The issue of violence is one of the most challenging aspects of transitioning to democracy, and concepts such as peaceful transition, peace-seeking transition, and unarmed transition are significant here.
One of the main factors in a transition is the anger stemming from accumulated dissatisfaction and problems. Due to ambiguity regarding the boundary between anger and violence, any protest, especially when there is repression, is sometimes considered violent.
The distinction between rejecting and preventing any violence in the nonviolent approach contrasts with managing and limiting violence in the self-defense approach, creating two different perspectives, one considered peaceful and the other peace-seeking.
In the peace-seeking approach, despite efforts to avoid violence and aiming for a non-violent situation, controlled and limited violence can be used in circumstances where there is no remaining way to confront suppression.
This necessary violence approach for transitioning to democracy may only be within the bounds of self-defense, a direct act by the suppressed individual against the suppressor. Or it can fall within the realm of civic activism (civil disobedience) by everyone who protests against injustice or wrongdoings, against all individuals and components of the systemic oppressor.
In any case, the issue of violence is a reciprocal matter that forms the foundation of resistance against tyranny. When evaluating types of transitions to democracy, it is difficult to find an example that hasn’t utilized necessary resistance and violence. Therefore, it’s better to use the concept of peace-seeking instead of peaceful.
Types of transitions can be categorized based on two concepts: armed transitions and unarmed transitions, where unarmed transitions correspond to peace-seeking transitions, and armed transitions encompass a set of war-based transitions, foreign humanitarian interventions, organizing militant groups, and urban guerrilla warfare in the final stages of transition.
