Look at Iran from this angle

So-called leftists with a narrow anti-imperialist discourse are trying to prove that this is not a "revolution of some colors." According to them, George Soros does not have anything to do with Iran as he did in the Georgian and Ukrainian revolutions. And no revolution is at issue here.

They sympathize with the "oppressive regime" in Iran just because it is "anti-American," but they cannot speak up.

Some of them see "external powers," i.e., U.S. President Barack Obama, behind the revolt as "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed in his Friday sermon. So they’re relieved.

They are not many but have quite narrow views. What they say is of no importance. Islamists are confused, too, in two ways, but in two ways. A group of them have the tendency to think that the "oppressive regime" in the Islamic Republic of Iran is synonymous with "Islam."

On that score, they are not at all pleased with Iranians’ reaction to the regime. They believe incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the elections deservedly. As a matter of fact, they make in-depth sociological analyses that "rural areas supported Ahmadinejad, but a handful of middle-class supported Mir Hussein Mousavi who looks at the West."

Some Islamists who recall that Mousavi was the prime minister of Ayatollah Khomeini stress that other opponent candidates were among the first generation administrators of the Islamic Revolution, so according to them incidents are not for a change of regime. They try to seek comfort in this view.

Some laic circles with a similar mindset sneer at the happenings.

Many Turks from different views have a common point: Developments in Iran do not mean a radical change.

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I should ask them "How do you know this?" "Without knowing anything about Iran, how do you know this?"

As riots broke against Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1978, so many people had scoffed. The Shah regime was "U.S. Gendarmerie in the Gulf." It had a big and strong military armed from top to toe. Everyone was afraid of even hearing the name of the Iranian intelligence services, Savak.

And everyone knew the ill-fame of the Evin Prison in Tehran. Those who thought that the Shah regime could be overthrown must had been out of their minds.

But six months later, on Feb. 1, 1979, the regime was collapsed upon the arrival of Khomeini. And Shah had left the country long ago.

We are at the beginning of everything in Iran. It is too early to say what will happen and how it will happen.

Just like it was "too early" for Turkish President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to congratulate Ahmadinejad hours after the election commission announced the official results. I wish they had waited for a while because Tehran was shaken by the biggest mass protests since the Grand Revolution in 1979.

Checklist for an Iranian revolution

In this period of time, it wouldn’t be a smart political act to take a side in Iran yet alone it is not at all a good picture to seemingly support the current government. Is it accurate to term the incidents in Iran as a "state of revolution"?

A quite interesting article was published in the Financial Times titled "check-list for an Iranian revolution". Except two, all terms in the list exist in Iran today. And the two exceptions are "weak or divided security services" and "external help".

As the Iranian Army failed to stop masses taking out streets and got paralyzed in 1979, the Shah had left Tehran and the ways to the victory of the Revolution were cleared. In Iran in 2009, the Revolution Guards and Besij militia are undivided. They are even willing to apply brute force. But there is something else. They caused bloodshed.

A regime causing people’s blood cannot get well. It will not pull itself up, even if survives. This is what is happening in Iran.

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There is another critical point in Iran. Although the security forces are undivided, "elites in administration" are.

A very serious split, this is. The Assembly of Experts, a group of clerics who are the only body in the Islamic Republic able to select or unseat the supreme leader of the Guardian Council and who are elected for eight years, led by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is involved in big talks behind the closed doors. He is seeking ways to form a "Guardianship" mechanism consists of a number of clerics instead of asking Khamenei to step down.

From Khomeini’s Prime Minister Mousavi to the former Assembly Speaker Ayatollah Mehdi Karrubi, to the Grand Ayatollah Hussein Montazari who was announced to be the successor of Khomeini in the city of Kum and to Hujjatul Islam, Islam’s third highest clerical rank, Mohammed Khatami, who would without doubt be elected if he becomes a nominee, a big "alliance" is acting like a massive opposition on stage.

But most importantly, the current regime, even if they win the struggle and remain seated, has already lost legitimacy. Let’s read the following lines together:

"The great unknown is the effect of violent suppression of the demonstrations. Once a regime starts killing its own people it crosses a line. Sometimes, as in Iran in 1979, bloodshed on the streets leads to such a loss of confidence and popularity that it spells the end for a government. On other occasions, if a government is brutal and ruthless enough, violent repression can work Ğ China in 1989 is the obvious recent example.

"Killing demonstrators, however, has stripped the Iranian government of its claims to legitimacy. It may secure the regime’s survival in the short term. In the long term, it surely dooms it."

Look at Iran in this angle, too...