Ennahda leader says Turks are model, inspiration for Tunisia

The leader of Tunisia's moderate Islamist Ennahda Party has hailed Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a model of success for his country to follow, stressing that Turks have also encouraged them during the transition period in the country. Tunisians overthrew a dictatorial regime last year, sparking similar movements across the Arab world and paving the way for the October elections won by Ennahda. The party was banned under the previous government and the four-day congress that began on Thursday is the first the party has been able to hold in public. Turkey-Tunisia Inter-parliamentary Friendship Group Chairman Metin Kulunk addressed the party congress as a representative from Turkey and had talks with the Ennahda movement leader Rachid Gannouchi. Ghannouchi, Ennahda's co-founder and current leader, is a respected scholar who teaches that Islam is compatible with democracy. He said after the talks with Kulunk that the AK Party has solved many problems that secular rulers in the Islamic world could not, which has encouraged his movement. He added that Turkey not only offers a model to emulate, but also has become an inspiration for Tunisians. "Our success in Tunisia is your success," Gannouchi said, adding that the Tunisian model is a smaller version of Turkey's. He noted that Tunisians always were proud to be part of the Ottoman Empire. Ennahda allied itself with two secular liberal parties to form a ruling coalition and it has been at pains to assure Tunisians, and especially the Westernized, French-speaking elite, that it is committed to democracy and does not want to turn this North African country of 10 million into a hard-line Islamic state. In the year and a half since the revolution, Tunisia has been wracked by strikes, a shrinking economy and a rising unemployment rate that exceeds 18 percent of the workforce. It has also witnessed protests and unrest brought on by hard-line Islamists known as Salafis, who want the government to enforce strict religious law. The congress included attendees from the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, Turkey, Iran, Sudan, North Africa, as well representatives of the United States, Canada, the European Parliament and European political parties. Banned under President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who was toppled last year in mass protests that sparked the Arab Spring, Ennahda won the most seats in elections for a constituent assembly in October and formed a government in coalition with two secular parties. Ennahda was founded as an underground organization in the 1970s and went public in 1981, attracting a fierce crackdown by Tunisia's independence hero and then-president Habib Bourguiba, a staunch secularist who brooked no dissent. Ghannouchi was among the Ennahda members jailed during the 1980s. After promising reforms, Bourguiba's successor Ben Ali again cracked down on opponents in the 1990s, arresting thousands of Ennahda supporters, while many went underground or fled abroad. Ghannouchi himself went to London, where he was to spend more than 20 years, returning after the revolution last year. Ennahda gained an official license two months after the revolution.