' (, ) is a political slogan associated with the Arab Spring. The slogan first emerged during the Tunisian Revolution. The chant echoed at Avenue Habib Bourguiba in Tunis for weeks. The slogan also became used frequently during the 2011 Egyptian revolution. It was the most frequent slogan, both in graffiti and in chants in rallies, during the revolution in Egypt.
The chant was raised during the uprising in Bahrain. It was frequently used in protests across Yemen. The slogan was used in rallies across Libya at the beginning of the 2011 revolt. In March 2011, a group of youths under the age of 15 were arrested in Dera'a in southern Syria, after having sprayed ejak el door ya doctor graffiti, translating to "it is your turn doctor" (referring to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who practiced ophthalmology). Their arrests sparked the uprising and subsequent civil war in Syria. The slogan was also used frequently in Sudan throughout the protests.
In Lebanon, the slogan has been used in protests against that country's sectarian political system. In the Lebanese protests, ' ("the regime") did not refer to the sectarian political order as such, but rather the government.
Syrian Islamists have appropriated the slogan for their own purposes, altering it to (), as well as ().
In post-Mubarak Egypt, given the fact that the military government only partially met the demands of the revolutionaries, with the state of emergency remaining in place, some protesters started using a somewhat different version of the slogan: The people want to bring down the field marshal, referring to Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
Variations of the slogan were used by counter-revolutionaries, including by Bashar al-Assad's supporters in Syria as ' (), by Gaddafists in Libya as ' (), and by King Hamad's loyalists in Bahrain as ' (), referring to the main opposition party of Bahrain, Al-Wefaq.
In Jordan, a youth group named "24 March" used the slogan ' (). However, the slogan later changed to in November 2012, when the government imposed a hike in the price of fuel.
In Palestine, a variation of the slogan, ' (), emerged in protests calling for the two main factions Fatah and Hamas to settle their differences.
During the 2011 Israeli social justice protests, the slogan "The people want social justice" was used, chanted in Hebrew to the same cadence as .
The slogan was adopted to ' () in protests in Morocco against the normalization of relations with Israel.
Uriel Abulof, professor of politics at Tel-Aviv University and a senior research fellow at Princeton University, commented:
Benoît Challand, teaching Middle Eastern politics at the University of Bologna, commented on the slogan in the following way:
Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia University and the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, commented in the following manner: