 All right, I think we can get started. Welcome everybody. How are you doing today? There is such a nice weather outside, isn't it? Nice autumn day. I like autumn more than summer and winter. How about you? I like spring the most, autumn second, summer and winter. Well, don't make too much of difference. Actually, I don't like winter too much. Especially if you live in a city like Ankara, it's freezing cold. All right, I hope everything is going okay and as you should be aware of the fact that we will be having progress meetings in my office starting today and I will start with Madam Secretary-General the Nations Unis. So and then we will meet in 10-minute intervals at least for this week and in two weeks time we will repeat and I will probably assign the same time slots for every group but on Thursday, I mean on the following Thursday, not this Thursday, but in two weeks time the Thursday teams, I mean, or teams at which I will have meetings on Thursday will have their meetings most probably on Wednesday because I figured out that some of your friends are taking this international organizations, right, or international law course from Professor Yükselinan, and as he starts his classes on half past, I guess, half past noon, right? So you cannot meet with me and Thursday teams will be meeting on Wednesday and why I do not have, excuse me, Metin, again, is there a problem? Yes, why don't you ask me? All right, so why do you speak among each other? Why don't you tell me? Are you going to resolve the problem by yourself or by consulting with me? All right, so I can fix another time for you, for your team to meet with me. And so when you started, you said at half past noon? Half past one? At one, sure. All right, so we can change the time. Well, the reason why I was just about to say this, if you had not entrapped me, as to why I'm not going to meet with you at half past noon tomorrow, is because I have a meeting at 11 in the city and I'm not sure if I can come back to Bilkent by half past noon. So, well, this is highly likely. So if you don't mind, I would just kindly ask from you, your team at least, to meet with me a quarter to one, right? At one, just a quarter to one. And unless you see me in my office, you can just leave. I mean, because that means I will be somewhere in the city. Okay, so this is one thing. Please make your friends know about this and I expect every single member of the teams, right? I don't just want to see some representatives after presenting delegations. So all four of team members should be present and I will, in that respect, take attendance of those attending, unless we have something very urgent, health problem or a family problem or something else, you can of course be excused. But next time, you should definitely take precautions to be present at the meeting. All right, one quick thing about these sort of two issues, op-ed and simulation. One of your friends just asked if op-ed should be chosen from among topics that I have published so far. Well, I'm not that kind of person who impose upon you my own will. So therefore, you can choose any topic you like, provided that the subject matter falls within the scope of this course. So, for instance, the gender and security in the Middle East, I don't know if it fits. But something that has to do with Middle East security issues. Therefore, it is up to you to pick up any topic for op-ed. And, but if you like, if you're not sure about it, if you have any confusions, just you can drop an email and ask, for instance, Fatih Chalkhan just yesterday at past midnight sometime sent an email asking me as to which one out of four topics which he had studied already and thanks for that. And Saudi arms deal, Iranian nuclear program and other stuff. So, he asked me as to which one I would prefer. I said, well, just do some more research, find your subjects and at least have two topics and then ask me. So, okay, and by the way, I should also express my very positive feelings about some of your friends. Doesn't mean that others don't deserve that. But I sent an email to Egypt team on Sunday afternoon and telling them that I had received an invitation for a meeting in downtown at Usak, U.S. Services Strategic Archdiocese, and that they invited me to attend this meeting which would be attended by the Egyptian ambassador and a high level delegation from Egypt. And I wanted to let this Egyptian team know about it and they replied quickly within an hour or so and that they said they would attend the meeting and all three of them, one of them had a different thing to do because it was a very short notice information that I gave them and they attended the whole day as far as I understand they very much benefited from this meeting. And so congratulations, you were there a minute or two, good as done, right? So, Ennis, where is Ennis by the way? Now for the records, Ennis is absent. Okay, so maybe he has trouble because he's a very good student. Anyway, so this is also very important. Another thing, for instance the U.S. team said they would have problem with meeting me on Thursday and within again half an hour notice all four of them were quick to meet me in my office. So this is the kind of student behavior that I expect from you, congratulations. And I know all others, I mean all the rest of you deserve similar praise and I will express this just in front of all others so that you know what I expect from you as university students, take this time, this is the best time of your life, trust me and you will remember me in five, ten years time when you get graduated, you have a family, you have a work and you will be yearning at days that you had passed here, you had spent here at the university and so take the most advantage of it. All right, going back to this issue, by the way just another short sort of announcement about simulation, if you encounter any trouble in meeting with the embassy people please let me know because as I said before these people know me and my colleagues because this is international relations department and they get in contact with us from time to time, we have with some of them very good friendly person relations with others we have institutional relations in case they either, I don't know, ask too many questions as to why you want to meet them or they don't give you any appointment, please let me know. I can just intervene and at some point maybe try to do something to facilitate your establishing context and other than that please study sort of and this must be done according to a certain burden sharing agreement within the group, I mean you should, each member of the group should undertake a certain responsibility, for instance one of you could through the internet and through from other sources can do a research, a search about what for instance the president of that particular country that you will be representing may have said sort of publicly with respect to the Iran issue I mean or the topic that you will be simulating and somebody else might just look at the websites of think tanks and the publications of think tanks and try to figure out what is the situation and because this simulation requires on the one hand a descriptive research I mean things that you will have to get from different sources about the true position of that particular state and also you should endow yourself with the capability to make analysis, all right, so such think tank reports or other analytical writings may help all of you to sort of make this interventions especially in the second round, so if you do that you will see that you will have more joy and fun out of it and also you will understand the subject matter way to well and at times and if you think it is the situation please get in contact with other team members because policies of foreign policies of some states in the Middle East are somehow interconnected and therefore you can benefit from other groups research, all right, so we were talking we talk about all this stuff I mean previously but the reason why I kind of go back for a short while is to you know point to another issue which is still and indeed at the very core of the Middle East debate Middle East conflict which is the Palestine problem and the problem of the Palestinians, so Palestine problem is of course has to do with the problem of the Palestinians but they are not exactly the same thing Palestine problem is a much wider problem but the problem of the Palestinians and also problems that the countries in the in the region have undergone sort of over the last several decades because of the Palestinian issue or due to the Palestinian issue needs to be studied here of course just very briefly going back to the Nasser period one of the objectives of Nasser was to liberate Palestine and sort of help the Palestinian cause and help with the Palestinians but as we have studied almost every time there was a war there was an offensive against Israelis with a view to liberating the territories territories means the occupied territories the territories that belong to Palestinian people in the minds of the Arab nations that are now being occupied by Israel so the idea every time they launch an offensive against Israel with a view to liberating the territories occupied by Israel they actually let alone liberating Palestine they lost additional territories to Israel and of course we have seen the consequences on the regimes as well as on administrations and and how these things have affected the countries in region Egypt Iraq and Syria and what kind of dramatic changes these countries have undergone because of the after effects of the war or the consequence of the war but the Palestinians of course have been and when look from the human dimension have been the most negatively affected group of people because they did not have an estate and each time there was a war of course they suffered the consequences and they had to fled the places locations where they were trying to leave and migrated to other places and this situation in and of itself has sort of caused other additional troubles other problems because when war started in 48 I mean right following the proclamation of the state of Israel the Israeli Palestinian refugee problem started because you know they had to leave the territories where they had to they used to live until that day and they have gone of course we have to bear in mind that we can we cannot talk about a unified sort of Palestinian identity we of course mostly Muslim but not all of them Muslim people and not of course mostly you know rural coming from rural areas but not all of them there was a certain nobility certain aristocracy certain sort of people who had higher incomes as well as living standards and those who had such advantages managed to you know go to other countries in the region or to Europe United States Canada other places and save themselves and their children and the next generations but bulk of the Palestinian people suffer the consequence of wars and of course they you know as I said they had to leave in different places in Jordan and in the countries in the Gulf work there to make to make it living and especially those who stayed within the Israeli territory as well as in Jordanian territory and some of them eventually moved to Lebanon they live in pretty bad conditions in camps and refugee camps which were thought to be for a temporary period until there would be a peace within within the region but that was always an elusive peace never happened so far so and of course here we see for instance when we talk about the consequence or implications of the 67 war one issue as Arafat Arafat's LFET dominates the PLO PLO actually was created by the Arab League we talk about the Arab League remember it was established it was founded in March 1945 we debut advancing the Arab cause to provide coherence among Arab policies and then sort of with a concerted action sort of defend the Arab identity Arab values and of course Arab advantages or just have a consolidated Arab power but you know Arab League has never been successful in achieving these goals and maybe even some of them so the PLO Palestine Liberation Organization was originally founded in 64 and with the sort of no Palestinian nobility I mean people who had a certain degree of education some sort of a better education when compared to the rest of the Palestinian people and it was not the PLO that we most of you probably know about today or the kind of image that you may have about PLO today or until recently was not the same as when it was founded back in 64 and it was you know of course it aimed at first of all gaining a certain recognition not only within the Arab world but also in the rest of the world as being the sole I mean the only representative of the Palestinians of course the ultimate goal being the founder the creator of the Palestinian state because with the UN resolution 242 the idea was to create actually two states or at least that was the sort of you know the objective of those who drafted the resolution two states Israel Jewish and Palestinian state side by side living in the same territories but of course there were some intriguing developments that we will not go into very much detail the Israelis took advantage of the resolution but Palestinians and our world failed to take advantage and when you ask the Palestinians of course and our world they put the blame on the Israelis who and the big powers who are actually a sort of question the sincerity of the Western world and they say the resolution was drafted in such a way that would of course blockade the way to creation of the state of Palestine state of Palestine well anyway living all this side to historians and to debate about this the Palestinian Liberation Organization which was of course created as I said with a view to advancing the Palestinian cause at the international for an international sort of circles again affected was affected from the 67 war and following this because as I said Palestinians had fled to many countries in the region have left their territories have gone to Gulf countries Kuwait Qatar Saudi Arabia of course Saudi Arabia has been a supporter of the Palestinian cause not necessarily directly being involved in the politics but rather by financial assets by providing some sort of support to Egypt in return for Egyptian support to Palestine or Palestinian people direct or indirectly anyway and because the Palestinian population was rather a younger population and living under very difficult conditions of course this situation was exploited by the groups which started to emerge within the Palestinian not only PLO but also all over the Palestinian sort of communities and al-Fati was one of them Americans pronounce al-Fatah while it is al-Fati al-Fati you know conqueror so therefore and to conquer the occupied territories back from the Israelis sounds nice so you can let it go so as long as you don't speak no problem right so therefore the we see the rise of Arafat to power and of course al-Fati was not the only group within the Palestinian organization or Palestinian groups so they advance because the humiliation in the hands of the Israeli army of you know Egypt Syria Palestinian extremist groups or radical groups have advanced the situation for advancing their exploited the situation for advancing their their own cause and to promote their organization of course on the one hand they had to deal with the other Palestinian groups and on the other hand they had to devise a strategy as to how to you know liberate the Palestinian territory from occupied Israeli occupation and one of the methods that they knew was of course use of violence against Israeli targets and to carry out some attacks or some activities with a view to attracting the world's attention to the Palestinian cause well sometimes terrorist organizations and this is not you know something that you know unique to any one of them of course one of the objectives of a terrorist organization might be you know liberation a certain territory separation of a certain territory from you know from a country or advancing some political ideology these may be situations and sometimes they target a certain individual or certain group of people such as soldiers such as security forces or a leader political ministry or monarch or someone from the administration and sometimes the peoples I mean whom they target are the target but sometimes they are not necessary target but the purpose is to attract the world's attention or the attention of some groups and the victim is actually not the target but you know they they know that by assassinating someone by killing someone they will attract more attention and that person might be just just be the victim of such a cause not necessarily himself or herself might have been someone who would otherwise like to kill so the objectives of terrorist organizations might be sometimes confusing but those who are experts on terrorism studies can make this distinction if it's to where the person or group of people was or where the target actually for instance on 9-11 I don't think those who hijacked the airplanes and sort of hit the World Trade Center had any problem with anybody in working in the in the buildings but the idea was to shock the world to send shock waves the rest of the world and 9-11 the attacks on 9-11 actually in that respect unfortunately reach their achieve their objective so therefore this is in the 70s we have seen and I myself even remember that that there were some hijackings and these hijackings of airplanes were so frequent that people were you know started to laugh about or make jokes about it as to whether I mean you know we will you know go to our destination with the flight time will be two hours and 25 minutes unless we are hijacked and that were the kind of jokes who started to emerge so in the 70s and starting with late 60s and almost throughout the first half of the 70s hijacking aircraft in the Middle East was kind of routine and people were not even noticing that after somewhere so and some and Palestinian groups were held responsible and some of them of course were very very serious because the hostage rescue operations have resulted in killing of and you know large number of hostages rather than the terrorists themselves and therefore Mogadishu for instance and then there was also such incidents like the 1972 Munich Olympic Games during this Munich Olympic case you must have seen the or you may have seen the movie Munich the Palestinian terrorists just kill a number of Israeli athletes and of course this had had quite serious consequences repercussions and Israeli secret services killed a number of Palestinian people or Arab people whom they believed were responsible for such an act and they killed these people in in European capital so the 70s in their respect was quite quite nasty I mean it was it was really ugly in terms of political developments so this this situation the Palestinians because they did not have any state and they was not you know a well-established top-down structure and there were groups on the one hand fighting against Israel and also on that hand fighting against among themselves in order to seize power and to have soul voice the the upper hand in in determining the Palestinian politics so therefore that situation went on quite for quite some time and as here for instance one of the thing that the Palestinians actually had to endure was the black September event do you know anything about black September these are actually in your reading assignments that you are expected to have completed by today I mean even by last week so the black September was actually a real black September and there are such days in a black September black October whatever in the financial markets when people lose a lot of money but this black September event is actually is no joke it's a very dark day in the history of Palestinians because the Palestinian groups found to be disturbing the situation in wherever they were living and one of these places was Jordan and the after all it was a kingdom and it is a kingdom and King Hussein found quite rather destabilizing the Palestinian factor and actually he was not happy with this situation and array them into raid against the Palestinian camps resulted in the killing of thousands of Palestinians in the hand of the Jordanian security forces something that lasted for about a week or 10 days so and I mean most people think of Israel as the entity making life a hell for the Palestinians but in the past well we're not of course talking about today but in the past the Palestinians also suffer from Jordanians they are follow fellow Arab people so this is something of course it also calls them to seek for other headquarters or other other places to leave and to stage their attacks against Israelis and one reason why they were told to be a distant destabilizing factor was because they never stopped their attacks against Israel targets with whatever they had in their in their power and Palestinians never had an army actually even today the Palestinian authority does not have the the capacity to maintain an army doesn't have the right to have an army but in the past they had none that could be compared to anything like an army and they had comparatively lighter capabilities in terms of weapons and munitions but of course the military capabilities per se are not necessarily sorry for that are not necessarily one item or one criterion that you should bear in mind the impact is important I mean if you are capable of building very sort of crude weapons but still kill large number of people with with these weapons they can be compared to even the most effective weapon which has the same or similar killing or damaging capacity so therefore the Palestinian attacks have resulted in significant losses in terms of human lives in the among the Israeli communities and also some damage to some of the Israeli facilities so therefore they were being retaliated by the Israeli so because they were living somewhere whereby they were attacking Israeli positions and Israel of course was fighting in itself the right to retaliate back to these posts and these being in the within the Palestinian territories and therefore what whichever country Palestinians lived ahead unavoidably a trouble with Israel so therefore this that was one major reason as to why regions countries in the region you know to consider the Palestinian problem to be a hot potato I mean this is this there's this term and no one wants to handle it so hot that you don't want to sort of hold it so therefore that that situation went on further I mean it was not it did not end with like September I mean the Palestinians did not say all right we were slaughtered in the hands of the Jordanians so therefore we we we give up they did not say that and they continued their their coast to advance their coast in different fora in different places one of which was Lebanon so here we come the the impact of the Palestinian factor on the Lebanese politics this is this is important because Lebanon was in itself in a having trouble with many of its constituents I mean because there were different groups different ethnic groups I mean not only Muslims and different ethnic Muslims but also different ethnic Christians and different sort of groups within Lebanon which was which had a certain balance since the time of a French mandate all these territories were under the French mandate and so they had established a certain degree of stability by way of you know promoting the Christians to certain posts and also establishing certain you know institutional frameworks by means of which in terms of administration I mean jurisdiction legal issues and administrative issues so there was a certain degree of balance I mean of course fragile vulnerable but somehow maintained and then and Syria especially after the creation of the Syrian territory never gave up its claims on the Lebanese territory which they always thought would have would belong or belong to Syria and always had a finger in or a certain role of course behind the behind the doors behind the walls within the Lebanese politics as I noted here rested on a very delicate very fragile sectarian balance and the presence and when once Palestinians move to Lebanon of course this had had some sort of impact on the fragile balance because Muslims were their Christians Maronites they they were sort of happy with the power that they had which you know you know they sort of understood each other and they they thought it would be in their best interest to continue the existing situation but the Palestinian factor created division because first of all the demographic situation changed the number of Palestinians who fled into the country or just flocked into the country after all these developments the own keeper war also had its own impact just like the 67 war each time war as I said at the beginning happened Palestinians were the worst to be affected from this so the Muslim communities within Lebanon of course because of this affiliation kinship and the their perception of the situation they some of them if not all of them supported the Palestinian cause and we have seen I mean Lebanon witness a situation whereby the Palestinians concentrate in certain parts of Lebanon again you know attacking on Israeli posts carrying out rates on the Israeli soldiers wherever they were which of course each time called for retaliation more than in kind and it is of course something to do with the Israeli way of thinking meet your way of thinking which is to retaliate more than in kind in order to deter the enemy to repeat the same mistake some some countries some some people some communities may understand that or make knowledge that and therefore stop attacking Israel for instance I mean that might be the Israeli expectation but Palestinians did not want to learn any such lesson so and they never stopped their attacks and just just until recently we have seen in Lebanon again just two years ago there was this offensive on southern Lebanon with a view to finishing Hezbollah which of course was not the result so therefore what we have seen here in Lebanon again this this fragile balance was tipped was was somehow disturbed and it was not only between Israelis and the Palestinians but also within Lebanon groups have started to fight each other because of this new element Palestinians so what we have seen was again a civil war in Lebanon which sort of called into the inter a call for the intervention of Syria at some point Syria which was sitting on the fence on you know there is this term sitting on the fence I mean you just watch a certain thing a certain developments and you wait for the right time to intervene when from a position of strength I mean at the time that you think your intervention would bring the most or the greatest advantage to advance your cause so but this situation that even worse with Syrian intervention but by the way something to note here was many of you might think if you have not made your readings many of you might think that Syria intervene on the side of Palestinians because Palestinians were Arabs and Muslim just like Syrians now you're wrong Syria intervene to actually help with or rescue the Maronites from the scourge of Palestinians I mean so that has taught some dear lessons to the Palestinians because you know even if Syria intervenes on the side of their adversaries I mean who else could help and for what reason Arab nations could come together so eventually Israel of course which was very much disturbed with what was going on Lebanon within Lebanon because Lebanon had become the headquarters of the Palestinian organizations in a staging attacks on the Israeli post because you know they are just bordering each other and that that of course was has become a problem that the Israelis wanted to get rid of and one way Israel believes it can put an end to it you know threat is to eradicate it is to eliminate it and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 which resulted in the killings or slaughtering of Palestinians in the hands of the Falange guerrillas in Sabra and Shatila the refugee camps and they killed thousands of people regardless of whether they were elderly people children or men and women and most because it was the time when Palestinians had agreed to some groups at least as I agreed to leave their arms and funny lasting solution to this situation in the region so all this of course had added much more heat tension and of course the situation has not improved even a bit since well some improve improvements we have seen maybe over the last few years I mean after so many years the Lebanon has become of course as we will see in a moment with the intervention of Iran into the picture with the entering of Iran into the picture the situation has gotten even worse and we have seen the impact of Iran Islamic Republic of Iran not just Iran it's entering into the picture and in having very close links with Hezbollah in Lebanon and and the Lebanese politicians at some point sort of complicated the situation a little more do you have any questions about anything that we talk about so far because I want to continue with the some of the other developments especially the Iranian situation next hour because and I want to sort of finish this historical part if I may say so today and start with more important developments that have taken place in the 1990s and 2000s until now of course the most important development being Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and of course the events that followed so any questions about this yes Fatih go ahead what is the question was closed yes well because in the 67 war both east and west banks of the Sinai Peninsula and the Canaver under Israeli occupation other questions all right let's give a break some of you might want to have a coffee and let's come back in 10 minutes