libya I can say this with every ounce of confidence the revolution in Libya was set started, sustained primarily initially by activists using the social media nothing more, nothing less hence right now I think we're playing catch up we're trying to understand how social media works and when we look out it's not clear that anybody else understands social media or the role of technology in social mobilization and political life very well this is one area where I would say it's not about economic cooperation or financial help but it's about technological and social science study of very important facets of life that we all should be paying attention to Ahmed, you're a media person but your news agency is your era over because the new ones are coming in and then please address some of the points that were made about Turkey I would repeat the same but there's one step before what happened was for the last 10 to 15 years the satellite broadcasting over the Arab region and North Africa expanded dramatically, it's probably more than a thousand satellite TV stations all over in the region this has not just happened like the social media a couple of years ago this has a 15 year history we were part of the history we've been broadcasting news in the region for the last 15 to 16 years but it was one way people could set up satellite dishes even it was prohibited in many parts of the region could just hide them and watch what the rest of the world is talking about and doing and how they are living but it was only one way there was no way to react to that or let the others know about it once the text messages came to cell phones it started to change the relations between people I want to talk about the same issues and then obviously Twitter came, Facebook came, computer connections came people were ready just that social media didn't bring everything all together at once people were ready for the change they knew a lot about what's happening in their countries or elsewhere but they could just not communicate that, it enabled that communication and it became like a wildfire but again it was always it helped and encouraged for that tipping point but I'm repeating myself again social media, all this technology it wasn't the only reason would you mind addressing some of the points made by some of the questions on Turkey some of the questions came they were related to Turkey, do you want to address that? well the Turkey issue is I'm not comfortable with the Turkey describing Turkey as an Islamic democracy it's a secular democracy just that the government and it will be until the elections, if Erdogan gets 367 seats, I guess it's automatically without referendum even they could take 400 seats, doesn't matter why would anyone upset the system there's growing 10% every quarter why would one upset that, it's all economy that's interesting because an argument is that they actually is after upsetting that system actually no, Turkey tells that it could be a very nice secular democracy run by a very pious person I'm glad because I'm going to Istanbul tomorrow I will take this question to the street and find out, Mr President I'll come back to both of you later the question is about the goals targets and objectives they not should but must be created by the nation itself otherwise it's not working because it's a question about values what are the values the values are supported but every individual as an individual and by the nation as a nation so they stand by and stand for these values and then the objectives, the targets and goals are created there's no other way all the other ways lead to a failure now there was a corresponding question about the Central Asia and I will talk a little bit about the eastern partnership because we have been very active as a country what does it mean try to assist these countries on the way to improving democracy and in a civil society so what are the lessons learned if you come visit with a full toolbox and offer them it's not working because they don't know how to use the tools that's right but what I would like to emphasize is all the time window of opportunity with some of the nations we had great expectations with Ukraine then we were a little bit disappointed now we are looking very carefully what's going on there we were much more less expectations in Moldova today Moldova might be the best example like Tunisia to whom to assist so we have to be very flexible in offering the assistance we shouldn't be very strict on that because the situation changes by election to election by some different other events like in Georgia whatever including Azerbaijan because I am in a great contact with most of the leaders of this region and the advantage I see they really understand me much easily because for some time we have lived in the same communist Soviet space and we had some kind of a common experience too so we are trusted much more but nevertheless they have to learn from the other spring not to get some centralation autumn I really want to get all of you to address the potential coming of autumn and what needs to be done so that it doesn't turn into a terrible winter in the Arab world but before that I want to quickly go to both of you on two different questions I know there was one question addressed to you or as I said would you answer that question quickly so that I can have only seven minutes as we were joking about it with my friend over there that was about the central Asia you know which one I think coming back what's happening in Egypt today and what's going to happen in Egypt it's going to affect everybody it's not just going to affect central Asia it's going to affect even China it's affecting even the United States walking like an Egyptian so I think it is affecting everywhere and it will affect everywhere central Asia has to learn and learn very very fast corruption as we have it in central Asia has to go before we talk about anything that has to go away and that is big big big time in central Asia matter of fact it's much bigger than the Arab world if I can say that now if European Union and the Arab world the 500 million people in the European Union like it or dislike it there are a million people just in south of themselves there are issues that they have to look at there is social issues, there is economic issues and there is political issues this is an aging society what we're talking about the 500 million 400 million is a young very young society the gentleman on my left knows this very very well majority of us we are below the age of 30 majority 70% of us are below the age of 30 and now that if we don't we're dealing and I'm mentioning 400 million people I'm not talking about 22 regimes I'm talking about 400 million people if we do not, the 500 here take that into consideration those people have the same rise as they do here in terms of accepting their governments in certain going and talking in terms of having the room for proper education critical thinking then we're going to have a major problem coming in the future Mustafa Nabli I don't know whether you said enough about this but the immigration strategy that you might have in mind to suggest to the Europeans in order to deal with this problem particularly from North Africa I think you have in mind some limited numbers have you discussed it with the Europeans have they reacted what sort of reaction can you just shed some light on this very important issue of how to deal with the matter of immigration and I know you are also a victim of the other immigration coming from Libya it's a different set of problems that you're having let me correct the last sentence we don't think that we are victim to the Libyan migration we welcome the migration because it's for a good cause can you please come we welcome the migration from Libya because it's for a good cause we don't consider ourselves victim what we are saying it's costly and then we would like to see burden sharing that's what that's the point we are making I think for us the migration issue should not be at the center of the discussion with Europe and we think that we find that the Europeans are obsessed by migration and everything is seen from the lens of migration and every help and every support everything they do is just migration I mean because 20,000 people across the border of Tunisia want to Lampeduza in early January because security was down border controls were down and so on and every hell broke loose in Europe and we have 70,000 Libyans or 80,000 Libyans they come to Tunisia and they are there and they are welcome we are dealing with that and it's a problem but it's not something that you construct a whole neighborhood policy around and I think that has been clearly you know it's not going to help you develop a strategy along the way now what do we want even if you want to talk migration what I say I have always said to my friends the European the policies that you are following are counterproductive you are getting the worst of both worlds by saying no migration you are not achieving no migration you are having migration but you are having not the migration that is best for you you are having the migration that is worst for you because you are having the illegal migration you have the migrants who are ready to risk their lives because they have nothing to lose and this is not necessarily what Europe needs in terms of migration on the other hand Europe needs migration everybody knows that Europeans know that the demographics you know say it and we have looked at this right and left and all the numbers and it's clear there is a win-win situation there is a migration that is good for Europe and good for the southern Mediterranean and we should think about how to make this migration take place instead of having the migration that is taking place today which is not good for the southern countries it's not good for Europe it's not good for anybody in a very brief one sentence because I have to conclude and it has to be one sentence I have five minutes only maybe Tunisia is out of the harm's way right now at least because there is institutions and education enough to take it forward we are not sure Egypt is out of harm's way because the transition is very fragile and it's an economic bomb if it doesn't work in Libya we have a situation that looks that it will be concluded if NATO sort of highlights its activities in Libya but if Mohammad Qadhafi insist on staying we're not so sure if that's not going to be an example for others to think they could hang in there and in Yemen we're not so sure if Ali Abdullah Saleh the president of Yemen is going to accept the deal offered to him by GCC whether he stays in Saudi Arabia where he's getting back and if he goes back what trouble we have in Syria we don't even know what model is President Bashar al-Assad looking at is he looking at the model of Bahrain or is he looking at any of the models that I mentioned Qadhafi Ali Abdullah Saleh, Mubarak Zain al-Abideen so certainly we have very brave people in Libya as you mentioned Tariq people had been broken and they've been really from a very systematic breaking method the same in Syria is this al-Sripring going to last is it going to become an autumn and then a winter where you bury it one sentence about what you think, what you hope and I'll start with you Tariq and then conclude with the president that's hard Raghida one sentence yes please help me with that so the sentence is I think we're seeing the beginning of a new Arab political order within the region I have the utmost confidence in that one statement and I think the sooner countries come to terms with it both within the region and outside the faster it will be to aid the process and to make it as peaceful stabilizing and as in the interest of everyone as possible a majority of Arabs today already live in countries that are going through some sort of a transition by the end of the year it will be maybe a dominant majority the new Arab world order or the Arab order is going to be one that is driven by the countries placed in Egypt and Tunisia and elsewhere they will be the center of gravity they will be the inspiration for ideas it is no longer the Arab world as we knew it just a few months ago thank you Tariq you're the dean of Dubai School of Government from the UAE to Ahmed Oran's sentence please well so hard to say a few things in one sentence but we'll try it is a dramatic change and it already happened it will not go back but it taught something it has two messages one was the message that showed the extreme wildest that extreme wildness is not the right message so the rhetoric behind Al Qaeda and others forces in the region had a blowback but it's one thing the second message is the remaining dictators that they need to behave better they need to learn from this they need to adapt they should stop humiliating their people and some of those who are richer than the others are now spending much more money and buying some time but the change will continue and the change will come to all of it this is not turning back thank you Ahmed Oran you are the officer of Ilhas Holding from Turkey Stefan to be short I would like to say that to use an analogy I think there has been climate change the climate has changed in this region it's not the same climate that we have seen before and it's changed forever now within that climate change there is going to be geography there is going to be seasons there is going to be all kinds of things it's not going to be one season or another it's going to be different things it's going to be different places it's going to take time it's going to move around and things but the climate has changed and this has changed for the better thank you Mustafa Kamil Nabil governor of the central bank of Tunisia Khaled I think everything has been said I agree with but I think just to add one important thing since we are sitting in Europe and sitting in the west I think the west to regain its morality when it comes to the Arab world with the way it's been dealing with the Arab world with the people of the Arab world I think the west has to now understand and accept to use the word catch up no longer more of a catch up grid one or not grid one I think they have to have it they have to be there they have to understand things will not be back as they were before it's not fake this is a reality on ground and it's going to go forward the people of the Arab world will be equal to the Europeans and everybody else in terms of what they want for themselves for their children for the future thank you Khaled Abdullah Jannahi January chairman visions 3 from the UAE as in of the base in UAE Mr President three points first it's the beginning of the process and no step backs second point we need in the short term one positive example success story at least in a one step forward in the region third point I will emphasize again the regional importance and the transition in Arab League must start in the Arab League that's important very important Valdez Zatler is president of Latvia thank you very much for joining us my name is Rahida Dergham I'm with Al Hayaa and I thank you for participating in this session and until next time with the wef wherever we are whether it is at the Dead Sea or in Davos thank you very much