 Okay, let's get started. Some of your friends ask a question which I believe you should also hear the answer. How you should get in contact with the embassies. I strongly recommend you to first of all locate the sort of contact information of the embassies. These are available everywhere. You can just look up on the internet or find from other sources. Where is their address, their phone numbers, and more specifically, as the first step, their email address. There are usually an info type, infoeth, say US Embassy or state.gov or whatever it is, type of email addresses where you can send your request. And since too many other different requests might be sent to that particular email address by many, many other people, the likelihood for your email to be located and to be sent to the relevant person is not very high because possibly they are getting maybe hundreds of emails every day. So someone should check these emails. Depending on the embassies we're talking about, maybe Israeli or Americans, maybe receiving more, some for protests, some for insults, some for requests, whatever. The internet is not always something that makes your life easy. Sometimes it may make your life very difficult. I have to spend half an hour every day to clean up my inbox, the spams and everything. Otherwise your inbox is inflated and it may explode at one point. Anyway, so please make sure you have an email address of the embassy and what you do is to go ahead and write an email explaining your situation that you are a student here at Bill Kent University International Relations Department and that you are taking this course. And please write explicitly and in complete sentences. Not the way you write to me, okay? I'm your instructor here, a professor. I may tolerate some writing mistakes, but when you write a request to an embassy, you should first impress these people with your writing and explaining the situation clearly. You are an IR student here and taking this IR343 because they will most possibly be checking our website and see if there is such and such a course being offered by me. Embassies are sort of here to do a number of jobs, one of which is intelligence and also serve their countries in many respects, one of which is security. So they will most possibly double check before they return to you by an email or by calling you. So please write everything in clear format, explain the situation and what exactly you want. So for this, of course, you will be needing a specific title which I will give you the latest on Friday and most possibly by the time we meet on Friday, you will have the subject matter. So don't rush to write to the embassies before Friday and until such time you get together and try to sort of get to know each other if you don't know already and what kind of sort of job assignments each one of you will have in terms of sharing the burden. But once you write an email explaining the situation and placing your request clearly, of course you should be asking specific questions or you should be explaining as to what exactly you expect from them to do because sometimes these embassy people call me or send an email to me telling me, well, we got an email from one of your students but we're not clear what exactly he or she wants. So please don't let them make this again and write your statement clearly, make your request known or understood properly so that these people might start thinking about how to help you out. So this first step and secondly, unless you hear from the embassy within a week or 10 days or so, by email or and of course please provide them with a number of email addresses each one of you and also your phone numbers so that they can return to you maybe by phone or if you like you can also give them a mailing address. They may want to see some documents, brochures or maybe some written material, etc. So if you don't hear from these people within a reasonable time like a week or 10 days, make sure you call them and of course once you call an embassy you usually have a person on the other side of the line, someone at the switchboard who doesn't know much about what is going on in the embassy and they usually are turkey citizens who are working in foreign embassies for facilitating their communication from outside to the embassy people. So explain the situation and tell them that you sent an email with such and such request and you would like to talk to the person who might help out and they will most possibly put you through to the spokesperson of the embassy, I mean person in charge of press and meeting the press request, etc. or maybe cultural attaché or other type of diplomats from lower ranks most possibly. You may or may not have access to the ambassador at first but if you sort of establish this contact over the phone and if you cannot still get someone on the other end of the line, all you have to do is to go to the embassy and embassies are usually crowded during the morning because people apply for visas, you may still go there in the morning or by checking the embassies working hours, opening hours, you can go in the afternoon when most people are not there or just waiting for their visas that may have been issued for them. So then you can explain to the person at the gate and they will possibly call upon someone and that person will come to the gate and you can sort of meet ways to face. So therefore different embassies may have different applications but what is something that will facilitate your task is that these embassies because I picked up the very same countries, just the ones that I chose in the previous simulations, ambassadors and the diplomats at the lower ranks in between are familiar with this course with me and with this kind of request from them so in most likelihood they will not be surprised by getting such a request from you. They should be sort of familiar with this request but in all likelihood all you have to do is to use your personal skills in terms of, you know, facilitating this communication between you and the embassy people and get as much information as possible. And again, let me repeat, the information that will be given to you, that will be supplied to you somehow. It may be a written text or some, you know, parts of different speeches that you can just walk them out and, you know, prepare your own statement. They may all help you out the most for the first session of the simulation where each country will represent its sort of position vis-à-vis that particular subject within four or five minutes at most considering that we have 11 countries and there will be time between each country to start and stop, etc. So we will have to devote our first session for this. The information that the embassies will give you, as I said, will be enough maybe for the first session but for the second session where there may be some crosswords or crossfire of words. I mean, there will be accusations by some countries about other countries of something and there will be some propositions put on the table. You will have to respond to that. And your sort of responses to these kind of situations will determine a significant proportion of your performance and therefore the grade that you will get out of the simulation. So therefore you should somehow extend the scope of your research. Do not confine yourselves to the stuff that will be given to you or that will come to you from embassies. This is a significant and important part but not all. So you have to make your research throughout the semester. You will have to go and read some books, articles, and think tank publications. All right. I think we can go back to our session that we were talking about major characteristics of the Middle East. All right. I think the simulation issue and output issues, they are both are properly understood. And if you have any specific questions still, please meet me in my office after the class or during my office hours. And my office hour, remember, is the hour when I'm in the office. So that means it is not limited to only two hours or three hours per week. Whenever you see me in the office, just jump in. My door is always open and ask questions. All right. Yes. Talking about the major characteristics of the Middle East, we talk about some major, major things such as, I mean, what make actually the Middle East really a very great source of concern in many directions for a variety of reasons. One of which, of course, unarguably is the Arab-Israeli conflict, the largest energy resources. Middle East was always there before it was even identified as Middle East. Middle, according to what, of course, depends. And therefore, the name itself is kind of new. It's not something that existed for centuries. It's there for maybe over the last two centuries, et cetera. Artificial state boundaries, again, it's an affair of the 20th century starting from the early 20th century. The Ottoman heritage actually was sort of shared among great powers of the period. We said political instability. There are certain factors that lead to this instability. One of which, of course, is ethnic diversity, diverse ethnic groups, different religions, and, of course, the conflict, which is unfortunately unavoidable among religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and within Islam, Sunni, Shia, sects, et cetera. Of course, the presence of extra regional countries, and especially during the Cold War years, the superpower intervention did not help in any way in bringing stability, and rather, on the contrary, it brought instability to the region. Well, maybe there was this Cold War stability at the systemic level, which was pretty much depending on the presence of highly advanced nuclear weapons capabilities in the hands of both superpowers, namely the Soviet Union and the United States, and it has a different logic, and it has entirely different conditions peculiar to the two superpowers, which actually helped maintain a certain degree of stability, but things could go out of hand anytime, and that was a very tense period, but the stability that existed between the two superpowers did not necessarily reflect to the relations in the Middle East, and we have seen much of instability in the Middle East, which when compared to some other parts of the world, there were some other regions such as the subcontinent, I mean, in the Pakistan or also in Latin America, there were some regions which were highly instable. What else authoritarian regimes? Well, these are, again, pretty much the characteristics of the Middle East. We do not necessarily think of democracies or advance democracies such as the ones that exist in Europe, North America, and we can also talk about Japan, Australia, New Zealand, these are democratic nations, but when we think of the Middle East, the first thing that comes to our mind is the presence of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, and of course these are not regimes where you can advance individual liberties, pretty much, and therefore, I would say, unfortunately, we should hope, we should keep our hopes alive that this thing will change, but it will take time because of all the other characteristics and the ones that we have not mentioned yet. So therefore, Middle East is not an easy region, and for many years, especially during the Cold War years, after the Second World War, until, I would say, the collapse of the Soviet Union or the collapse of the bipolar system by and large, Turkey bought out of necessity because of its role that it was supposed to play within the western camp, being a member of NATO, and also because of some other reasons, political reasons, economic reasons and otherwise, Turkey dissociated itself or alienated itself from the Middle East. Turkey did not consider itself as part of the Middle East and tried to stay as far away as possible and as long as possible away from Middle East and politics. I keep saying this in my classes. I think it was Vahit Alephoglu when I read either in his memoirs or in one of the interviews back in the 80s, possibly somewhere in one of the other papers. He described the Middle East, the politics in the Middle East as the sandhills in the desert, and that they would change every day. And he, like many other Turkish diplomats and politicians or foreign policy analysts, preferred to believe that Turkey, one should stay away from this highly dynamic situation which Turkey did not have much in common, and therefore Turkey preferred to stay away from the Middle East, stay clear from Middle Eastern or the conflicts in the Middle East. But since the end of the Cold War and more specifically because of the Iraq War in 1991 or because of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the events unfolded after this, since then Turkey found itself unavoidably part of the Middle East politics and over the last 10 years or so because of, again, necessity and also it is a deliberate choice, as far as I can see, of the Turkish government officials to get involved in the Middle East more than the sort of the Cold War period, much more than the Cold War period. During the Cold War period there's only short episodes of Turkey's interest in the Middle East such as the Baghdad Pact of 1954-55 which lived pretty short. And there are also some relations with some countries such as Israel which, again, depended pretty much on the other circumstances as we will talk about toward the end of the semester. All right, so this is not the Middle East. We still have some space left and there are many other issues that we can talk about. One particular issue, I mean, you were taking Middle East security course and since this is an elective course, one of the motivations behind your taking this course must be to learn what the security situation is and will be in the Middle East. And when we talk about security, what is it that we talk about or we should think about? Yes? What was your name? Meltem. Meltem, okay, Meltem. Okay, well, this is something that we talk more frequently and quite intensively after the 9-11. But prior to 9-11, there were also some other terrorist attacks in the region such as in Yemen, in other countries. So presence of, let's say, non-state actors. A couple of weeks ago, one of my graduate students completed his dissertation, his master thesis on terrorist al-Qaeda actually and the debate, well, maybe not a debate, but the discussion at one point of his thesis defense was whether we should make any distinction between a terrorist organization and a non-state actor. Because for some people, well, I would also, you know, sign up for that list. It doesn't make too much difference if we talk about a non-state actor or a terrorist organization so long as we don't, of course, talk about in multinational corporations because there are some books, some publications which make this distinction between non-state actors and which are seen as terrorist organizations or organizations of concern for security reasons and also multinational corporations or some other sort of institutions worldwide as non-state actors. Of course, every actor in the international arena which is not a state may be counted as a non-state actor, but here, for this course, we talk about terrorist organizations or such organizations that use violence, arms, or are not attacked as a way and means of achieving their purposes. And therefore, I would rather prefer to use non-state actor, which is more encompassing, which includes a bigger number of entities because the world terrorist organization for some people may not be that sympathetic, may not be that much sort of appealing to their sort of expectations, but what I mean here is an actor which does not actually dare using force or violence against innocent people, civilians, or unarmed groups. Okay, so one particular characteristic, again, unfortunately today, is the presence or, according to some abundance, or widespread nature of non-state actors. What else can we talk about? Your name was? Dilara. Dilara, okay, sorry, I keep forgetting some names, but I will get used to it over the course of the semester. Dilara, Meltem, all right, go ahead. Maybe we can accept the inter-application such as Iran's inter-activity and Saudi Arabia's buying weapons from USA nowadays. Well, that actually, the one, that is the thing that I was expecting into hearing since from the beginning. I mean, there is possibly not any other region in the world where armen is so intensive, so high. And this is an overly armed region. And the most recent deal, well, actually maybe the deal might be recent, but there was for so many years discussion about it between the United States and Saudi Arabia for the sale of $60 billion, $60 billion worth sale of arms. So Saudi Arabia will make the region even more armed. So heavy armament, let's put that way. Well, when we talk about heavy armament, we basically talk about the first thing that comes to our mind is the, what we call conventional weapons. Conventional weapons, and there are also non-conventional weapons which are weapons of mass destruction. So also the spread of, let's say, of what we call proliferation, sorry for that, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, WMD. Well, conventional weapons and non-conventional weapons are two different categories. And my students who may have taken courses from me should be familiar with this distinction as to why there is this category of conventional weapons and non-conventional weapons. Who could explain to us? Or who would volunteer an explanation as to what the difference is between conventional weapons or conventional category of weapons and unconventional or non-conventional weapons? Okay? Good job, I remember you. Okay? Can you speak up? I'm not sure if you're friends at the banks that can hear you. Okay, NBC, nuclear, biological, and chemical. Okay, fine. I mean, Gujihan said something right, but somewhat incomplete. I mean, it is not, of course, wrong to define as such that is, or to make this distinction between conventional and non-conventional weapons. Conventional weapons are the so-called traditional weapons and non-conventional weapons are, relatively speaking, newer. Fine, but why is it that they are called conventional and non-conventional? I mean, here, if you were to solve a mathematics problem, so you go, you have nothing here. Well, I wish life would be that easy to get rid of all these weapons. But so what is it that makes one weapon as a conventional weapon and the other is non-conventional? What is the significance of this term conventional? About time again? Well, to me, it is legitimate to have any sort of weapon. I hate weapons, and that's why I'm teaching this argument. But, for instance, the United States has nuclear weapons, so does Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China. They are all legal tenders of these weapons. I mean, they have the legitimate right to have these weapons in their arsenals according to the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, MPT. It is legitimate. Well, to me, it's legitimate. Fine. Or chemical weapons, biological weapons conventions, prohibit states from developing these weapons or stockpiling them, using them, and, of course, producing them, et cetera, et cetera. But this is not the boundary between conventional and non-conventional. Legitimacy is something that sounds similar to what I expect from it to here. Bishra, I think I can read from your face that you have the correct answer right now. You don't have to be. I mean, that's why you come here. Well, yeah, threat perception, of course, threat perception from non-conventional weapons or weapons of mass destruction. The perception is much higher and much more serious when compared to conventional weaponry, but there are some conventional capabilities which may be as destructive or dangerous as non-conventional weapons. This is not that, I mean, this categorization is correct in itself, but not the one that I expect to hear. You should understand the difference between conventional and non-conventional. You're right? Okay, please. And by the way, this is, please give two signatures if you are here in the first hour, and so if you're not, just one. Okay. Okay, I mean, so we're getting somewhere. This is important. This is important. Your friend said conventional weapons have a limited effect, so to speak, and non-conventional weapons may have wider effect or may have effect on a wider area. So this is one reason behind this sort of a categorization or distinction between non-conventional and conventional. Can you just use your intellect a little bit more? Gil Jihun again, yes? All right, fine. Some other thoughts, Amelia, any suggestions? You don't have to be sure to make any suggestions. Sure, actually. Well, in some respects, some manufacturing non-conventional weapons such as chemical and biological weapons may not be as difficult as some conventional weapons, which may be really highly sophisticated. This is not the reason between the distinction again. Non-civilians, whereas non-conventional weapons might be as well-civilized as well. Since they are weapons of mass destruction, we cannot prevent killing civil beings. Yeah, we're getting somewhere even closer. Any shuai, any suggestions? All right, based on you, Sofya? Are sort of more acceptable to use in warfare whereas non-conventional weapons are the same? Exactly. Yeah, this is, I mean, the culmination of what your friend said comes down to this. I mean, just when you have doubts about the meaning of something, this is something I learned during my prep school years at Boston University. You have to divide the word into its sort of a constituents. And here, what do we have? Conventional. What is a convention? When a convention, well, there is this Hilton Convention Center, meaning Hilton, there is this meeting center. Or where people meet. That means where people come together. So conventional, there is a certain degree of understanding or common understanding of something. So meaning conventional weapons are weapons that are seen, accepted, agreed upon as weapons. We like it or not, there have been weapons since, or throughout the human history. And there will be weapons in the future so long as humanity exists on the surface of the earth. We hope forever. But, and there is at least an understanding that some weapons are, no matter how much we agree personally individual, but there is a great consensus about being weapons as legal or legitimate instruments of warfare, war is the ultimate or maybe the last sort of a way or mean of resolving differences. Diplomacy, politics and other ways and means need to be resorted first or attempted first. But at least there is an agreement upon the certain weapons such as tanks, such as rifles, such as artillery, aircraft, whatever, these are things that are accepted as weapons, but non-conventional weapons actually suggest that there is no agreement upon whether these could be categorized as weapons because, as your friend said, their effect may go beyond the intention. A military commander in the battlefield, knowing the capacity or the weapons categories he or she has, then may decide on how much weapon or how much force or power to use in order to get a political objective because wars are just instruments of getting or achieving a certain political objective. You can limit the scope of destruction because conventional weapons do not necessarily have far-reaching sort of effects. But once nuclear, biological or chemical weapons are used, depending on many conditions and of course depending on the amount or number of these weapons used, it is virtually impossible, literally impossible to limit the effects of these weapons. Well, there's definitely almost no way of defining one against the extreme degree of destruction of nuclear weapons and biological and chemical weapons are such chemical or biological agents that are spread into the atmosphere, into the air and depending on the climatic or environmental or meteorological conditions, their effects may go beyond the intentions of the users. And therefore, they may become weapons of mass casualty. They may kill many, many more people than the sort of a political decision makers or meter decision makers may have even intended. So therefore, there is no consensus or there's no convention on whether these could be categorized as weapons. Some people do not accept these as weapons, including myself, I always say, these are slaughtering devices. Well, I do not like or accept any other weapons system, even they are conventional, but at least I can agree that throughout history and in the future, there will be these weapons. But these are different categories and their effects will go beyond and of course, when there are efforts to limit the number of conventional weapons, there are agreements on a bilateral basis or multilateral basis which aim at stopping the spread or increase in number of even conventional weapons. For instance, there is this conventional force in Europe agreement which was negotiated during the Cold War and then signed and reinforced after the Cold War between the former Warsaw Pact countries and NATO countries, now of course Russia and many other countries in Europe and in NATO. So therefore, these are some treaties or agreements which aim at stopping the spread of conventional weapons. Still, they do not necessarily dispute whether these are weapons or not. But when it comes to biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and radiological devices, et cetera, their characteristics of being as to whether they are a weapon or not is hotly debated. So therefore, there is this distinction between the two. So I wanted you to understand that when we talk about conventional and non-conventional weapons, we talk about entirely two different categories of weapons. As I said, regardless of how you approach the issue, non-conventional weapons are chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and conventional weapons are all the other types of weapons. But of course, there are some in the gray area which may be categorized, which may still be categorized as conventional weapons, but their effects may really be extensive, such as some laser weapons, for instance, or some other devices which may cause much harm, much damage to civilians or some institutions or some networks of communications or other things. Of course, one great danger threat is, of course, not only these being in the hands of states, it is still and already a threat. Countries, and there are approximately 200 countries in the world and almost all of them, with few exceptions maybe, have big or small armies, navies, air forces. Of course, they have, in though all their sort of military institutions with as many weapons as they could, depending on their financial capabilities or threat perceptions, et cetera, but still, even though there have been wars, and most likely there will be other wars in the future between or among states, but these are actually still being very, very significant and very threatening, but not the most threatening issues. What is the most or all the more threatening is, of course, the probability of these weapons falling into the hands of non-state actors which do not necessarily refrain from or may not refrain from using these, not only against the armies of some states, but also against the civilian populations. As we have seen on 9-11, for instance, the targets were deliberately chosen as civilian targets, one of which, of course, was Pentagon. There are some civilian people working there, but more importantly, the war trade centers, of course, no one could just identify this or the two towers as being military targets. These were purely civilian sort of targets. So, therefore, the threat of use of weapons of mass destruction in terrorist hands is something that really scares many people. Well, not everybody is scared at the same degree. Well, I can see that. I can tell you this based on my research and also my observations because I'm in these circles quite often, but still, at least from my personal perspective, and as we will see throughout the semester, based on our readings and discussions, and also, in some cases, some of the countries that you will be representing, this threat is all the more sort of emphasized. For instance, Israel is one of the countries which is much more concerned with the probability of a terrorist attack with weapons of mass destruction, not only the ones that have been used so far in attacks in cities like Haifa, Tel Aviv, etc. So, therefore, what we mentioned here, heavy armament or spread of or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Again, there are some other things that we should not forget about the Middle East, especially with respect to the secure dimension. What else can we say as we proceed with the characteristics of the Middle East? Yes. Your name was? No. Yes, go ahead. Do you sense of different ideologies, for instance, Zionism and Arab Brotherhood? Muslim Brotherhood or Arab Brotherhood? Muslim Brotherhood. Okay. Ideologies are different. All right. Zionism, slash... Who is the founder of Muslim Brotherhood? Any idea? Egypt is the country, yes. I see. Good job. Okay. Read your text, please. Read your text. Every information you need about Middle East can be found in the reading assignments that I left out in the reserve section. I think I said this before, but let me repeat, for those who may have somehow missed or were not here, it is very difficult to find a book on Middle East politics because there are basically two groups, I mean, basically and not exclusively, but there are basically two major groups who are publishing on Middle Eastern affairs. One, of course, looks at the issue from, let's say, Zionist perspective or from Israeli perspective, not necessarily Zionist, not all of them Zionist, and the other is looking at the issue from Arab perspective and sometimes overlooking some facts, figures or over-emphasizing or underestimating or under-emphasizing certain things. So it is highly difficult to find a balanced book. And as an instructor, as a professor teaching this subject, I think I feel like I should be in a position to not to impose any particular ideology or any particular view upon you and your mind. You should be the ones who will find your own ways in this conflict. So what I'm trying to do actually in terms of assigning reading material is to find the ones that in my personal judgment reflect the situation to the extent possible as objectively as possible. So therefore, William Cleveland's book is the one that I found and now lost, I don't know where it is gone. I can't find my book anyway, but I have these copies and these are available in the reserve, but it is the one that I found quite balanced in its approach. It doesn't have any concern as to siding with one of the parties and sort of opposing the other party. It is trying to present as much objective information as possible and still make some comments but yet leaves to the reader to make the ultimate judgment about how he or she sort of sees the situation in the Middle East. With respect to the different ideologies, yes, Zionism is an ideology to some extent or is a way of life. It is something that has culminated in what today we know as Israel and Muslim Brotherhood is again something that emerged in the Egyptian territory but has a widespread appeal and went beyond the Middle East today, especially after the end of the Cold War rivalry. The Cold War actually was a period which in a sense blocked the emergence coming to surface of many other sort of ideological confrontations. This does not mean that they did not exist and they just emerged after the Cold War. They were there but the heavy weight politics of the Cold War, let's say, in a sense like pop-up blockers in your computers, they blocked them from coming to the surface. The situation in the Balkans, for instance, when in 1980, Yosef Prostito passed away when he died. There were some commentators who suggested, who forecasted that Yugoslavia could not remain as one and that it would be a matter of time for Yugoslavia to dismember, to sort of fall apart. But because of the Cold War balances some certain degree of systemic structural developments, it stayed as one until the end of the Cold War. The same applies to the Middle East. Some conflicts, big or small, could have erupted and could have spread to the wider region during the Cold War even. But that was, as we will discuss, possibly on Friday, because these kind of even small conflicts or bigger conflicts could escalate into a bigger, even bigger conflict that would bring in the two superpowers in the United States and Soviet Union, they were somehow blocked at their earlier stages. So therefore, when we look at, as I mentioned, when it seemed like there was a systemic stability to some extent during the Cold War period, some region conflicts were somewhat blocked from escalating to bigger conflicts. Well, whether that was a good thing or bad thing, it is up to your interpretation. It was a good thing in some sense because they did not result in hot conflicts and people did not die. But maybe it was not such a good thing because some of the differences were not resolved and so long as the differences exist, they preserved their potential of growing into a bigger conflict and they have bigger roots, may not come to the surface, but once accumulated over a period of time, then they come to the surface being as a bigger conflict. So maybe the 9-11 trauma that most of the world experienced was experienced because what in a sense motivated these people to sacrifice their own lives and to sort of exercise or to sort of execute this event might have been a result of this accumulation in the Arab world or in the Islamic world which may have been somehow controlled at lower levels had this conflict been sort of a, to some extent, thought or to some extent discussed when they were at their earlier stages. All right, well, actually this is not it. This is not all about the Middle East but major characteristics of the Middle East are this but we will discuss, let me just for one last second, I will send you this as an email attachment after discussing in the classroom, oops, Sanio. Well, 20 more seconds. Actually you must have seen this, the PowerPoint file and I will, to some extent, summarize a number of chapters that are aside from Cleveland's book but it is essential that you read this otherwise some parts may not be fully understood. This will come and we will go on for a number of issues here like the state of affairs in the Middle East after the Cold War period, sorry, World War II period and, of course, Israel, Nazarism, the wars between Arabs and Israel. What is more important than the wars themselves? Of course, people have lost their lives and this is therefore very, very important but there are both complications and what happened after, for instance, the 1948-49 war right after Israel was created? What kind of transformations in the Middle East this war has caused and what kind of implications the 67 war and also the Yom Kippur War in 1973 not only across the region but also across the world? So, therefore, we will go on with the discussions but I strongly recommend to you to at least come through, just, you know, familiarize yourselves by trying to quickly read chapters. These are very easy reading chapters, not difficult, not detailed. jargon is not used extensively and simple sentences are used by the author so, and your English must be more than necessary more than sufficient to understand everything. So please make sure you understand and for some basic characteristics of the Middle East I also recommend you to go over several pages not more than 15 or so pages from this book actually Hindabush and Atisami's book, all right? Okay, I'll see you on Friday. Thank you for coming.