ORTA DOĞU VE KUZEY AFRİKA - Deneme Sınavı - 3

While the non-permanent members are elected
for two-year terms, the permanent members
never change. The permanent members which
are the US, Russia, France, the United Kingdom,
and China, have the right of veto, which enables
them to refuse any proposal in the Council.

Within the war on terrorism doctrine, the
US pursued more aggressive policies against the
Middle East, which would trigger an instability
period in the region. Unsurprisingly after a short
time of the attacks, the US demanded from the
Taliban regime, which was ruling Afghanistan,
to deliver everybody related to the September 11
attacks and Al-Qaeda (Hayden, 2009: 59-60).
When the Taliban regime refused to cooperate
with the US by claiming that they had no
information about the existence of Al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan, the Bush administration declared
war against them (Güney and Gökcan, 2010: 27).
Even though the US forces quickly toppled the
Taliban regime, they could not create stability in
the country since Taliban forces and other anti US organizations managed to perpetuate guerrilla
war against the US forces.

The Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, a school teacher
Hasan Al-Banna, founded the Muslim Brotherhood
(Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimin) as a social organization
targeting increasing solidarity within Sunni-Muslim
society by offering health care and education services.
The movement rapidly spread around Egypt and
became an active organization against British rule.
Moreover, similar organizations affiliated with the
Muslim Brotherhood emerged in other parts of the
region (Cleveland and Bunton, 2008: 199).

The Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, a school teacher
Hasan Al-Banna, founded the Muslim Brotherhood
(Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimin) as a social organization
targeting increasing solidarity within Sunni-Muslim
society by offering health care and education services.
The movement rapidly spread around Egypt and
became an active organization against British rule.
Moreover, similar organizations affiliated with the
Muslim Brotherhood emerged in other parts of the
region (Cleveland and Bunton, 2008: 199).

The Rashidun Caliphates The Rashidun (rightly
guided) term is used for the period consists of the
first four caliphs after the death of the Prophet
Mohammed. These caliphs were elected by the Muslim
society to rule the Islamic state. The period ended with
Muawiyah’s capture of the caliphate. S

On the northern African part of the
Abbasid Empire, rules such as the Almoravid
Dynasty (1040-1147), Almohad Caliphate
(1121-1269), the Ayyubid Dynasty (1171-1260)
were established. During this period, also, the
first examples of the Shiite rules emerged, which
made the fitna a fundamental factor in regional
politics by deepening and institutionalizing it.
The Buyid Dynasty (934-1062) in Iran and the
Fatimid Caliphate (909-1171) in North Africa
were among the first Shiite-based states (Hourani,
1991: 64-65).

Russia in the North

During the war, Italian forces, with the direct
help of Germany, organized attacks against British
troops, especially in North Africa. One of the main
targets of these attacks was the Suez Canal in order
to cut the ties of Great Britain with its colonies in
Asia (Sander, 2016: 129). Great Britain was very
successful in repelling those attacks and managed
to control almost the whole of Northern Africa.
While the Axis powers organized direct attacks in
Northern Africa, they would not enter through the
rest of the region. However, there were indirect Axis
attempts to stir up the communities against the
British forces with the help of their sympathizers.
For example, the Iraqi Prime Minister Rashid Ali
wanted to end the British influence over Iraq by
demanding the withdrawal of British forces from
the country. The British forces defeated Ali’s army,
which got assistance from the German air force
(Lewis, 2003: 406).

Nasser declared the decision of
the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956.

The Baath Party, The Arab Baath Party, is a socialist
party aiming at removing foreign influence and
founding Arab unity in the region. The party has
many distinct branches in the region. The two most
prominent examples of the party are in Syria and
Iraq. In both examples, the Baath Party established
strong regimes under Saddam Hussein’s leadership
in Iraq and Hafez al-Assad’s leadership in Syria.
(Devlin, 1991).

Iraq (636), The Levant region including Syria and Palestine (641), Egypt (642), and Iran (651) entered under the control of the Islamic State led by the Rashidun caliphates.

All are true.

The Near East is currently composed of East Mediterranean coastal states where currently rich natural gas resources were discovered. Therefore, Russia is not considered to be a Near Eastern country.

In the categorization of the East, the concepts such as Far, Middle, and Near East were widely begun to be used by the colonial forces at the time. Due to the fact that the West occupies the center, the periphery (East) was defined according to its proximity and distance to the center.

Due to shared societal bonds and geographical linkages, in terms of social, political, and cultural aspects, between the Middle East and North Africa, the combination of both regions and the usage of the MENA currently gained more credibility and visibility within the literature on the Middle East.

For the Bush administration, “New” Middle East was not mainly based on the consideration of the ethnic-religion similarities and differences, but it was an allegedly reform-based definition, which intended to eliminate the resource of the “terrorism” and “violence.”

Under this Orientalist and essentialist approach, the Islamic-Arab identity of the Middle East facilitates the emergence of the so-called violence-prone environment. Israel which is also geographically a part of the Middle East, is seen as a part of the West due to its alleged democratic and secular identity and allegiance to Western values.

Politically, there are three types of the regimes within the Middle East. One type of regime is monarchic regimes existing predominantly within the Gulf region. In addition to GCC countries, Morocco and Jordan has monarchical political structures as well. Another type of regime is the authoritarian republic which has a dominant-single party tied to regime ideology and has a military dominance in the designation of the socio-political life. Despite the existence of the several superficial democratic structures like parliament and weak opposition parties, every critical decision on the domestic and foreign policy is mostly determined by one man under undisputed power. The countries like Egypt, Iran and Syria fit this type of administration model. Lastly, there are also democratic regimes in the Middle East. Following the Arab uprisings, Tunisia moved into a democratic model, and Iraq’s regime changed after US-occupied this country in 2003. As a result of this occupation, Saddam Hussein’s Baathist and the authoritarian regime was replaced by a consociational democracy.

Consociational democracy developed by Arend Lijphart is based upon the power-sharing model between the powerful sectarian, religious, or ethnic groups. This type of democracy, which initially originated in the Western continent, intends to provide a stable and peaceful democratic system in the divided societies. The leading groups within these divided societies have no sufficient political-military power to defeat each other. Therefore, the only logical method seems to realize a reconciliation among them according to which all critical authorities and positions, including the presidency, speaker of parliament and prime minister are expected to be shared depending on their demographic power.

There were around 1,7 billion Muslims in the world as of 2010, and this was the equivalent to almost 25% of the world population. About 20% (322 million) of this Muslim population was residing in the Middle East, while 62% (1 billion) of the total Muslim population were living in the Asia-Pacific region.