 All right. Good morning. Welcome back. Here is the list of country preferences for the simulation. I thought we'll be getting rid of this chair. I'm not going to use this anymore. Well, at least softly for the foreseeable years. Well, I'm going to go over the list for two purposes. First, is to make sure your names are on the correct country preference. And secondly, whenever I read a name here, please stand up so that everybody else in the same group sees you and you get to know each other. Some of you already know each other, but some students may not know who is, for instance, Isan, Arab, Samarj, etc. All right. So these are determined according to your preferences. And so long as there was a seat available in any country which you chose as your first choice, then I registered your name to that particular country. But if there was no seat available, and in most cases, I mean other than the ones available, I registered your name to the second, or in some cases, maybe third choice. So, and I would like to turn this off. I believe you can keep other members, because I will not be using the screen for a while. I'll be using the board. Okay, now I think we can get started. Not only this hour, but also the semester in terms of Middle East security. Because so far last week, both on Tuesday and on Friday, I went through two basic requirements of this course, one of which is writing an op-ed, and the other is, as you have just seen here, representing a number of countries in a simulation session, where we will possibly simulate an emergency situation in Middle East, a meeting convened upon the request of the UN Secretary General from a number of countries which may have concerns with the secure situation in the region. I would like to make one point clear, and I want to make sure myself. Are the requirements for op-ed writing in terms of how to determine the topic, as well as, and more importantly, how to write an op-ed as to what it is? I mean, is everything clear? Is there anything that you believe you are not clear, or you may be a little bit confused for some reason, and is there anything that you would like me to repeat here? And so this is important because I want this message to get through, and I don't want to hear any complaints about, well, I was not sure that was what you were expecting from us, because I think I spent quite a lot of time, and based on my experience, I thought it would be necessary for me to talk at least this much about what an op-ed is, because in the previous semester when I asked from students to write an op-ed, I thought I was given enough information, but in due course I could figure out that information was not that sufficient, because some students were either on and off listening to what was going on in the class, or not attending the class, or they may not have attended the particular art that I mentioned. But last time on Tuesday and on Friday, I think I devoted quite a significant amount of time to explaining what an op-ed is. Is there anything? Well, just don't be ashamed. You can ask any question because we are students, we are professors, you are supposed to know certain things and you are supposed to learn certain things, so this is how we proceed throughout the semester. And secondly, are you clear about what is expected from you in terms of simulation? And I think even if there is anything which may not be clear at this moment, or if you encounter any problem in due course, we will be having this sort of a progress report sessions in my office, and we will assign specific time slots like 5-10 minutes each. I don't want that extended discussion sessions if need be. Of course we can talk as much as you need, but I would like you to do most of the job yourselves in cooperation with other institutions like the embassies here or the representative offices. And of course there will be a certain degree of propaganda in the information that will be supplied to you, which is, after all, quite normal because you will be acting as if you were a member of a delegation that is representing a particular country, so your job will be propaganda anyway. So what I would like to suggest here, please go ahead right after the class, either during the break or after the class because I think it's lunchtime so no one should have any class sort of assignment. Please go ahead and just meet each other, I mean, if you don't know already, and sit and talk about sort of what to do, who's going to do what, what I call burden sharing. It's a big assignment, it's a significant assignment, and the more time you devote to it and the more serious you take it, the better will be the simulation and much more fun you will get out of it. And because some students were not present in the previous sessions on Tuesday and Friday last week because some of them were still not registered or in the process of registering themselves to other courses, so they may have missed some of the things that I mentioned here, and please make sure everyone understands what is expected from sort of every group and every student. All right, yes, please. For op-eds? Well, okay, for simulation, well, I have to think about it a little bit because I have one major concern and actually I always start trusting people. Even if I'm, you know, hesitant, I just sort of make my choice on the part of students by trusting them, but my major concern is that if I pick the same subject which is still available, I mean, which is still valid because the one that we sort of chose for the last spring semester was, you know, there were these concerns as to whether the United States and or Israel would strike, would carry out a military strike against Iranian facilities and being concerned with this possibility and maybe probability, let's say, the UN Secretary General convened an emergency meeting. My concern here is, though this topic is still valid and even maybe more timely because I keep hearing here and there from this and that people who may have access to what is going on in the international arena that this is something that is even more serious and even more likely. I mean, if there is any likelihood anyway. So if I pick up the same subject, my concern is whether students would like to go through the shortcut and have access to those people who had represented some countries in the spring semester and get their notes and without making something new, without anything new to that job, would they like to sort of benefit from the previous semester students' work? Well, if you think you are not going to talk to anybody who has taken this course before and that your group will do a sort of fresh new job for this sort of simulation, I think there is nothing wrong with picking up the same subject. Do you think I should pick that subject? I mean, are you going to talk to your friends, students who have taken this course simulation before? Should I trust you? Say yes or no? Okay, fine. Then the subject is the same. You start by trusting people. You won't lose. I mean, if you lose, you will still gain something. Don't worry about it. So I think because unless the subject is relevant and timely and of course valid, it may not excite students. Otherwise, if I pick up another subject, it may not be of great concern to anybody in the embassies and you may not be given proper information about that and they may not be up to the task. So I think as I will officially notify you possibly by Friday we meet here again, the subject will be most likely pretty much the same. Therefore, I think you will be or you should be starting to find ways to have to contact the embassies here and also do what kind of research through the internet and other sort of written material from books, journal articles, think tanks, visit the websites of think tanks. Of course, some think tanks may look like serving a very specific purpose, such as propagating a country's sort of idea as well. This is one of the many sort of jobs, let's say, or reasons as to why think tanks are established. So the more information you can get from more or various sources, the better. And you will of course be able to, God bless you. Good. You've woken up people who may have been sleeping already. Okay, so that's it. Any other questions about op-ed or simulation? Because I want to really start with the subject, the course, the topic that we will be discussing throughout the semester. For those interested, actually this book is good for Turkish foreign policy or foreign policy analysis courses. But there are some chapters in this book, which is written by myself, by me and my spouse, who is also a professor at the Middle East Technical University International Relations Department. This is available in the bookstore for some reason. If you're interested, there are certain subjects, certain parts, which have relevance to this course in terms of Turkey's relations with Middle Eastern countries. But this is not a must-book. Actually none of the books or none of the chapters are must-readings, but should-readings, let's say. It is highly recommended that you come to class having read your chapters. How many of you already checked the reserve section of the library? And you made photocopies. And as far as I know, as far as the guide, the reserve section, told me these will be available online. E-reserve, there will be an e-reserve. They scan every page, but I don't know about the quality of e-reserve. I mean, scanned pages, if you can read them well. Is it okay? Okay, fine. So long as you understand a read. And please bear in mind, we are not using a textbook here. A textbook is a certain type of book for any course, which you follow from chapter number one till the end, and almost chapter by chapter, section by section, paragraph by paragraph. I mean, we are not going to use any textbook. There is nothing very particular to this sort of course in terms of a book. But there will be chapter assignments, and some chapters will have some parts, which will have relevance to the discussions that we'll be having here in the class. So the readings will make up the background of your understanding, of your knowledge. And I don't want you to sort of be concerned as to whether you should read every single sentence. Of course, the more you read, the more you learn, the better for you. But depending on how many courses you take or how much time you devote to reading and learning, of course, it is highly recommended that you make your readings and try to understand the subject because I'm not going to repeat anything or everything that are already in the chapters that are assigned. But these will constitute the background. Without proper understanding this background, Middle East is such a complicated region to really understand well for the purpose of this course. And as time goes by, as we proceed with the topics that are highlighted in the syllabus, you will understand that lack of information or lack of knowledge about a particular issue will make it more difficult for you to understand other subjects or to properly locate in your sort of mindset as to what is the relation with this and what is the relation of this with the subject that we discussed here. So therefore, I strongly recommend you to come to class with at least having an idea about what we are going to talk about. And as I said, we start by, first of all, understanding the subject matter. What is the subject matter of this course? Who could just say? Because what are we going to talk about here? Middle East. Do you know what Middle East is all about? I mean, how do you define Middle East? It is always recommended, at least found to be pedagogically correct to start by defining the subject that you are dealing with. And unless we understand or we determine what kind of an understanding we have about the subject at hand, namely Middle East here, I mean, we cannot proceed any further because we should make sure we understand, at least we understand that we don't understand what or how Middle East is and what kind of peculiarities it may have and what are the characteristics of the Middle East. So let's start by hearing from each one of you. I mean, how do you see the Middle East? What is it that Middle East means to you? What is Middle East in your view? I mean, how would you define Middle East? What are the characteristics of Middle East? Let's put here characteristics of the Middle East. So what would you say, how would you start with? I mean, not necessarily in terms of importance, in terms of sort of, we are not going to assign prior to any one of them until we have a complete list and maybe then looking at the board here from a distance, we may maybe possibly say, okay, here are the most particular or most important characteristics of the Middle East and here are some other characteristics of the Middle East that will help out here in understanding the very sort of characteristics of the region because this is important, yes. Who would like to, I think I saw some, yes, Ennis, go ahead. Can you please pick up or before being a supplier, you have to have the reserve. So would it be, matter of you said, largest, largest, well, maybe it would not be that correct. Well, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in terms of, for instance, oil and natural gas are the largest sort of suppliers as well as they have biggest and largest reserves, energy resources because, of course, Central Asia and Russia, they should not be forgotten and during the Cold War years because they were not necessarily sort of coming to the fore in terms of political discussions, it was all the Soviet Union and most sort of a concern was about the Saudi Arabian or Middle Eastern energy resource in terms of security because Central Asia under the Soviet Union was secure from their perspective. Okay, largest energy resources and what else, there are too many, I mean trust me, there will be full four sort of boards here about characteristics. Fatih, go ahead. All right, so let's say artificial state boundaries. Well, Arab neighbors and Middle Eastern do not like to hear this, but let's put here. Can you read, by the way, this is not a very dark black board but artificial state boundaries. Maybe I should use this one. Go ahead, yes. Okay, ethnic diversity or the way you put it, different ethnic groups. All right, go ahead, Ibrahim. Euphrates and Tigris. Yes, Mesopotamia, I mean, when you speak, please make sure I hear you, okay? If I cannot hear you and since this being taped, people watching this over the internet will not hear anything you say. Okay, you point to a particular region within the region, meaning the Euphrates and Tigris River Basin and what is it that you mentioned here? Or are you talking about water scarcity or limited amount of water resources or a conflict-prone resource? What is it that you just... Sure, Nile River, Jordan River, Euphrates, Tigris, Orantes and others. All right, so how would you identify in terms of being a characteristic? I mean, how would you just make your sentence into something that fits to this format? Well, I'll think about it. Let's hear from Bishra. Go ahead. So let's say it is a cradle of civilizations and the oldest. My spouse, Ashur, was in the GAP region. She came yesterday. There was an international workshop, a meeting, and she told me that archaeologists or those who are professional dealing with all this human heritage found something that is as old as 11,500 years. Kind of a plague or a mosaic type of something or tile something. I couldn't really remember specifically. So, therefore, it is the cradle of the ancient civilizations who were born and spread to the rest of the world. All right, what else? There are two main other things. When I think of Middle East, I cannot even stop my mind. Let's go ahead. Problem is everywhere and just what makes it more peculiar to the Middle East is, can we say the never-ending, almost Arab-Israeli conflict? Let's use this board here and then we'll go. Of course, the Arab-Israeli conflict. And what does this remind us? Yeah, instability, political, economic, as well as other types of instabilities. Instability is widespread. Instability and you can apply this to anything as you can think of. Yes? Or let's confront it. Arab-Israeli conflict is not all about religion because the conflict between Jews and the Arabs were even before the Age of Islam. So it goes all the way back to maybe 5,000 years. So this is pretty much inherent in the subject. But let's say monotheist religions. I mean, it's the home of three major religions, right? Home of monotheists. I mean, believe in one God. Christianity, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Yes, Brexit. Geographically or geo-strategic significance is pretty high. And this is something that has to do with the presence of energy resources and also depending on which perspective you look at the issue. Of course, the presence of Israel and the creation of the state of Israel in May 1948, which, of course, prompted a number of wars with the Arab countries, as we will discuss possibly next hour in the coming weeks on Friday and in the coming weeks. What can we say about this? Geo-strategic, geopolitical significance is for sure based on all this instability everywhere, political instability. What else? There are certain other issues that really, if not peculiar to the Middle East, there are other regions in the world where we can see pretty much the same thing. But when it comes to the Middle East, the degree of significance gets even bigger or more important. Go ahead, Ines. Profitable market for what? Best account to discuss. Go ahead. Or buying Mercedes and BMWs Cadillac. The luxury goods. Maybe you can leave this out, out of the context of Middle East security. It is possibly one of the major characteristics and whenever, even if you get on a taxi, there is great likelihood that you are in a brand new Mercedes or even a Cadillac when you go to Qatar, United Arab Emirates. These are the countries that I visited in the Gulf region. Yeah, they are rich and possibly some brands, some cars that you can almost see there and also at Bilkan here for the first time in your life. During last Mayfest, I could see from the mirror that there was one red Ferrari and one white Lamborghini coming just right behind me and they were kind enough to wait until they passed by this radar thing as you come up from the main gate here and when they passed by I couldn't see them anymore. So for the first time you can see some cars first time here at Bilkan and so that makes us no different than rich Gulf countries in that sense. Alright, Ibrahim, another characteristic? Yeah, you mean super or extra regional countries intervention or intervention of extra regional countries from outside? And of course, especially during the Cold War region, it was the battleground or playground depending on how you sort of determine these terms. It was a playground of the superpowers and we could see both the Soviet Union and the United States involving in the regional politics and also not only taking sides but also trying to determine the pace of events. Yes, what else? Kurdish issue is something that we can sort of apply to the entire region. Okay, why specifically this? Okay, not only in Turkey but also in Iraq and Syria, Iran. Well, not so much in Iran and then not so much in Syria. But okay, Kurdish problem, let's see. We'll see how it applies. Yes, well it might be and it is one of the characteristics of one of, it might be one of the issues that may have some relevance because the situation in Iraq, as we will see, I mean the security situation stability depends heavily on this issue. And actually here I'm putting some issues that may have, not necessarily maybe totally, but may have some relevance to our discussion here. And when we cannot understand Middle East without specifically looking at this issue at least to some dimensions of this problem and at some length, of course it will not constitute the entire sort of semester's discussion but without properly locating as to where it stands with respect to Iraq, with respect to Syria, with respect to Turkey-Syrian-Iraqi relations which is now part of the Middle East. And also the situation in Iran. Well, okay, let's at least for a while let it stay there and we'll see how it applies to the purpose of this course. Yes, Chala? Yeah, pre-colonial past. Yeah, pre-colonial past. Well, it has to do with maybe the so-called artificial boundaries thing. The colonial powers have determined the boundaries and of course once boundaries are determined artificially and of course there may be some basis. The way the colonial powers or grid powers at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century in determining the boundaries, they may have made reference to some points in terms of ethnic religious differences or sectarial differences, not necessarily a religion, but within a religion sectarian differences may have played a certain role and grid powers of the periods such as the Great Britain, France, of course since they were there for long periods and they had access to many of the documents, many of the archival stuff, they may have studied the region and again according to what they knew about different sectarian groups, religious groups, different ethnic groups, they may have divided accordingly in order to set certain groups apart or maybe to mix them so as that there is never a stable relationship so that they could still play their game by using one against the other. So therefore pre-colonial past, especially in Egypt for instance, you see everywhere the traces of this in their mindset. Being occupied maybe almost throughout their history has left deep traces in their mindset and this made them quite concerned about the intentions of other countries when they approached them. So therefore certain issues of course have some impact, bigger impact than others and pre-colonial past may have had a bigger impact on the sort of political relations or relations among nations there or states in the region. Amelie, I saw you and struggled between individual people and their governments, yes? Should we say authoritarian regimes or authoritarian slash totalitarian regimes abound because this is important? What is the difference between authoritarian and totalitarian regime? Who could tell me the difference? They have of course some common ground, commonalities, but there is also at least there are some differences. What do you think? Who could explain to me what is the difference between an authoritarian regime and a totalitarian regime? Can I see new faces in the volunteers? Okay, fine. Well, it is correct as to what you say about totalitarian regime because as the name suggests, total. It has total control on your life. The way you dress, the way you work, the way you should believe and poetically and also spiritually, etc. But authoritarian, it applies a certain degree of authority on you. Provided that you do certain things or you do not certain things. Beyond this or the boundaries of this, you are kindly or relatively speaking freer. And so you may have some more space, some privacy and some way of life. Provided that you do not uphold against the central authority or you do certain things for them or you do not certain things that may hurt their interest. And other than that, they may not be interested in how you dress or how you work, how you believe. But in totalitarian regime, you are of course under control. Can you give names for each a country which has a totalitarian Iran, okay? What about an authoritarian regime which there are many actually? Well, North Korea in some respect, yes, but it is not 100% totalitarian, which is, I would say, more authoritarian regime. Of course, the way it looks from outside, it looks like a totalitarian regime, but I would say, at least from my perspective, authoritarian would more or better apply to North Korea. What about an example for a totalitarian regime in the Middle East, since we are talking about Middle East? Come on. You don't have to think for long. All right. What about Syria, for instance? Okay. We'll continue with the major characteristics of the Middle East after a break. And in the meantime, while you buy your coffees, please think about what you're going to say in the second hour. Thank you.