Sharing my Middle East conflict lecture series at University of British Columbia! 🌍 Join me for insights into historical roots of regional tensions. If you're passionate about international relations, or simply interested in delving deeper into the Middle East, this series is for you.

1. Middle East and
International Relations: An
Introduction
Dr. Masoud Zamani

2. Fact Check
• True or False: The Middle East consists of countries with homogenous
and monolithic populations
• True or False: Middle Eastern states are more prone to waging wars
• True or False: international borders have not changed the end of
World War I
• True or False: Middle Eastern states have a lower level of political
development
• True or False: Middle Eastern states are inherently anti-Western.
• True or False: Political Islam is inherently anti-Western.

3. Middle East as a
Complex Area
• Middle Eastern political
processes defy observation,
discourage generalisation
and resist explanation. (Bill
1996: 503)

4. Recent Challenges in the Middle East
• 1. 9/11 and subsequent terror attacks and the US ‘war on terror’
• Iraq war of 2003
• The 2011 Arab uprisings
• The rise of so-called ‘Islamic State’
• Refugee crisis of enormous proportions
• Iranian proxies
• Israeli-Palestine conflict

5. Where Is the
Middle East?
The term ‘Middle East’ was
created by the US naval historian,
Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1902
Middle East: Arab countries
starting from Morrocco from the
West to the Arab countries of the
Persian Gulf and three non-Arab
states of Iran, Turkey and Israel.

7. Middle East and the
Ottoman Empire
• Today’s Middle East is the result of the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the
repercussions of the post-Ottoman
order.
• World War I, the empire destroying war,
put an end to the Ottoman Empire
• The Ottoman Empire institutions have
played a significant role in the Middle
East

8. Turks: The Ottoman Rulers
• Turks transformed Anatolia from Christian-Greek
speaking land into a Turkish Islamic land
• In the 16th Century, the Ottoman Empire stretched
from outskirts of Vienna to Somalia, Algeria and parts
of Iran
• Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453 (Mehmet II)
and renamed it to Istanbul (the largest city in the
world).
• The head of the Ottoman Empire personified two roles:
1. Sultan 2. Khalif

9. Nationalism in
the Middle East
• Nationalism transformed sovereignty
from a heavenly-ordained authority to
that of humans.
• In the Middle East, sovereignty was
predicated upon God commands.
• The idea of nationalism, which implied
a secular order, had difficulty taking
root in the Middle East in the modern
era.

10. The Modern Era in
the Middle East
• In the territory of the Ottoman Empire,
the modern era starts in 1798: the defeat
of the Ottoman Empire by Napoleon.
• In Persia, the modern era starts in 1804
and following the defeat endured by
Persians in Russo-Persian wars.
• The Eastern Question in Europe refers to
the fate of the Ottoman territories in the
European foreign policy.

11. Colonialism, Nationalism and State Formation
in the Middle East
• In 1919 and following the Paris Conference, imperial
powers, mainly Britan and France, decided on the fate
of principalities belonging to the Ottoman Empire.
• This order did not enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of Arabs,
since the state-centred order was an alien concept to
most of the Arab population.
• Arab nationalism emerged as a strong force in 1907.
Arab nationalism, however, aimed at obtaining Arab
unity, not scattered independent states.

12. Failure of Arab Nationalism
• Arab nationalism was a stark failure
• Israeli-Arab War of 1948
• Israeli-Arab War of 1967
• The Post-1967 trends in the Arab world:
• 1. Acquiescence in the colonial state
order
• 2. Revival of radical Islam

13. Sources
• A. Susser, D. Atlas, The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (Moshe Dayan
Centre, 2017)
• J. Bill, R. Springborg, Politics in the Middle East (Harper Collins, 1994)
• F. Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and Politics in the
Middle East (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2003)