(2021). Turkey: between democracy and authoritarianism. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT As one of Turkey’s non-Muslim minorities, Turkey’s Greeks have faced substantial pressures since the founding of republican Turkey. As its members could not claim their constitutional rights as citizens of Turkey, emigration soared and the minority reached a point of near extinction. Significant improvements were noted when the EU-supported reform transformed the Turkish state and society

(2021). Kuwait and Al-Sabah: Tribal politics and power in an oil state. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Security in the Gulf: Local militaries before British withdrawal. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT Taking the Anglo-Turkish Trade and Navigation Treaty, concluded in March 1930, as its focal point, this article investigates the relations between Turkey and Britain after the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne and suggests that the failure of the British government to understand the fundamental importance of economic independence for the governing elite of the new Turkish republic, combined

(2021). Quagmire in Civil War by Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 340pp, £24.99 (paperback). ISBN-13:978-1108486767.nb. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT Relations between religion and nationalism, as two identity forms, has been debated in Muslim countries, especially where the nationalist trends coincided with the rise of religious reformation and Pan-Islamic movements. This article scrutinizes discourses on linking a transnational ideology of Pan-Islamism with Afghan nationalism in an early twentieth century nationalist newspaper, Seraj-ul

(2021). Chehabism revisited: the consequences of reform in Lebanon. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2021). From guests of the Imam to unwanted foreigners: the politics of South Asian pilgrimage to Iran in the twentieth century. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT This article discusses the offer made by Cemal Pasha in 1915 to Albert Antébi to sell the area in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem in order to dismantle the nearly thirty houses owned by the Moroccan inhabitants of the Maghrebi Quarter and create a space ‘reserved for the prayers of the Jewish people’. European Jews had already sought to purchase the same area from the Ottomans for several

ABSTRACT The arrival date of the Druze at Mount Carmel is still unclear and several claims exist regarding it. None of the Druze villages have been extensively studied, and at present there are only two villages that survived the dismantling of the last two centuries; these are Daliyat al-Karmil and ʿIsifya. The current study will focus on Daliyat al-Karmil as a case study, using geographical, historical

(2021). Rural or urban? Planning Bedouin settlements. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Iran’s experiment with parliamentary governance: the second majles, 1909-1911. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2021). ‘The school is the link between the Jewish community and the surrounding milieu’: education and the Jews of Iran from the mid-1940s to the late 1960s. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2021). The duality of ‘official’ and ‘local’ in modern Iran: historical and intellectual foundations. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Turkish intelligence and the cold war: the Turkish secret service, the US and the UK. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Book Review. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

Abstract ʿAli Salem was an independent intellectual, unbound to the regime or political parties. He believed that the intellectual must also be independent from the public. It does not mean he must be detached from society or elevated above it, but that he must avoid flattering it. Over thirty years of literary activity, Salem published 27 plays and hundreds of humoresques and short stories, which

(2021). Portraying antiquity in cartoons: examples from the periodical Molla Nasreddin. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Who are we? and Who are they? The construction of Turkish national identity in textbooks within the context of the Turkish War of Independence. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

Abstract The nineteenth-century news market offered benefits beyond sales incomes to opportunists functioning in local and global news markets. The owners of newspapers could come to terms with governments to publish in their favour. They could exploit political tensions among the Great Powers to manipulate governments into making agreements with them. They also utilized their influence upon groups

(2021). US-Syria relations in the shadow of Cold War and détente. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Kurdish cross-border trade between Syria and Turkey: the socio-political trajectories of Syrian Kurds. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Ottoman Rums and the Venizelos – Constantine conflict after the Armistice of Mudros: the election of Meletios Metaxakis as patriarch. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

Abstract This study aims to document the age structure and mortality by age in the Ottoman city of Bursa that served as a politically and commercially significant urban center over centuries. It uses a set of hitherto unexamined Ottoman population registers kept in 1839 and updated until 1842 that provide detailed self-reported data on all male inhabitants regardless of age, including deaths, births

Abstract This article presents an analysis of the first recognisably modern-style death registers in the Ottoman Empire. These were produced, in 1838–9, as a result of the state’s reaction to the cholera pandemic of 1831. This article shows how these registers were designed and structured, how they differed to those that preceded and came after them and so occupied a key point in the transition to

Abstract This article analyzes how a local notable on the eastern frontiers of the Ottoman Empire struggled for local power within the context of the early nineteenth century. Focusing on an era on the eve of the Tanzimat, this article seeks to indicate how the local dynasty of Muş – Alaaddin Pashazades – sought not only to maintain but also to strengthen their power and influence by taking advantage

ABSTRACT This study aims to explore the social history of musicians in Istanbul that lived during the transitional period and experienced the sociopolitical as well as cultural changes from the late Ottoman to the early Republican periods, roughly from the turn of the twentieth century to the early 1930s. Collective biography analysis upon 257 musicians’ life narratives while revealing certain defining

Abstract This article aims to demonstrate the role of the children’s periodicals and magazines in the process of formation of the divine and the greatest sultan character in the minds of children between 1876 and 1908. By examining seven newspapers and magazines from that period, this article points out that these materials emphasized merciful, generous, protective, progressive, reformer, religious

Abstract The national resistance movement that emerged in Anatolia and Thrace immediately after the end of World War I and that was eventually successful in overturning the peace settlement imposed on the Ottoman Empire by the victorious Entente, has become such an important part of the history of the emergence of the Turkish nation state, that it is studied almost exclusively in that context: as republican

Abstract Interposed between the Constitutional Revolution and the rise of Reza Khan, Iran began a foreign diplomacy that asserted a nuanced nationalism. After the devastation of the First World War, Iran sent a commission to the Peace of Paris. There, Iran put forward a nationalist programme which sought a sovereign and independent Iran, and the return of territory lost since 1828. Whilst many facets

Abstract The article focuses on David Ben-Gurion’s past image using a series of programmatic and widely distributed speeches he made during Israel’s first Independence Days (1948-1958). The article argues that while the founding of the state was defined as a turning point it was certainly not portrayed as a ‘beginning’, and that both the ancient sovereign and the exilic Jewish experience had a central

Abstract This article uses archival sources to demonstrate how Israel crafted policies in the Gaza Strip following the 1967 War to reduce the size of its population, and how, in a two-year process, it reformed its policies to meet the needs of a long-standing occupation. Underlying these policies was the Israeli aspiration to annex the Strip without absorbing a large number of Arabs. The Israeli government

ABSTRACT The influence of Sayyid Qutb’s writing on political Islam and Islamist groups cannot be overstated. In constructing his radical political theory, special attention is usually given to Qutb’s two binary concepts, hakimiyyah (usually translated as divine sovereignty) and jahiliyyah (the condition of any place or society where Allah is not held to be the sovereign being). This article interrogates

Abstract This article examines and critiques the macro top-down constitutional language policy of the so-called the Caliphate State, often referred to by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL. Although Sharicah law, claimed to be the only source of the Caliphate’s laws, does not legislate local, official and national language policies, the Caliphate constitutionalises language policy through the misappropriation

(2021). Decoding the crisis of the legitimate circle of coalition building in Israel: a critical analysis of the puzzling election trio of 2019–20. Middle Eastern Studies. Ahead of Print.

Abstract Religious discourse has a fundamental impact on sectarian violence, stability and sovereignty across the Gulf region. Amidst an increasingly volatile political and social situation, fatwas serve as a prominent factor in the behaviour and beliefs of individuals and groups across the Gulf. Fatwas have long been a source of great interest in religious studies and international law yet very little

Abstract This study is based on a broad range of newly declassified documents which garner revelatory findings pertaining to the involvement of Czechoslovakia in the Cyprus dispute in the years 1960–1974. These new findings reveal that the countries of the Eastern Bloc sought to prevent the overthrow of the Cypriot President Makarios during the studied period, as his foreign policy ensured that the

Abstract This article compares and contrasts the shared and unshared functions of the Shiʿite elements within three separate but interconnected Buyruk texts. While introducing Shiʿite themes like the glorification of ʿAli and ahl al-bayt, the doctrine of the Imamate, and the matter of the 14 Impeccables applied in the Buyruks, with a comparative approach, this research will unpack the differences of

(2021). Away from chaos: the Middle East and the challenge to the West. Middle Eastern Studies: Vol. 57, No. 2, pp. 407-408.

Abstract Turkey served for five years in the UN Security Council during the early Cold War period. Throughout its service, first in 1951–1952, then in 1954–1955, finally in 1961, Turkey joined 201 voting sessions, and gave many statements on matters before the Security Council. The three electoral campaigns of Turkey for the temporary seat in the Council, and its voting and statement performance during

Abstract The notion that development towns, founded at the dawn of the state of Israel, have become slums for North-African Jewish immigrants as part of a deliberate policy that served the status interests of the veteran, dominant Ashkenazi population, is a common perception among some scholars, which has recently taken root among the Israeli public, as well. This article focuses on the problems and

Abstract Up until the late eighteenth century, the economic understanding of the Ottoman elite was based on the worldview of the scholars of the Madrasah system. The first Ottoman treatises in modern economics began to be written in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, close to 300 years after the emergence of the subject during the Mercantilist era. The nineteenth century witnessed a gradual

Abstract The Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel makes no mention of the country’s aspirations regarding its borders; neither does it mention the name of the state’s capital. The absence of these features was due to the state of war that the country faced at the time of the declaration, as well as the fact that according to the Partition Plan (UN Resolution 181), Jerusalem was supposed

(2020). Announcement. Middle Eastern Studies: Vol. 56, No. 6, pp. 771-771.

(2021). Powering empire: how coal made the Middle East and sparked global carbonization. Middle Eastern Studies: Vol. 57, No. 1, pp. 168-172.

(2021). Muslim preaching in the Middle East and beyond: historical and contemporary case studies. Middle Eastern Studies: Vol. 57, No. 1, pp. 173-177.

(2021). Coping with uncertainty: youth in the Middle East and North Africa. Middle Eastern Studies: Vol. 57, No. 2, pp. 406-407.

Abstract The British imperial project in the Bahrain, Qatar and the Trucial States originated in the early nineteenth century when the Government of India signed treaties with the rulers of the sheikhdoms. It was a model of low-cost imperialism in which the British secured their economic and strategic interests. Whitehall rarely intervened until the Labour Party came to power in 1964. Domestic economic

Abstract This article aims to examine the issue of stateless ‘bidoon’ in Kuwait. The study explores the historical background of the bidoon issue in Kuwait. It finds that the bidoon issue has been influenced by internal and external factors since the emergence of this problem in the 1950s in Kuwait. However, the main object of this study is to trace the relationship between statelessness and political

Abstract The accepted understanding of what constitutes executive government in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is that power rests with the Cabinet. This is, however, only partially correct. In reality, executive power over national security is excised from the Cabinet, and instead rests with a group of legislatively-defined agencies and posts. In other words, institutionally the UAE’s executive branch

Abstract This article focuses on the Bedouins’ part in the Great Arab Revolt in Palestine – during the time of the British mandate; what motivated some clans/tribes to join a given side, and why others chose to remain neutral – and it also refers to the later implications of these different choices. The article briefly overviews the social and political developments that led to the Revolt, explains

This article analyzes the Egyptian regime’s quest to establish Islamic legitimacy for the transition from conflict to peace with Israel between 1977 and 1981. Based on an integrative analysis of a wide range of sources, it demonstrates that Islamic argumentations were at the core of Egypt’s official state campaign for peace. The appeal to Islamic justifications facilitated the regime’s efforts to describe

This article uncovers the short history of the American Colony Christian Herald Orphanage, operating in Jerusalem following the First World War. Hosting around 36 Christian and Muslim girls, the or...

In modern Turkey, male circumcision is so inextricably linked with Muslim identity that one may assume it a practice universally performed by them for centuries. However, a significant number of Mu...

(2021). The British Mandate in Palestine: a centenary volume, 1920–2020. Middle Eastern Studies: Vol. 57, No. 1, pp. 166-167.

Abstract This article intends to shed light on the local politics of the Alevis by focusing on three different cemevis in Istanbul’s Gazi neighborhood. Based on a field study in the neighborhood between 2014 and 2015 and eventually revisiting it in 2019, we analyze the local political dynamics with regard to different cemevis. By so doing, we aim to acknowledge and underline two phenomena: the dialectical

Abstract It has long been observed that the development of professional security institutions is a key stage in modern state formation. Leaders of many proto-states embarking on programs of rapid development – such as many of the rulers of the Arab Gulf States in the 1960s – have brought in foreign professional expertise to assist in building up fledgling state institutions, including militaries, police

Abstract One of the notable characteristics of Britain’s imperial role in the Trucial States (United Arab Emirates from 1971) was the establishment of armed forces and security services. The Trucial Oman Scouts (TOS) were the most important proto army in the sheikhdoms. During the last decade of the pax Britannica in the Trucial States competing units were also established in the region. The Foreign

(2020). Correction. Middle Eastern Studies: Vol. 56, No. 6, pp. 1044-1044.