ORTA DOĞU VE KUZEY AFRİKA

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.

The Arab and Arab-Berber population consists of almost 61% (331 million) of the total population within the Middle East.