Authoritarianism and Automobility in the Arab World

Aminah Elahi

Aminah Elahi is a third-year history student at the University of Birmingham. Over the summer of 2023 she received funding from College of Arts and Law as a Collaborate Research Intern to work as on the Movements & Mobility online forum.

Urban planning in the Arab World has long been strategised to serve the interests of various elites, whether that be the colonial British and French governments, or local Arab and Turkish rulers. This discussion considers connections between diminishing public space in the Middle East, to argue that the growing use of the private car has come about through ideas centred on gender, programmes of suburbanisation, and pressing concerns to avoid political uprisings.

At the centre of any discussion on automobility and public space in the ‘Middle East’ is the idea of the private car as the primary method of transport for all ‘respectable’ individuals. Using public transport like buses and trams is therefore not respectable, even ‘humiliating’ and threatening to both masculinity and femininity (1).

The primacy of the car in the Arab world came into being through various factors, but in the Middle Eastern Muslim context gender was a key factor. From the beginning, the car was marketed as male, synonymous with efficiency, power and freedom while public transport was feminised as inefficient, slow, and most importantly, unsafe, especially for women. Thus, the private car became the only option for any ‘masculine’ man and also the choice for any self-respecting Muslim woman who wouldn’t want to subject herself to the wandering eyes of strangers. Pascal Menoret’s ‘Learning from Riyadh’ takes the gendered aspect further in the Saudi Arabian context, showing how for women ‘car transportation was an instrument of control, not of freedom’, since men remained their chauffeurs and suburbanisation had isolated women from other households (2).

Suburbanisation in Riyadh was constructed in a way to isolate individuals from each other and the city centres, leaving the car as the only option for travel but also to prevent the buildup of big cities which were perceived to be hotbeds of political uprisings. The idea of the big city as a political threat to ‘the regime’ has persisted in recent times. President Sisi’s ‘New Cairo’ can be seen as an attempt to escape the rebellious Cairene population and prevent his own removal from power. Menoret details how this Western concept of the suburbs was ‘seen as the graveyard of religion and community’ and how people were shocked with the ‘absence of communal areas’. Public space was intrinsically connected to urban planning which in turn was connected to automobility.

Public space in the “Middle East” had already been disappearing for years, making way for swanky new carparks and high-rise buildings, but the trend accelerated quickly after the Arab Spring, with private as well as government buyers repossessing ‘green’ communal space for commercial or military reasons. Many historians recognise the way the availability of public space as a political ground helped the various anti-colonial protests in the Arab colonies or ‘protectorates’ but also how they served revolutionaries during the recent Arab Spring (2010-2012). In an article on the connections between public space and the Arab Spring, Sanburn shows how European-style open squares facilitated large-scale protest but also how simultaneously they served the interest of the authoritarian elites by being spaces easy to repress and contain. For example, Tahrir Square in Egypt was the site of successful sit-ins and mass protest during the first revolution, but under the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) was an site of easy repression. The military council recognised the way public space had assisted in the revolution and promptly grassed over the main square and guarded against people trying to step onto the grass. This was a blatant attempt at restricting public space in order to restrict political opposition. Similarly, in Bahrain, the famous Pearl Roundabout monument to which protesters rallied was demolished overnight and the space returned to being simply a roundabout for cars.

This loss of public space is not an unnoticed trend. Organisers in countries like Lebanon and Turkey have used social media to attempt to organise protests and spread awareness about impending privatisation projects. For example, Kristin V. Monroe points to the halted demolition of Jesuit Park in 2013, which was planned to be converted into a 300 space carpark. The protesters held slogans like “Cut pollution, not trees” and handed out flyers lamenting the disappearing green space in Beirut. The Friends of Mufti Hassan Khaled Park stopped a similar demolition in 2019. Lebanon’s 2019 protests also sparked a project of reclaiming public spaces with #ReclaimingthePublicSpace used online. Various spaces including Martyr’s Square, The Egg (an unfinished cinema) and Samir Kassir Garden were repurposed into places of public debate and community.

In Turkey, the 2013 Gezi Park protests was sparked by the planned demolition of Taksim Square and Gezi Park and the building of army barracks and reportedly a shopping mall in their place. Taksim Square and Gezi Park were clear public spaces, acting as community centres with public transport links. TaksimSolidarity Platform, an online group mobilised citizens into nationwide protests which spiraled into general pro-democracy protests against Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Almost ten years later, the same regime has continued its pursuit of private profit in its planned takeover of Validebag Grove in Istanbul. In 2021, protests against various government projects aimed at generating private profit within the park were violently suppressed by Erdogan’s government, mirroring the 2013 situation. Validebag Volunteers and Validebag Protection mobilised online also, using #ÜBValidebağdanDefol (Get out) to spread the word.

The decreasing amount of public space is often directly related to the enlarging of highways. For example, the recently constructed Sadat Bridge restricts public access to the beachfront to ‘solve’ a traffic issue that never existed. The ten-lane highway has not only failed to curb traffic issues, but has induced demand for car usage, increasing congestion and pollution. This increased pollution has endangered marine life and also cannot be beneficial for the preservation of clean and safe public space along the waterfront. Like all government failures, the project drew criticism especially on social media where people made fun of its inane reasoning and clear failure to provide access to the public beach.

cars.destroyed.our.cities. Instagram, 6 July 2023, Accessed 14 August 2023 (https://www.instagram.com/p/CuXPorYOt_-/?img_index=2)

These highways, built with the increased usage of cars in mind are mirrored by the low investment in public transport services. For example, the Riyadh metro system is to be completed in late 2023/24, while buses and trams in countries like Bahrain and Egypt remain unreliable. In Saudi Arabia, the segregation of men and women does not allow for equal mobility using public transport and even private cars and taxis are only open to men.

Other forms of mobility, separate from public transport and the car are still ever present but always secondary to the car. However, in certain circumstances the hegemony of the car can be subverted. During the Battles of Muhammad Mahmoud St, Lucie Ryzova recounts how motorbikes were used instead of cars as makeshift ambulances that could reach the frontlines with ease and were able to navigate the narrow streets filled with debris. In occupied Gaza until recently, donkeys were used by merchants to transfer produce and set up stalls due to the ban on imported fuel and contracted to remove debris and rubble and also assist in garbage removal service. This started to change in late 2021, when Israel started to restrict the import of donkeys into Gaza, with one resident commenting ‘One day there will be no donkeys in Gaza’ (3). In Bahrain, foreign nationals are discouraged from cycling. Instead the official website encourages the purchasing of a private car to navigate the small island. Public transport is said to be unreliable and for “labourers” while cycling is “dangerous” due to cars and the lack of cycling infrastructure. Ironically, both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain sponsor successful international cycling teams while quietly ensuring at home that cycling as a form of mobility remains unsafe.

The domination of the car, at the expense of public space and other forms of travel, can be understood as a logically extension of investment on the part of certain royal families. The kingdoms of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia hold shares in  European car companies; Bahrain has 56.4% of shares in MacLaren, while Saudi Arabia has 17.7% of shares in Aston Martin.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15124131/how-and-why-the-middle-east-is-buying-into-europes-car-companies-feature/

Between reinforcing unequal gender relations, planning suburban development around the private car, reconfiguring public space to neutralize collective democratic expression, and profiting from the auto industry, various elites in the Middle East have found automobility to be an effective driver on the road to securing authoritarian rule.

Notes

1. On Barak, “Gridlock Politics: Auto(im)obility in Sadat’s Egypt,” Comparative Studies on South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 39, no. 1(2019): 116-130.

2. Pascal Menoret, “Learning from Riyadh: Automobility, Joyriding, and Politics.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 39, no.1 (2019): 131-142.

3. Steve Hendrix and Hazem Balousha, “Israel’s embargo made donkeys critical to Gaza. Now it may take them away,” The Washington Post, October 6, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/06/gaza-israel-donkeys-palestinian-territories/

References

Hendrix, Steve and Balousha, Hazem.“Israel’s embargo made donkeys critical to Gaza. Now it may take them away,” The Washington Post, October 6, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/06/gaza-israel-donkeys-palestinian-territories/.

Menoret, Pascal. Learning from Riyadh: Automobility, Joyriding, and Politics. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 1 May 2019; 39 (1): 131–142. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-7493843

Monroe, V. Kristin. The Insecure City. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016.

Rabbat N. (2012). The Arab Revolution Takes Back the Public Space. Critical Inquiry. 39, pp. 198-208.

Ryzova, Lucie. The Battle of Muhammad Mahmoud Street in Cairo: The Politics and Poetics of Urban Violence in Revolutionary Time, Past & Present, Volume 247, Issue 1, May 2020, Pages 273–317, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz029

Sanburn, J. (2011). Square Roots: How Public Spaces Helped Mold the Arab Spring. [online] TIME.com. Available at: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2071404,00.html [Accessed 30 June 2020].

Sinno, W. (2020) “How People Reclaimed Public Spaces in Beirut during the 2019 Lebanese Uprising”, The Journal of Public Space, 5(1), pp. 193-218. doi: https://doi.org/10.32891/jps.v5i1.1258.