 Just a couple of questions about the simulation. Those members of the two delegations, namely Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Are you guys here? Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia. Yeah, I'm in the two standing, and how about Jordan? Well, I should call King Abdullah next time. All right. Please make sure you know your team members. I mean, I tried to introduce you to each other last time just by asking you to stand up so that everyone can see everybody else and knows, of course, that he or she who is or her team member. So it is essential that you get together as soon as possible, as I indicated in my emails, and devise strategies to how to proceed. Next week, I'll be attending a conference in Paris on Thursday. So I'll be returning on Friday. We'll not have class on Friday, but we will have class on Tuesday, right? Don't forget this, and don't spread the word that professor will not be here next week. I will not be here next Friday. I'll be here on Tuesday next week, so please do not cause any misunderstanding. But for your convenience, I'm telling you right now that our next Friday's class will be canceled. That's why there's the reason, as I explained at the beginning of the semester, we are having four hours a week, at least for several weeks at the beginning of the semester. So it's to be able to compensate for the several hours that we'll be missing because of these conferences. Again, I was planning to show you a PowerPoint here. The computer, there is a problem with the accounts. I cannot open my e-mail account in which I had this PowerPoint file sent to myself so that I could show it here. I did not have a copy last time, so but I have this printed copy myself. But don't worry about it, you will get the PowerPoint as an attachment in an e-mail that I will send you. So please take notes because the PowerPoint consists of some bullet point type information, not very much detail, just headlines, sort of headings, subheadings. But the information that I'll be discussing here will be useful for you in your preparation to the midterm exam, which is casual as far as I remember, November 12th, right? Right before the bi-room. All right. Excuse me. Again, something or is there anything you'd like to tell us, everyone? That way, so that will increase your adrenaline and you'll be working better. Don't worry about it. In case there is going to be trouble for most of the class, we can maybe think about another date, but I don't think this should be unnecessary to discuss at this point. Anyway, last time we tried to sort of determine the basic characteristics, the fundamental characteristics of the Middle East, because this is the subject of this course. We are of course particularly interested in the security dimension of the relations in the Middle East. There are a number of factors that elevate Middle East to a very high position in international politics, and it is not a new phenomenon. It is not something new. Middle East has been one of the focus of international politics for quite some time. At least over the last century, the Middle East has been the battleground, but I mean per se, in real sense, where wars were fought, but also in political sense where big powers, small powers have fought each other in order to advance their own interests. After all, as I always tell my students, in my foreign policy analysis or Turkish foreign policy classes, foreign policy is the pursuit of national interest outside of the boundaries of that country. Therefore, we have seen many countries trying to advance their interests and pursue their interests vis-à-vis the advantages that they thought would emerge from being there, or just taking part in regional politics or intra-regional politics. Today, we are talking about Middle East primarily because of nature resources, especially oil and gas that exist there, and many countries in the world are dependent on Middle Eastern oil as well as gas. That is one particular reason why, especially big powers, both in the past and today, have displayed a lot of interest in their approach to Middle East, and they always wanted to be in a more advantageous position vis-à-vis other powers. Of course, especially since the creation of the State of Israel, as we'll be dealing with more in-depth and extensively throughout the semester, and also more recently because of more imminent security problems such as terrorism, Middle East again is in the focus of many, many countries. Therefore, it is an important subject. But of course, we can go, as I always say, as far back as many centuries in order to start or to set the clock, as to where to start studying the Middle East. There is ultimately no meaningful point or yardstick where you can just start history. The more far back you go, and of course, the more things you find which are interesting for understanding and explaining what is going on in the Middle East. But of course, because it's not a course or history course, history department course, and because we don't have much time and we want to devote much of our time to understanding contemporary issues in the Middle East, we will start from the post-World War II period. And we will look at the state of affairs in the immediate aftermath and also the period since the World War II. So what was or how was the Middle East looking like at the time? What was the situation in the state of affairs? What was the political situation, military situation, security situation in the Middle East right after the World War II? Actually, there were some quick important developments following the end of the World War II. Well, World War II, of course, is a very important turning point in history. There is no question about it. And the war itself and what followed afterwards affected many, many nations, many, many countries. New nations have borne out of big empires which have collapsed or some new relationship emerge between or among countries, one of which was, of course, the creation of the League of Arab Nations. Well, that was actually something that preceded the official or formal end of the war because it was in March 1945. But something that is, of course, important to bear in mind is that many of the developments that follow the official end of war had their origins in the years when still war was still going on, such as the creation of the United Nations. Many conferences were carried out among nations and some other institutions that would, again, follow the end of the war. The League of Arab Nations, or Arab League, so to speak, is one of the important developments that we have to bear in mind. And it still exists. It was started with six countries. And today, is there anybody who has any idea about how many members the Arab League has? Or approximately, you don't have to be very exact. I mean, can you give a number within a range like today, how many Arab nations are members of the Arab League? 50 or 50, who said 50? And you said 15. Far too much, 50. I don't think there are 50 Arab nations today. 15 is, well, not so bad. It's now 22 Arab nations who are members of the Arab League. Is it a very important organization? Well, it depends on where you stand and from which perspective you look at issues and what you expect from the Arab League. Of course, you have to go through its charter in order to understand the mission and the powers of the Arab League as to what it is supposed to do and what it aims at achieving or what is its ultimate goal. Of course, one part of the thing, as the name suggests, is to sort of create a more coherent relationship among the Arab nations. Maybe emphasize or strengthen Arab identity and help spread this understanding among the Arab nations because there are some countries where almost the entire population is Arab. There is no sort of significant number of percentage of minorities. But there are also some countries where Arabs are also in minorities, such as Israel, for instance. There are approximately 20% of the Israeli population today is Arab, but Israel is not a member of the Arab League. Well, this is something that would be pretty much unthinkable for the Israelis. Even though they have, as I said, one-fifth of their population today, which is not a significant, insignificant proportion. It is a significant proportion, but still, of course, due to other reasons, not only because of this proportion. Israelis, of course, are not an Arab League member, but there are also some countries such as Iraq, for instance. Again, they're like 16%, 17%, or according to some other figures, 20% of the population is not Arab identity, such as the Kurds. But it has been not only a founding member, but also one of the most important members of the Arab League. It doesn't have binding power on the nations. It aims at achieving certain goals through negotiation and also consensus finding, and this is, therefore, important. That is something that tells us about the post-World War II period, in that Arab nations have, in a sense, developed a sense of Arab identity, and they figured out it was important for them to emphasize it. This is, therefore, one important development. Of course, one very important development that followed the end of the World War II was the creation of the State of Israel. On May 15, 1948, Israel proclaimed independence. Of course, there is much history to this. I mean, it is not something that happened overnight. That was a dream for at least several centuries back in the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries. And this Zionist movement always aimed at creating a nation for the Jews who were being persecuted everywhere, almost everywhere in all parts of the world. But, of course, and there were some significant developments, some important stages that have paved the way to this ultimate decision. And, of course, the Jews have taken advantage of the United Nations resolution, which actually aimed at creation of a state for the Jews as well as for the Palestinians, because the territory that Israel today exists is Palestine, which was actually ruled for several centuries by the Ottomans. And this is a period where, which actually even the Israelis today sort of believe was a very significant period in history in the sense that Ottomans have kept peace and stability in this region, where there is all these different ethnic religious identities which are prone and also have actually fought each other and prone to fight each other. So, therefore, the creation of the state of Israel, in many respects, constitutes one of the most important stages in history of the world, as well as, and more specifically, history of the Middle East. And according to many, it's the beginning of everything in the Middle East, depending on, again, how you look at the issue. This is something that paved the way to very important developments, as I mentioned, and one of which, of course, is a series of wars between the Arab nations, which aimed at coming together in a coherent way, sort of strengthen their position, and create some sort of a unity among themselves. And this Arab identity, of course, could not and did not accept the creation of state of Israel and they launched offensive against Israel, which, of course, resulted not necessarily in a victory for themselves, for the Arab nations. And almost each time Arabs have fought the Israelis, they pretty much suffered the consequences in terms of regime change or in terms of sort of shift of power from one group to another, sort of within themselves. So we will look into this more closely, because these are important developments that have shaped, actually, the rest of the decades that follow the end of World War II, especially in the 70s and 80s. We see a certain degree of radicalization of the Middle Eastern, some of the Middle Eastern nations or the relationship among the Arab nations as well as between Arabs and Israel. And we see more sort of intervention into the region by extra regional powers, super powers, and sort of peripheral powers, such as Iran, for instance. Turkey, for the most part of this period, I would say throughout the post-Second World War period, up until recently, almost pretty much, I mean, in most cases stood outside of the Middle Eastern politics for several reasons that we'll explain in the course. But other countries like Iran, of course, Israel, has always been unavoidably in the Middle Eastern politics. One, of course, one important development throughout these years in the 60s and 70s, late starting from late 50s, although which had their presidents, of course, all of which had their reasons of their own, such as the rise of a pan-Arabic ideology or Arab socialism in the hands of Nasser, Jamal Abdul Nasser, the head of state, Egypt, who came to power, of course, as a result of some of the events that succeeded the military coup carried out by a number of military people. Of course, these are important topics that we will be going on. One particular development that we should bear in mind is that throughout history, at least for the last several centuries, we have seen or we meant Great Britain and France, particularly. To some extent, Germans tried to play a role, but they were not that much successful. But French and British used to be the great powers of the period in the 17th, 18th, 19th century. And they always exerted their influence on the region. And this is somewhat, well, this map is not a very good one. I, therefore, found one on the internet and sent to my account, which I couldn't open today, which I would think would better display the situation that would give you a better idea. But still, of course, the world is spherical. And some maps are so flat that people think it's all the way straightforward. But here, for France and Britain, I mean, because they had interest in India, for especially the British, and France and South Eastern Asia, and some in some other parts, Middle East has been on the crossroads or has been on the way to their ultimate destination. And that was, of course, not only to extend their political influence to as many regions as possible, but, of course, out of this, or based on this, or taking advantage of this, to make trade and to make import and export of certain goods. And more specific, of course, import of raw material and the manufacturer using their manufacturing of some goods and, of course, become a welfare nation. This is what capitalist powers in the past or imperial powers have done. And this is, therefore, something not new to you. But here, what we have seen in the particular period that we are going to talk about, more contemporary period, is that we see the decline of these two powers as major powers. The post-World War II period witnessed the decline of the British and French rules in the Middle East as well. But more so, maybe, in the further regions of the world, such as India, for instance, and we have seen India later on Pakistan emerging as independent powers, and which were previously ruled by the British. And this colonial rule was, or disappeared, with the free will of the British, maybe, on the surface. But, of course, there was a lot of reasons as to why the British have left or quit the region. We have not seen the same development here in the Middle East for another period, like up until the 60s, the British and the French were not necessarily so anxious to give up their privileges here of ruling these regions. Because not only that these regions were still rather closer when compared to other parts, so therefore they could still exert some influence, they could still project their power on these closer regions. But also, because of, again, the creation of state of Israel and some other sort of developments and oil and gas, these regions were so rich that could not be compared to the wealth in other regions. So they were still jealous. They were still not very much willing to give up their powers. But all in all, what we have seen gradually and eventually erosion of their powers, erosion of their influence, and they had no other choice but to sort of lead the region. And one particular development was, of course, the Suez Canal crisis, which was followed by, of course, maybe because of the reaction of the United States to the sort of, I mean, Israel, France, and Britain, who as a reaction to Nasser's closure of the canal and nationalization of the canal and sort of fought or launched an offensive against Egypt, they did not expect a reaction from the United States. And the Soviet Union, of course. So this reaction caused deep trauma in the mindset of the French, British, as well as Israeli politicians. And they have sort of looked at the region with a new sort of perspective. And they have then figured out that they could not still exert the influence that they used to do so in the past. And that they were going, and the United States was emerging as a power, as a regional power as well, in addition to being a global power. Well, the 50s is important in the sense that there were some approaches of the US administration under Eisenhower. There is this new deal. There is this new approach to many international issues, such as in 1953 with respect to nuclear energy and the spread of nuclear energy. And there is this famous Atoms for Peace speech at the United Nations General Assembly and things like that. So many developments in the 50s have, again, witnessed that Middle East was not going to be anymore a region where Brits and French were so much or as much as they used to do, you know, exert their influence, but the United States was replacing them. So that was an important note to bear in mind that British and French rules were in the decline. And US was rising as the power, the extra-regional power or outside power, which would somehow shape the future of the intra-regional politics together with the Soviet Union. I mean, we should not forget the fact that, yes, in the 1950s, the Soviet Union may not have had as much military capability as the United States had. But in the following years, throughout the 60s, there was pretty much a parity between the two and both of which have taken advantage of this situation. And we talk about a superpower rivalry in all parts of the world and more specifically in the Middle East. So starting from the late 50s and early 60s, the Middle East has become more exerted. I mean, there was much influence of this rivalry between the two superpowers on the region, on the Middle East. Again, of course, this period tells us that more and more Arab nations have won their independence. Yes, there were some developments in the 1920s. As we discussed here, some boundaries were artificially drawn by the outside powers, French, British, Sykes, Pico, I mean, in 1916. All of these developments have had their effects throughout the 1920s and 30s. And but during the Second World War, many things were paused. I mean, there was a sort of a kind of standstill position, which, of course, was an unavoidable consequence of the war, which lasted for five, six years. And in its aftermath, we have seen these radical developments. And with the decline of the French and British rules, we have seen more and more independent nations. I mean, Arab nations who have won their independence from the declining powers. So it was also a consequence of, of course, as I mentioned, of the US intervention, and also the Soviet intervention in the region. One impact of the creation of the state of Israel, as I mentioned, was the start of a series of wars between Israel, almost on the day they proclaimed independence. They were attacked by Arab nations who could by no means accept this. Therefore, we have seen wars, 48, 49, just right after the creation of the state of Israel. And of course, Israel, in some respects, was not only spiritually or mentally ready for such a reaction. They were not dreaming that they would be welcome in the region. So they were not only ready politically, but also militarily. And they could just survive these attacks. But most important of which was the war in 1948. I mean, the beginning followed by 1967. These are the major wars. And the state of war actually has never ended between Arab nations and Israel. There is still not an eternal peace, not a peace at all. Only a handful of nations, just a few of them, in the Arab world, recognize the state of Israel formally. Some have not recognized officially, but acknowledge, or at least act in such a way to acknowledge that there is this entity there, a political entity, with which true indirect fashion, indirect means and ways do some trade and enter into some cultural, political relations. But again, only a handful of nations, just a few nations among the Arab states recognize the state of Israel. Even today, and we do not see much prospects in the future, or in the near future, at least. Of course, we would hope for the opposite. Because Israel was created in Palestine in a region where Palestinians were living, side by side with the Jews. And the Jews have taken advantage of creating their own state. But Palestinians have failed to do so. Palestinians who had no nation, no state, of course, were directly affected from the situation. And we have seen, during the war and its aftermath, we have seen a large mobilization or movement of a large number of Palestinians going to many nations, to many states in the region. One of which was primarily known as Transjordan. And today, as we know, Jordan. So today, I don't have the exact figures in mind. But an overwhelming majority of Jordanian population consists of Palestinians. And some historians and politicians argue that there is actually no such in Jordanian nation, which is something not accepted by Jordanians. And that there is a distinct Jordanian entity. The name, of course, comes from the river Jordan, or Jordan River, which was, again, created by drawing some maps by the big powers earlier. And based on some of the promises that were given before and during the wars, Second World War, especially. But what is important today is that one particular consequence of this war between Arabs and Israelis is that the Palestinians were most affected and, of course, badly affected. Another one, of course, at the time, I mean, there were kings, emirs, sheikhs, such individuals who were ruling in sort of Arab people in the Middle East. And there, I mean, Middle East was consisting of such dynasties, which were sort of keeping control of their population, which had some, of course, legitimacy, maybe in the eyes of some other powers, outside powers, maybe also among their population. But the war showed, unequivocally, that they were not that strong entities. And that followed by the war, or right in the aftermath of the war, these dynasties have gone into trouble because they could not sort of protect their people, and they could not protect their position, their power, their sort of status. And that, of course, has led the way to the creation of or emergence of new regimes in the region, taken over by mostly Dmitry. And once Dmitry intervened in it, in the situations, and Dmitry within itself created other problems and sort of paved the way to other interventions by other members of Dmitry who have blamed their predecessor for not being successful or for not being as strong or as tough as they had to be against, of course, Israel. So what we have seen in countries like Egypt, Iraq, and Syria was that kingdoms, or kings, or monarchs, dynasty powers, so to speak, have been toppled down by Dmitry, and then Dmitry rules, Dmitry regimes were established, which, again, as I said, within themselves have undergone several problems because everyone wanted to hold onto power and become the dominant actor in the sort of administration of his country. So let's give a short break here, and I'll come back. When we come back, we'll discuss this issue, and I'll try to figure out if we can open this account today.