Why the Lebanese are most unlikely to protest like the Turks

I bet a few Lebanese looked at events unfolding across Turkey in recent days and asked themselves why they couldn't summon up the anger and sense of oneness to protest against the list of abuses visited upon them by their own political class. I certainly did.
I say a few because, unlike Turkey, Lebanon's nationalist identity is in reality almost non-existent. And by nationalism I don't mean it in the nasty, brown-shirted, jackbooted sense; simply the idea that we are one country and that we should feel it profoundly when our nation is being ripped asunder, be it physically, economically or politically. All evidence points to the fact that we don't, or at least not as much as we should. The reality is that we are a group of sects living under a notional flag.
We had our own revolution once; half a decade before the world got excited about Tahrir and Taksim squares. But the 2005 Cedar Revolution was a fluke, a convenient gathering of interest groups who used the notion of the Lebanese flag and the ideas of independence, sovereignty and freedom to advance their own sectarian and political agendas. I know this because virtually no Shia took to the streets on March 14 of that year and virtually no one apart from the Shia demonstrated a week earlier on March 8.
The Turks, however, are cut from a different cloth. In the 10 years the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been in office, the country has gone from being a regional couch potato, a four-star tourist destination, albeit one with a rich and splendid history, to a genuine regional superpower, one that has seen GDP nearly triple.
We Lebanese are acutely aware of Turkey. We don't need visas to visit and visit we do; Istanbul is seen as a serious transit hub, and many Lebanese businessmen are considering relocating to the city, not only because of its location but also because its cultural and religious ties make it an obvious place to do business.
Let's not forget that, should push come to shove, the Turkish army could be in Damascus by lunchtime. Yes, even Israel with all its American-funded hardware, would think twice about scrapping with Turkey.
Yet even with such prosperity, there is anger, anger at what the younger Turks, the more secular, social-media driven generation, see as an erosion of the aspirations that would make them members of the wider global community. It is a backlash against the conservatism that took root in the Arab spring garden.
Turkey is not an Arab country, but given that the Arabs are so diverse, a Turk probably has more in common with a Lebanese and a Syrian than an Algerian or a Sudanese and so the spirit of revolt falls very much within the mood of our times.
What sets the Turks apart from the Lebanese is that they have put Turkey first.
They recognise their government has become too Islamist, too dictatorial and too brutal. If only the Lebanese had this spirit instead of the mythical sense of who we once were. If we did, we would still have many of our old buildings while the new ones wouldn't dot the coastline and suffocate the city.
We would not have overpasses that leave communities in darkness and we wouldn't witnesses the disappearance of mountains into the pockets of a sleazy and corrupt political class. Add to this the fact that we are entering an economic winter and at the tipping point of sectarian conflict and still we remain silent.
But then last Sunday, soon after it was announced that our ineffectual parliament was to be extended by 18 months because no one could agree on an election law, protesters gathered in Parliament Square and pelted legislators' cars with tomatoes. I had never seen anything like it in 21 years.
Perhaps there is hope after all, but I'm not holding my breath.

Michael Karam is a Beirut-based freelance writer

Why the Lebanese are most unlikely to protest like the Turks

I bet a few Lebanese looked at events unfolding across Turkey in recent days and asked themselves why they could not summon up the anger and sense of oneness to protest the list of abuses visited upon them by their own political class.