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161. The Arab Revolution: Ten Lessons from the Democratic Uprising

Author:
Ramazan Kılınç
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The Arab world has been making a new history since January 2011 when the uprisings against President Ben Ali resulted in his fleeing from Tunisia. Throughout 2011, the decades-old rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Moammar Qaddafi in Libya ended. Political change came to Yemen and the status quo has been strongly challenged in other Arab countries. Jean-Pierre Filiu, in his The Arab Revolution: Ten Lessons from the Democratic Uprising, takes stock of the revolutionary movements in the Arab world, briefly summarizes the events in key countries and comes up with ten lessons that we can learn from the uprisings.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
Yemen, Arabia, Egypt, and Tunisia

162. Turkmenistan: Strategies of Power, Dilemmas of Development

Author:
Alex Jackson
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
There are few regions more unknown and caricatured than Central Asia, and within it perhaps no country is less understood than Turkmenistan. Central Asia is oil, caravanserais, the Great Game, and the Silk Road; in the popular imagination, Turkmenistan's only distinguishing feature is its reputation as a “Stalinist Disneyland” with revolving statues, Gaddafiesque Books of Wisdom, and empty cities of marble. The people are absent.
Political Geography:
Central Asia, Turkey, and Turkmenistan

163. The Shift: Israel-Palestine from Border Struggle to Ethnic Conflict

Author:
Craig Larkin
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains one of the most intractable, globally sensitive and over-studied of national disputes. The past few decades have witnessed a deluge of scholarly and polemic writing covering the history, nature, and causes of the violence, as well as those exploring future obstacles to peace. While the quantity of literature often masks a paucity of academic quality, Menachem Klein's book, The Shift: Israel-Palestine from Border Struggle to Ethnic Conflict, offers a timely and provocative prognosis of the current facts on the ground. Klein, a lecturer in political science at Israel's BarIlan University and advisor to the Israeli negotiating team during the last decade of peace talks (from Camp David in 2000 to the Geneva Accords in 2003), draws on a range of primary sources and personal insights to outline a radical shift in the nature of the conflict from a national territorial dispute to an ethnically inspired system of Israeli control over all the Palestinian territories. In so doing the author seeks to challenge the traditional “occupation” paradigms and dispel illusionary hopes of a future “unitary non-ethnic democracy” (p. 4). His critical lens is rather fixed on the stark realities of Israeli hegemony, evidenced in settlement expansion, increasing security operations and the diminishing power and influence of the Palestinian Authority (PA).The result is an empirically rich, albeit theoretically light, reading of the contemporary IsraeliPalestinian struggle, which contributes to the on-going debates surrounding future peace negotiations and permanent resolution.
Topic:
Ethnic Conflict and History
Political Geography:
Israel and Palestine

164. The Contradictions of Israeli Citizenship: Land, Religion and State

Author:
Dov Friedman
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
One might be forgiven for presuming that a new book called The Contradictions of Israeli Citizenship would present innovative insights about the place of Palestinian Israelis—and their stateless West Bank-dwelling brethren—in modern Israeli society. Given the long paper trail left by past scholars seeking to understand the practical and philosophical dilemmas of a codified ethno-religious identity existing alongside a liberal democratic ethos, one might reasonably anticipate new conceptual frameworks and a fresh evaluation of a long-examined problem.
Political Geography:
Israel and Palestine

165. The State of Islam: Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan

Author:
Jon Armajani
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
One of Toor's central theses is that within and outside the context of Pakistan's history and politics, Islam is far from being a monolith. For Toor, Islam as a set of religio-political entities has been and continues to be invested with different meanings and associations by different actors who have enormously different goals. Toor's volume analyzes the diversity of meanings and political programs which have been associated with Islam throughout much of Pakistan's history. Some of the many themes that she examines include modernist Islam, Islam as it was fused with Pakistani (and other forms of) nationalism, the Jama'at-i Islami's appropriations of Islam, and the Islamic socialism of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's People's Party. Toor argues that these diverse forms of Islam have been under attack by a variety of domestic and international forces. The book provides an overview of these contestations and examines trends related to polarization during Pakistan's history.
Topic:
Cold War and Islam
Political Geography:
Pakistan

166. The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations

Author:
Ahmet T. Kuru
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
One may argue three law-like generalizations in political science: “no bourgeois, no democracy,” “democracies do not go to war with each other,” and “natural resources are a curse.” Although each of these highly contested arguments is important, the last one has the broadest impact—the negative effects of oil, natural gas, and mineral production go beyond authoritarianism and have economic, military, and societal consequences. Recently, some important publications have challenged the “resource curse” argument, creating doubts about these negative effects. In this regard, Michael Ross's book is an extremely timely work. It not only responds to these critiques but also provides a consistent set of explanations about oil and its effects on authoritarianism, patriarchy, inter-state and civil wars, and economic underdevelopment. Ross has already written path-breaking articles on these issues and this magnum opus brings together his previous contributions with updated data, revised arguments, and fresh perspectives. Unlike his earlier publications, Ross's analysis focuses on oil and natural gas, sometimes referring to both as only “oil,” and consistently leaves mineral production aside. His data show how the importance of oil will persist, if not increase, in the near future: “the global market for oil and other liquid fuels will rise from 86.1 million barrels a day in 2007 to 110 million barrel a day in 2035; the market for natural gas will rise from 108 to 156 trillion cubic feet” (p. 251).
Topic:
Civil War, Development, Economics, and Oil
Political Geography:
Middle East and North Africa

167. Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and Approaches in a Connected World

Author:
Turan Kayaoğlu
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
What is global history? How does one study it? These are the main questions Dominic Sachsenmaier wants to answer. “It depends” seems to be his answer. Essentially, he argues against a single definition, rationale, and method for global history and shows the presence of multiple and equally valid global, historical perspectives. Debates in the United States, Germany, and China on global history all exemplify this variation.
Topic:
History
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Germany

168. US Presidents and Foreign Policy Mistakes

Author:
Özden Zeynep Oktav
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
Socrates' pupil Chaerephon once asked an oracle “who is the wisest of all men?” The oracle responded that Socrates is the wisest of all because of his self-awareness. According to philosophers from Socrates to Montaigne, Spinoza, Kant, true wisdom and full knowledge may be a utopian fantasy. In a world of uncertainty where mistakes are unavoidable facts of daily life for citizens and politicians alike, how politicians will be able to avoid foreign policy mistakes is the main concern of this book. There are some other questions of crucial importance which the book deals with: What are foreign policy mistakes and how and why do they occur? The answers to those questions are available in this book and it concentrates on the concept of power. Regarding the concept of power, the main question is “kto-kovo?” (Lenin's famous question, “who controls whom?”) The answers to the question “what are foreign policy mistakes?” and conceptualizing foreign policy mistakes are quite blurry and complicated. There may be lots of different kinds of mistakes, such as violating moral rules, lack of cognitive judgment, and policies costing too much and having unanticipated and undesirable results. The mistakes can be classified as omission (too little/too late) and commission (too much/too soon). For example, mistakes of omission are evident in the British policies towards Germany which failed to deter Germany's occupation of Sudetenland in 1938 and to reassure the Russians that they would negotiate an alliance against Germany. This failure of the British decision makers led to a non-aggression pact between Stalin and Hitler in 1939. The Katyn Forest massacre exemplifies best how Soviet Russia misperceived the gains in cooperating with Germany in the removal of Poland from the map of Europe because according to the authors, the Soviet decision to execute Polish POWs and bury them in the Katyn Forest is a foreign policy decision that falls into three domain; morality, intelligence and policy. It was a violation of international law, based on a diagnostic judgement blinded by ignorance of the future and by communist ideology, which led to a prescription for a policy action that alienated future allies.This, at the same time illustrates the mistake of commission (too much/too soon) and moral failure. Foreign policy choices are not only concerned with rational choices, but, as Axelrod and Jarwis clearly defined it, they also stem from some sources of mistakes such as subjective cognitive maps, heuristics, attribution errors, desires to maintain cognitive consistency and avoid cognitive dissonance, selective attention, and other emotional or cold cognitive biases. Khong explains why human beings are “creatures with limited cognitive capacities” by emphasizing that leaders, like every human, tend to turn to historical analogies for guidance when confronted with novel foreign policy challenges. However the issue is that the result is often a foreign policy mistake since this only helps the leaders “access analogies on the basis of surface similarities”.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Britain, Russia, United States, Europe, Poland, Soviet Union, and Germany

169. September 11, 1683: Myth of a Christian Europe and the Massacre in Norway

Author:
Şener Aktürk
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
This essay critically approaches the impact of September 11, 2001 attacks in galvanizing the myth of a Christian Europe, a myth that provided the ideological justification for the recent massacre in Norway. The myth making around the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, an event that provided the inspiration for Anders Breivik's fifteen hundred pages long anti-Muslim manifesto, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, comes under scrutiny. The author argues that Europe has been, not only a Christian, but also a Jewish and Muslim continent for many centuries, using examples from the centuriesold history of Islamic civilization in France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Spain, among other European countries. The author draws attention not only to the total annihilation of historical Muslim communities in places such as Sicily and Spain, but also to the nearly total eradication of Islamic religious heritage and architecture in these countries.
Political Geography:
Europe, Norway, and France

170. A New Deal for Arab People

Author:
Francis Ghilès
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
In recent years the Arab lands have been reduced to a uniform discourse, which well suited those in America such as Bernard Lewis who tried to convince their political masters that a clash of civilisations between the West and Islam was inevitable. However, over the past twelve months a series of revolts recast the map of the Middle East. When the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt started, many Western commentators failed to understand how young Arabs peacefully managed to overthrow well-entrenched dictators such as Ben Ali and Mubarak. Their initial reactions fitted into a broader collective spirit of Orientalism, which long gave up hope on Arab societies ever joining contemporary trends towards democratization. It was not Islam or poverty that provoked the uprisings – it was the crushing humiliation that had deprived the majority of the Arabs who are under the age of thirty of the right to assert control over their own lives.
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
America, Middle East, Arabia, and Egypt