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311. Katar 2012

Author:
Mustafa Yetim
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
2011 yılına benzer şekilde 2012 yılı içerisinde de Katar genel itibari ile Arap halklarının demokratik istek ve taleplerine yönelik olumlu tutumunu devam ettirmiştir. Bu durum Katar'ın Türkiye, Suudi Arabistan ve devrim sonrası Mısır, Tunus ve Libya gibi ülkeler ile arasındaki ekonomik ve siyasi ilişkileri önemli oranda geliştirirken söz konusu halk hareketlerini olumsuz şekilde değerlendiren İran, Suriye ve Irak ile ilişkilerini büyük ölçüde zedelemiştir. Bölge ülkeleri ile değişen ilişkilerin yanı sıra Katar Ortadoğu'da ortaya çıkan yeni güç dağılımında önemli bir aktör olarak yerini almayı başarabilmiştir. Sınırlı güç kaynakları, nüfus ve coğrafyasına rağmen izlediği aktif dış politika ile Katar bölgesel ve küresel güçlerin bölgede politika oluştururken dikkate aldıkları bir aktör haline gelmiştir. Bu durumun ne kadar devam edebileceği hakkında şimdiden bir öngörü sunmak imkânsız olsa da, Katar'ın uzun yıllar beklediği bölgesel aktör olma fırsatını “Arap devrimleri” sonucunda değerlendirmek için önemli riskler aldığı ortadadır. Bu bağlamda önceleri batılı ülkeler ve bu ülkelerin bölgedeki otokratik müttefikleri tarafından bölge istikrarına tehdit olarak değerlendirilen fakat Tunus, Mısır ve Libya'da demokratik taleplerin savunucusu olarak iktidara gelen İslami eğilimli aktörler ile uzun yıllar siyasi ilişkisi olduğu bilinen Katar arasında önemli işbirliği fırsatı oluşmuştur.
Political Geography:
Arabia

312. Preparing for a Constructive 2012 Conference on the Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone

Author:
W.P.S. Sidhu (ed), Bruce Jones (ed), and Colette Jaycox
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:
The consensus decision reached at the 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) to convene a conference in 2012 on the establishment of a zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the Middle East was, perhaps, the most salient outcome of the quinquennium gathering.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Security, Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
Middle East and Arabia

313. Rising Democracies and the Arab Awakening: Implications for Global Democracy and Human Rights

Author:
Ted Piccone and Emily Alinikoff
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:
As the emerging global order takes shape, debate is growing more intense around the trajectory of the rising powers and what their ascendency to positions of regional and international influence means for the United States, its traditional allies, and global governance more broadly. Commentary about these rising powers— often referred to in a generic way as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) but actually encompassing a dozen or so countries largely represented in the G-20—ranges from alarmist to sanguine. Pessimists argue that China, with its impressive economic growth and increasingly global reach, is well-positioned to challenge the United States' role of global superpower and to weaken the commitment of other rising powers, and various international organizations, to liberal values. More optimistic analysts insist that the rise of middle powers, most of which are democracies of varying stripes, bodes well for the world: millions are being lifted out of poverty, rule of law is taking hold and the international system is bound to be a more inclusive, representative one.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, Economics, Globalization, Human Rights, International Trade and Finance, Markets, Poverty, and Governance
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, India, South Africa, Brazil, and Arabia

314. A Changing Mediterranean: Regional Organisations and North Africa during the Arab Spring

Author:
Marco Pinfari
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
Since 1960, Latin American attempts at regionalism have undergone distinct phases. More notably, they have tended to diverge across space, gradually giving birth to separate blocs that seem to be tearing South, Central and North America apart. Additionally, within and across these regions several overlapping projects coexist. This article focuses on the dynamics of segmented and overlapping regionalism in order to describe what they look like, analyse how they articulate with one another, and explain why member states have pushed for such a messy outcome. This situation, linked to the evolution of the global context, might be indicating that regionalism in Latin America has reached its peak, beyond which it may be difficult to achieve further progress. Two conclusions are elicited: first, economic integration is becoming a geographically diffused phenomenon rather than a regional one; second, regionalism is still a compelling foreign policy but its causes, goals and outcomes are no longer what they used to be.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Libya, Arabia, Latin America, North Africa, Egypt, and Tunisia

315. Iran within the Political Dynamics of the Middle East

Author:
Farhad Atai
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Center for Strategic Research (CSR)
Abstract:
Developments in the Middle East in the past decades, and especially in the past few years, have drawn the world's attention to this region. Never since the break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century has the region been so volatile and explosive. While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to have a deciding effect on the Middle East, other issues have appeared, further complicating the politics of the region. The stunning socio-political developments in the Arab world during the past year, which started in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain are still unfolding and will permanently change the Arab World. Where does Iran fit into the political dynamics of the Middle East in these turbulent times? This paper attempts to answer that question. After a review of the recent developments in the Arab world, it examines the Islamic Republic's position in the region in the light of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the breakup of the Soviet Union and subsequent developments in Central Asia, the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. The paper suggests that the changing geopolitics of the region has positioned Iran in a relatively stronger position vis-à-vis the Sunni-Shi'a debate. It further suggests that three decades after its Islamic Revolution, Iran has matured. This is especially true in the wake of the rising extremist tendencies and groups such as al-Qa'ida in the region. Once the shorter term issues are resolved, Iran can have a moderating influence on the dynamics of the region.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, Middle East, Israel, Yemen, Arabia, Egypt, and Bahrain

316. All Azimuth A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace

Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
The Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
International Relations theory is in crisis: it does not appear to have been successfully accumulating in an integrated manner. Despite abounding theories and concepts aiming to explain what happens globally and to draw lessons for improvement, casualties continue to pile up, and the world is not becoming a safer place to live in. Our supposedly revolutionary new concepts and approaches still tend to remain 'event driven', and in fact follow things that happen in the field, rather than precede them. One needs only to look at the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Arab Spring for recent reminders of this shortcoming.
Political Geography:
Arabia

317. From the Editor

Author:
Rashid Khalidi
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
As A wAve of revolution, unrest and upheaval sweeps slowly across the Arab world, one question has arisen repeatedly. This is the place of the question of Palestine in these ongoing tectonic shifts in the political map of the region. It has long been an article of faith for partisans of the status quo from which Israel benefits that this is an unimportant question, artificially sustained by corrupt unpopular regimes in order to distract their oppressed citizens. In her article on the place of the Palestine question in Egypt's revolutionary upheaval, Reem Abou-El-Fadl shows that in the case of Egypt the political forces that made the revolution (and those that have emerged in its aftermath) have long been deeply involved with the cause of solidarity with the Palestinians and opposition to the regime's policy of normalization with Israel. This important article highlights how central the question of Palestine and Israel is in Egypt, in spite of the overwhelming emphasis on domestic factors since the January 2011 revolution.
Political Geography:
Israel, Arabia, and Egypt

318. The Iron Wall Revisited

Author:
Avi Shlaim
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
More than a decade after the publication of his acclaimed The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, Avi Shlaim returns to Ze'ev Jabotinsky's theory as a framework for understanding Israel's Arab policies, this time focusing on the post-1967 period. The author revisits the theory's formulation by the leader of Revisionist Zionism in 1923 and its near total convergence with the (unacknowledged) strategy followed by Labor Zionism. Examining each Israeli government since 1967, he shows that all zealously followed stage one of Jabotinsky's strategy (constructing an “iron wall” of unassailable military strength) but that the lesser known stage two (serious negotiations with the Palestinians after being compelled by stage one to abandon all hope of prevailing over Zionism) has been completely ignored except by Yitzhak Rabin. Indeed, the recent periods have witnessed a full-blown return to the iron wall at its starkest, with increasing resort to violence and unilateralism.
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

319. The Meaning of Memorialization

Author:
Rosemary Sayigh
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Rochelle Davis tells us that she took ten years to research and write Palestinian Village Histories. For a Western scholar to have read and analyzed 112 of the 120 village histories published, as well as interviewed many of the authors, is in itself a rare achievement. If we add to this a range of scholarship that takes in the literature on memory, identity, postmodern anthropology, and Arab, Islamic, and Western historiography and textual criticism, we can only admire a tour de force. Davis's object of study is not the villages that the books memorialize but what their memorialization means, why this process began at a specific moment (the mid-1980s), how the books were produced, by whom and for what audiences, how they are read and responded to, and what power relations they reflect. While challenging dominant Zionist narratives, the village histories, she writes, also express "Palestinian men's authoritative perspectives within dominant definitions of what constitutes history . . . attempts at the ascendancy of certain families within local social structures; and . . . the pervasive and silencing presence of certain social values".
Political Geography:
Palestine and Arabia

320. It Only Takes One to Tango

Author:
Moshe Behar
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Think of a prominent Arab-Jewish scholar who had published dozens of books about themes pertaining to the modern history of his native Middle East (for example Murad Farag or Avra-ham Elmaleh). Imagine further that al-though he did not have a command of Latin, English, French, or German, our heuristic Arab-Jewish author proceeded to write a book about the his-tory of Western European Jewry during the past fourteen centuries, titling it In Jesus' House: A History of Jews in Christian Lands. Would academic presses be likely to entertain publication of such a work? Would scholars of Western European Jewry be likely to view such a text favorably or as being authoritative? These were my first thoughts after reading Sir Martin Gilbert's staggeringly ambitious book, aiming to survey the history of Jews from Morocco to Afghanistan, notwithstanding his lack of Arabic, Persian, or Ottoman Turkish.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Europe, Turkey, Middle East, Arabia, and Germany