scholarly journals Institutional solutions for sectarian conflicts in the Middle East in the context of imperial legacy

2021 ◽  
pp. 140-164
Author(s):  
Irina Kudryashova ◽  
Alexander Kozintsev
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Diversity Management ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Ethnocultural Diversity ◽  
Late Ottoman

The article focuses on the nature of sectarian conflicts in the Middle East as well as ways to resolve this and possible transformations. We assume that the rising level of ethnic confrontation stems from the disruption of governance regimes established during the Ottoman Empire. Hence, the research question states as follows: are there any ways to use the imperial practices of ethnocultural diversity management as the institutional framework for the resolution of current sectarian conflicts? By applying a structural functional approach, we identify the political space of the late Ottoman Empire, its main elements and constellation. We show that the process of statebuilding in the Middle East resulted in the decay of social ties between local communities and the increase of ethnic violence. These claims are confirmed by comparative analysis of a number of conflicts. It is found that the institutional framework for conflict resolution in Arab states should be based on political devolution and powerdividing agreements. This allows to reset inactive imperial practices in order to mitigate violence and enhance legitimacy. We point out that among the various reforms designed to achieve harmonization of formal and informal political institutions are federalization, non-territorial autonomy, consociationalism and local governance.

Caravan Trade in the Late Ottoman Empire: the ʿAqīl Network and the Institutionalization of Overland Trade

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 38-72
Author(s):  
Philippe Pétriat
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
19Th And 20Th Century ◽  
Late Ottoman

AbstractBuilding on recent works on Central Asia and using Ottoman, Arabic and European sources, this article challenges the idea that caravan trade was declining in the 19th and 20th-century Ottoman Middle East. It explores the caravan trade’s economic and political dimensions from the Gulf to Syria. This trade’s resurgence was simultaneous with the reassertion of imperial control over the steppe. In that changing context, the institutionalization of caravan trade by groups such as the ʿAqīl traders kept overland trade lively and arguably competitive.

scholarly journals Review of Lorenzo Kamel, The Middle East: From Empire to Sealed Identities

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Ammar
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Historical View ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman ◽  
Middle East History

While the scholarly literature is replete with works claiming a comprehensive analysis of modern Middle East history, few authors have actually built their investigation on identity-related perspectives. Indeed, the book, The Middle East: From Empire to Sealed Identities, proved faithful to its title, providing a clear historical view of the processes that turned the fluid and multifaceted distinctiveness, which characterised the peoples of this region under the late Ottoman Empire, into sealed-off identities... 

Economic Bases of Revolution and Repression in the Late Ottoman Empire

1986 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carter Vaughn Findley
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ottoman History ◽  
Young Turks ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman ◽  
Modern Sense

Central to late Ottoman history is a series of events that marks a milestone in the emergence of modern forms of political thought and revolutionary action in the Islamic world. The sequence opened with the rise of the Young Ottoman ideologues (1865) and the constitutional movement of the 1870s. It continued with the repression of these forces under Abdülhamid 11 (1876–1909). It culminated with the resurgence of opposition in the Young Turk movement of 1889 and later, and especially with the revolution of 1908. Studied so far mostly in political and intellectual terms, the sequence seems well understood. The emergence of the Young Ottomans—the pioneers of political ideology, in any modern sense, in the Middle East—appears to result from the introduction of Western ideas and from stresses created within the bureaucracy by the political hegemony of the Tanzimat elite (ca. 1839–71). The repression under Abdülhamid follows from the turmoil of the late 1870s, the weaknesses of the constitution of 1876, and the craft of the new sultan in creating a palace-dominated police state. The emergence of the Young Turks shows that terror ultimately fostered, rather than killed, the opposition. Too, their eventual revolutionary success shows how much more effective than the Young Ottomans they were as political mobilizers.

Book Reviews

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
Kurdish Studies Kurdish Studies
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Middle East ◽  
New Brunswick ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Iraqi Kurdistan ◽  
Nationalism And Identity ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

David L. Phillips, The Kurdish Spring: A New Map of the Middle East, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2015. 268 pp., (ISBN-13: 978-1412856805).Bedross Der Matossian, Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire, Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2014, 264 pp., (ISBN: 9780804791472).  Yaniv Voller, The Kurdish Liberation Movement in Iraq: From Insurgency to Statehood, Oxon: Routledge, 2014, 190 pp., (ISBN: 978-0-415-70724-4).Özlem Galip, Imagining Kurdistan: Identity, Culture and Society, London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2015, 311 pp., (ISBN: 978 1 78453 016 7).Mahir A. Aziz, The Kurds of Iraq: Nationalism and Identity in Iraqi Kurdistan, London and New York:  I.B. Taurus, 2015, 163 pp., (ISBN: 978-1-78453-273-4).

The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taner Akçam
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Armenian Genocide ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Young Turks ◽  
East And West ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Late Ottoman

Introducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents, this book demonstrates in detail that the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman Empire resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of its Christian subjects. This book goes deep inside the bureaucratic machinery of Ottoman Turkey to show how a dying empire embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing. Although the deportation and killing of Armenians was internationally condemned in 1915 as a “crime against humanity and civilization,” the Ottoman government initiated a policy of denial that is still maintained by the Turkish Republic. The case for Turkey's “official history” rests on documents from the Ottoman imperial archives, to which access has been heavily restricted until recently. It is this very source that the book now uses to overturn the official narrative. The documents presented here attest to a late-Ottoman policy of Turkification, the goal of which was no less than the radical demographic transformation of Anatolia. To that end, about one-third of Anatolia's 15 million people were displaced, deported, expelled, or massacred, destroying the ethno-religious diversity of an ancient cultural crossroads of East and West, and paving the way for the Turkish Republic. By uncovering the central roles played by demographic engineering and assimilation in the Armenian Genocide, this book will fundamentally change how this crime is understood and show that physical destruction is not the only aspect of the genocidal process.

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