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214 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 11 / 2018 Meanwhile, Ennahda, a victim of its own inexperience after losing support due to its failures in government, is in no rush to return to power. It has instead opted for negotiation and compromise as a means of riding out a tumultuous and unstable period of transition fraught with uncertainty. And yet, Tunisia is a paradise compared to how other Arab Spring uprisings have panned out. And, for the sake of achieving its political objectives, as any other party would do, Ennahda’s heart remains Islamist, although not so much as before, and is now focused more on its own sphere of action. Without mixing religion and politics. In this process, religion is just another factor, and an important one, but it is far from being the only one or the most important one today. In this regard, the case of Morocco’s PJD is similar to that of its Tunisian counterpart. The most notable difference between the two, as researcher Bruce Maddy-Weitzman points out, is that the Moroccan regime has been a relatively successful «modernizing monarchy»53, if we can use such a term, and Maddy- Weitzman uses quotation marks because it should be viewed with caution. Going back to the similarities, when they encountered stiff resistance from the regime and bureaucratic apparatus, as happened in Tunisia, the two Islamist parties opted for a more pragmatic and peaceful solution, primarily because they did not have sufficient institutional capability to change fundamentally the way their national political systems are run54, as pointed out by Mohammed El-Katiri, researcher at the British Conflict Studies Research Centre (CSRC). And in the case of both Morocco and Tunisia the issue lies, not in the religious aspect, but the political one, in the lack of capacity required to turn values into realistic policy, into government action, something that is generally acquired through experience. We can therefore conclude that the two parties still have a long way to go before they are capable of achieving their political goals. The case of Turkey is different. To quote AKP member of parliament, Talip Kucuckan: «We respect him (Ataturk) very much, but today we have a country in which the army no longer decides, nor academia, nor the media. This is a different kind of democracy today. His decisions were right for the 1930s and Ataturk must be seen in the right context – not to use his memory or ideology to frighten us into using the army and forcing secularism (on people). Ataturk was always the excuse, but we have to move on (...). What people outside of Turkey are not willing to understand is that while it’s true that there is a conservative thread in our party, it reflects more than half of our society. We have conservative and Muslim values – but we are also different from Muslims in other places because our Islam is more moderate, being mixed with Sufism and influenced by our close contact with the West and the 53  http://www.rubincenter.org/1997/07/weitzman-1997-07-07/ Accessed on 20-11-2017. 54  https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2014/ssi_el-katiri_140721.pdf Accessed on 20-11-2017. http://revista.ieee.es

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