Aswaat, Volume 1 (2017)

aswaat
Kings College London

Middle East and North Africa Review
Volume 1 (2017)
table of contents
1. Introduction by Dhia Muhsin, Lincoln Pigman,

and Lana Ahmad (kings college london),
1-2
2. Suez, Saddam, and Syria by Owen Davis
(kings college london), 3-8
3. Aid and Syrias future: insights from selectorate
theory by Kirill Mazourine (new york
university), 9-15
4. Myths, militias, and the future of Syria by
Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi (middle east
forum), 16-18
5. Changes in Turkey from 2003 to the present by
Mustafa Kemal, 19-23
6. Religion: friend or foe of Kurdish nationalism?
by Sam Wyatt (kings college london), 24-
28
7. Israel-Palestine: a conflict of identity? by
Farhana Akthar (kings college london),
29-31
8. Revisiting the Saudi-Qatari feud of 2011-14:
causes and consequences by Sami Zahed, 32-35
9. Democracy in Egypt: an end or a means? by
Malak M. Taher (kings college london),
36-39

introduction
Dhia Muhsin, Lincoln Pigman, and Lana Ahmad
kings college london
Dear readers,
Welcome to Aswaat, the Kings College London Middle East and North Africa
Forums own journal. Established as a space for informed academic discussion on
Middle Eastern and North African affairs, the Forum has enjoyed a successful first
year of existence, hosting distinguished practitioners and scholars alike. As the
culmination of this first chapter in the Forums development, the inaugural volume
of Aswaat seeks to complement these established perspectives with those of rising
regional experts.
Aswaats inaugural volume features contributions from a community of scholars

extending well beyond Kings College London. In these pages, voices from New
York University and the Middle East Forum, an American think tank, join those
from Kings College London in addressing regional dilemmas past and present.
With the Syrian conflict now in its seventh year and the balance of power favouring
the government of Bashar al-Assad, Owen Davis, Kirill Mazourine, and Aymenn
Jawad al-Tamimi weigh in on the wars evolution. Davis considers how the Barack
Obama administrations failure to enforce a red line in Syria bears echoes of past
strategic miscalculations in the Middle East, namely, the 1956 Suez crisis and the
2003 invasion of Iraq. Looking ahead, Mazourine and Tamimi examine the roles
played by Assads Iranian and Russian allies and the militias that support him,
respectively, offering valuable perspectives on Syrias uncertain future.
Testifying to its ubiquity in Middle Eastern and North African affairs, the rest of
the volume tackles the impact of identity religious and otherwise on the regions
politics. Writing under the pseudonym of Mustafa Kemal, an anonymous
contributor chronicles Turkeys transformation into an authoritarian state and the
erosion of its secular norms. Turning to Egypt, Malak M. Taher challenges the view
of democracy as an end in itself.
Furthermore, Sam Wyatt argues that religion has been a mixed blessing for Kurdish
nationalism, outlining the movements relationship to faith and secularism since the
early twentieth century. Dubbing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a conflict of
identity, Farhana Akthar notes how identity has contributed to the divide between
Israelis and Palestinians and how it can still bridge that gap, while Sami Zahed looks
aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 1

at Qatars flirtation with Islamism and its impact on Saudi-Qatari relations from 2011
to 2014.
The release of Aswaats inaugural volume marks the Kings College London Middle
East and North Africa Forums emergence as a community of authoritative regional
experts. We hope you enjoy reading the articles contained within, and invite you to
join our dialogue.
Dhia Muhsin is a student of international relations at Kings College London and the
founding president of the Kings College London Middle East and North Africa Forum.
Lincoln Pigman is a student of war studies at Kings College London. In addition to his role
as one of Kings College London Middle East and North Africa Forums academic officers,
he is a contributor to the New York Times, Janes Intelligence Review, and Bellingcat.
Lana Ahmad is a student of international relations at Kings College London. She is one of
Kings College London Middle East and North Africa Forums academic officers as well as
the Kings College London United Nations World Food Programmes liaison officer.

suez, saddam, and syria
Owen Davis
A dictator with powerful influence in the Middle East, an intelligence failure driven
by political and economic agendas, broken promises in the United Nations (un), and
the decline of a superpowers regional authority. Do we mean the Suez crisis of 1956
or the invasion of Iraq in 2003? This article endeavours to demonstrate how these
two conflicts amounted to self-inflicted wounds for both Britain and the US. Suez
marked the demise of Arab confidence in Britain, and gave the US an opportunity
to assert herself in the region. The US-led invasion of Iraq precipitated similar
blowback, with American influence in the region now challenged by Russia, Saudi
Arabia, Turkey, and Iran, a cast of characters irreversibly entrenched in the regions
conflicts, especially the war in Syria. As each state attempts to secure its interests in
the region, one important question remains: whose geopolitical grip will hold sway
over the Middle East and its resources?
The importance of securing the strategic resources and trade routes of the Middle
East loomed large in Whitehall in the 1950s amid the growth of Arab nationalism
1
and the rise to power of Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt in July 1952. Nassers
rise to power came at a crucial point in the history of the Middle East, as Britain was
beginning its gradual transfer from the expensive policy of maintaining a military
presence in the region to a more affordable reliance on soft power, financing the
regions development for and with the Arabs. Britain had already begun her military
withdrawal in 1948, when British troops left Palestine.2 In 1954, prime minister
Winston Churchill announced his plan to transfer British forces from the Suez Canal
Zone to Cyprus, although the British government was to retain majority shares in
the Suez Company, which administered the Canal.3 Withdrawal from Egypt
represented an attempt to improve relations with Nasser while protecting British
economic interests in the region, which Britain sought to shield from interference
by Nasser and the Arab nationalists, who, Britain hoped, would cease to view Britain
as an imperial threat.
Egypt and the Canal were vital to British interests. Westminster still considered the
Middle East to be largely a British sphere of influence.4 However, this declaration,
made by British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin in 1945, was intended to remind the
US of Britains primacy in the Middle East. President Harry S. Truman had already
begun to encroach on British interests by supporting demands for a Jewish state.5
Trumans backing came at a time when Britain was fighting a Zionist insurgency in
the Palestine Mandate from 1945 to 1948. At the conflicts end, with Israel now

6
independent, the US became the first to grant her recognition. From this point on,
British ascendancy in the Middle East was no longer assured. She now had to
consider American interests in the region, as she required American funds to help
rebuild her economy after World War II.7 British reliance was something president
Dwight D. Eisenhower used to his advantage during the Suez crisis, particularly
when, in the midst of the conflict, the sterling collapsed.8 The Americans refused to
underwrite the British market until the British and their French allies withdrew their
9
forces from the Canal.
American influence was but one element undermining Britains position in the
Middle East prior to 1956. The Soviet Union was brought into the Middle East by
Nasser, who circumvented both Britain and the US by turning to the Soviet Union,
10
via Czechoslovakia, to buy military equipment. The move left Whitehall disquieted
and put a break on British rapprochement with Egypt.11 Nasser not only paved the
way for Soviet involvement in the Middle East, but also sent an important message
to the old imperial powers.12 Nasser unambiguously stated that the former
imperialist yoke would no longer rest on Egyptian shoulders, and that Egypt would
13
act more assertively in the future. Even before the Suez crisis of 1956, British
authority in the Middle East was threatened by US and Soviet encroachment alike.
Egypt and the Canal were vital British interests, as Evelyn Shuckburgh, the minister
responsible for British Middle East policy, wrote in 1955: If we lose Egypt, we shall
lose the rest of the Arab world.14 Nasser was the man who stood in Britains way,
and, for prime minister Anthony Eden, he was but another Adolf Hitler or Benito
Mussolini. It followed that Eden could not repeat the mistakes of Neville
Chamberlain, namely, his failed policy of appeasement.15 Edens increasingly
aggressive attitude towards Nasser reflected how poorly he understood the post-war
environment, in which the regime change he envisioned for Egypt was no longer
politically palatable. Such imperialist adventurism was now considered destabilising
and anachronistic. Moreover, the overthrowing of Nasser would also affect American
interests. Despite his faults, Nasser was considered the best prospect for securing
American influence in the Middle East. American contacts with Nasser had been
maintained through covert channels established between Cairo and Washington by
the Central Intelligence Agency (cia).16
The descent into the Suez crisis began in earnest in 1956, when Nasser nationalised
the Suez Canal, depriving Britain of her shares in, and her control over, the company
and the vital waterway. For Eden, this was the final straw; Nasser had to go.
Together with the French and Israelis, he signed a secret pact at Svres that
committed Israel to an invasion of the Sinai.18 Following this attack, Britain and
France intervened to secure the Canal, aiming to keep the Israelis and the Egyptians

apart, to establish an international zone around the Canal, and to secure access for
19
British shipping. But during the invasion, the British market collapsed, providing
the US with an opportunity to use its aid as leverage. Meanwhile, the Arab states
began to look to the US as a bulwark against the old imperial powers of Europe.20
The spell had been broken. Britains financial reliance on the US forced her to
withdraw from Suez, and as international opinion turned against her, Britain was
relegated to a secondary place on the world stage. British hegemony in the Middle
East made way for another Cold War confrontation as the US and the Soviet Union
vied for influence. The Suez crisis exposed Britains declining power, leading Arab
leaders to lose confidence in her as a partner. That process culminated in 1963, when
Britain was expelled from her last possession in Arabia, the port city of Aden, by
21
local actors backed by Nasser. Eisenhowers condemnation of Anglo-French
aggression raised Arab hopes that the US could step in to protect the Middle East
from the foreign interference that had characterised the period following the collapse
and division of the Ottoman Empire in 1922.22
With the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the drawing to a close of the struggle for
influence between Moscow and Washington, the US emerged as the sole superpower
in the world and the pre-eminent foreign power in the Middle East. Yet, American
dominance was not universally recognised throughout the Middle East, with
American interests at odds with those of Saddam Husseins Iraq. Saddam had
attempted to challenge the regional status quo by invading Kuwait in 1991. However,
despite the swift expulsion of Iraqi forces during the Gulf War, he refused to comply
with the sixteen un resolutions passed against Iraq between 1991 and 2002.24
1998 saw American attempts to further exercise military power in the Middle East,
with Britain siding with the US to avoid any rift in the special relationship, the
kind seen in 1956. The 1998 bombing campaign and the sanctions placed on the Iraqi
government were intended to demonstrate Americas strength and coerce Iraq.25 But
the limited operation carried out under president Bill Clinton and prime minister
Tony Blair merely demonstrated their ability to disrupt Iraq, as the airstrikes failed
to make Saddam comply with the un resolutions and allow inspection of what was
said to be an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (wmd).26 un sanctions on Iraq
were kept in place, but, by September 2001, the international situation had changed.
The terrorist attacks perpetrated on 9/11 led the newly elected president George W.
Bush to declare a global war on terror.27
The Middle East became a focal point of Americas search for security, and Iraq its
first target, as it was feared that Saddam could supply wmd to a terrorist network
like al-Qaeda. Following 9/11, Iraqs non-compliance with the un and the risks

associated with Iraqi wmd planted Saddam in the crosshairs of the US and
necessitated his forcible removal. Regime change in Iraq was justified in terms of
regional security, just as in 1956.28 In his State of the Union address in January 2003,
Bush declared that [Saddam] will not be permitted to dominate a vital region and
29
threaten the United States. Bushs address echoed the feelings of Evelyn
Shuckburgh in 1955 regarding the growing influence of Nassers Egypt. However, as
with Eden, a lack of international support made Bushs escalation a risky step for the
worlds sole superpower. The decision to go to war showed overconfidence in
international support for the US and in the White Houses ability to prove Saddams
alleged ties with international terrorists and his possession of wmd. Bush had
underestimated the effect that unilateral action would have upon world opinion.
Why so? Surely the oft-quoted mantra of Prussian military theorist Carl von
Clausewitz, that war is a continuation of policy by other means, would suggest that
nothing is more natural than the path to war if policy aims cannot be achieved using
30
diplomacy. However, like Edens push for war and his secret pact with France and
Israel at Svres in 1956, Bushs offensive received meagre support from the
31
international community. Eden must have dreamed of repeating the imperial
intervention that had brought Britain into Egypt in 1882 following the collapse of
32
Egypts economy and the assumption of military rule by Colonel Ahmed Urabi.
Similarly, Bushs armed intervention recalled an earlier age when interstate violence
was a far more casual affair. There was little visible reason to invade Iraq. The
dubious nature of the intelligence obtained by the cia and Britains Secret
Intelligence Service on Iraqs wmd programme and its usage in defence of going to
war suggested desperation.33 Much of this intelligence was open source, provided by
Iraqis living in exile who claimed that the Saddam regime had not abandoned its
dream of acquiring wmd or broken with al-Qaeda.34
In the eyes of many Arabs, rather than act as a bulwark against imperialist tendencies
whilst promoting democracy in the region, the US had joined the ranks of the
imperialists. Worse still, in contrast to the international norms invoked in 1991,
Washingtons primary motivation in 2003 appeared to be self-interest.35 A 2005
survey conducted by the University of Jordans Center for Strategic Studies assessed
the popular reactions of five Arab countries to the foreign policies of the United
States, Britain, and France. The study found that many felt that US foreign policy
revolved around the imposition of Americas will onto the Middle East.36 Its attempt
to do so in 2003 produced resentment in the Arab world and echoed Britains role
in the Suez crisis. Such associations damaged the image of the US, no longer
considered a protector of those seeking democracy in the Middle East. In the words
of Ali R. Abootalebi, contrary to political rhetoric by Bush administration statesmen,

the United States is not seriously committed to establishing democracy in the
37
Middle East.
Negative appraisal of president Barack Obamas Middle East policy further

solidified anti-American feeling. In 2009, Obamas accession to the White House
renewed optimism in the Arab world. Unlike Britain in 1956, the US appeared ready
to reverse the mistakes made in Iraq. One of Obamas first speeches, delivered at
Cairo University that same year, outlined his Middle East policy and saw him appeal
to the regions reformers.38 However, the superpowers decline was confirmed again
when the Arab Spring forcibly restructured the Middle East and North Africa.
Americas disengagement during the overthrowing of president Hosni Mubarak in
2011 left the Egyptian people disillusioned, with an American president who had
only decided to publicly side with the forces of progress once their victory seemed
assured.39
The ongoing war in Syria has further underscored the decline of US influence in the
Middle East, a region unimpressed by Washingtons strategic confusion since 2011.
In the sobering wake of the Arab Spring, the US appears further than ever from her
post-Suez position as the democratic defender of the Middle East. The lack of
support domestic and international alike for intervention in Syria has allowed
the Middle East to splinter into spheres of influence, with Iran growing in prestige
as she works to protect fellow Shia Muslims and Saudi Arabia and Turkey keen to
influence affairs in Iraq and Syria for their own security. However, the greatest gains
have been made by Russia. Since her intervention in defence of the Syrian
government, many Arab leaders have come to recognise Russia as a valuable asset
with respect to regional security.40
Just as Suez had a lasting impact on Anglo-Arab relations, so, too, has the Iraq war
for the US. For Britain, the shock of the Suez crisis crippled her internationally for
decades. For the US, the shock of losing Iraq is still being felt. President Donald
Trumps populist rhetoric reflects a growing sense that the US doesnt win
anymore.41 Now that Trump is in the White House, the question remains: what role
will the US play in the Middle East, since she no longer commands the same respect
in the Arab world as she did sixty years ago? The US appears to be a superpower in
limbo. With a new president and political upheaval at home, will she now take the
drastic decision of retreating from the world stage and focusing on her own security?
Or will she follow in the footsteps of Britain, and allow her global position to suffer
a slow death?

Owen Davis is a student of war studies and history at Kings College London.

notes
1. Benjamin Grob- the Middle East, 31. Kampfner (2004), 211.

Fitzgibbon, Imperial Middle East Journal 32:1 32. Kampfner (2004), 211.
Endgame: Britains Dirty (1978), 5. 33. Khalidi (2004), 170-73.
Wars and the End of 13. Grob-Fitzgibbon 34. Revisiting the Arab Street:
Empire (2011), 341. (2011), 341. Research from Within
2. John Darwin, The 14. Darwin (2014), 600. (Amman: University of
Empire Project: The Rise 15. Calder Walton, Empire Jordan Center for
and Fall of the British of Secrets: British Strategic Studies,
World System, 1830- Intelligence, the Cold February 2005).
1970 (2014), 536-37. War, and the Twilight of 35. Ali R. Abootalebi,
3. P. J. Vatikiotis, The Empire (2014), 294. What Went Wrong in
History of Modern Egypt 16. Walton (2014), 297. Iraq? in The Middle
from Muhammad Ali to 17. Walton (2014), 296-97. East and the United
Mubarak (1991), 389-90. 18. Grob-Fitzgibbon States: History, Politics,
4. Grob-Fitzgibbon (2011), 344-45. and Ideologies, edited by
(2011), 28. 19. Khalidi (2004), 34. David W. Lesch and
5. Rashid Khalidi, 20. Walton (2014), 316-18. Mark L. Haas (2013),
Resurrecting Empire: 21. Khalidi (2004), 170-73. 373.
Western Footprints and 22. Steve A. Yetiv, The 36. David E. Sanger,
Americas Perilous Path Iraq War of 2003: Why Confront and Conceal:
in the Middle East Did the United States Obamas Secret Wars
(2004), 121. Decide to Invade? in and Surprising Use of
6. Khalidi (2004), 121. The Middle East and the American Power (2013),
7. Philippa Levine, The United States: History, 277-79.
British Empire: Sunrise Politics, and Ideologies, 37. Sanger (2013), 302-03.
to Sunset (2013), 207-08. edited by David W. 38. Dennis Ross, Why
8. Darwin (2014), 585. Lesch and Mark L. Middle Eastern
9. Denis Judd, Empire: Haas (2013), 342. Leaders Are Talking to
The British Imperial 23. John Kampfner, Blairs Putin, Not Obama,
Experience from 1765 to Wars (2004), 29. Politico, 8 May 2016.
the Present (2004), 359- 24. Kampfner (2004), 34- 39. Rebecca Shabad,
60. 35. Donald Trump Goes
10. Darwin (2014), 600. 25. Philip H. Gordon, on Epic Rant about
11. W. M. Roger Louis, Winning the Right War: Winning, cbs News, 18
The Dissolution of the The Path to Security for June 2016.
British Empire, in The America and the World
Oxford History of the (2007), xii.
British Empire, Volume 26. Yetiv (2013), 345-46.
iv: The Twentieth 27. Yetiv (2013), 346.
Century, edited by 28. Carl von Clausewitz,
Judith M. Brown and On War, translated by
W. M. Roger Louis Anatol Rapoport (1982),
(2001), 342. 119.
12. John C. Campbell, 29. Walton (2014), 296-97.
The Soviet Union in 30. Darwin (2014), 70-72.

aid and syrias future: insights from selectorate theory
Kirill Mazourine
new york university
Selectorate theory offers a game theory-based examination of how sub-state actors

impact the way leaders consider taking on military commitments. By deriving
expected utility functions for conflict and comparing them to the bargaining ranges
of the would-be combatants, the selectorate bargaining model of war states that
leaders who depend on a smaller proportion of the selectorate for political survival
tend to have less resolve than those that must satisfy a larger winning coalition of
the selectorate. This offers observers of the Syrian conflict theoretical explanations
of how sponsors of the pro-Bashar al-Assad faction may attempt to influence their
proxy in the context of peace talks. In particular, one may interpret the expected
utility diagrams constructed from a simplified selectorate bargaining model to mean
that the Assad-aligned faction will not strive to achieve a military victory, and that
his foreign backers will seek to modulate his bargaining position at the negotiating
table by changing the ratio of resources the regime has at its disposal to the size of
its politically-active population.
Offering a rather rare realist systematisation of the impact of sub-state actors,

selectorate theory was brought into its current state by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita,
Alistair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, and James D. Morrow. It relies on the
assumption that to retain power, a nations leader must satisfy the demands of a
sufficient winning coalition (W) of the selectorate (S), the set of all people with a
say in whether the leader retains power.1 As such, in a voting system relying on a
simple majority, S is the population legally eligible to vote and the winning coalition
is W > 0.5S.
Bueno de Mesquita et al. argue that the winning coalition in autocracies is much
smaller than its counterpart in more democratic countries.2 Autocrats can buy the
loyalty of those few crucial powerful individuals through grey and black schemes
that redistribute national resources to the handful of key people in national power
hierarchies. Logically, if the required size of the winning coalition is larger by a factor,
representing a democratic oligarchy or even a true democracy, kickbacks and
corruption schemes may prove to be destabilising factors rather than lubricants.
While a proverbial million dollars split between ten key figures may have some
impact, the same million split between ten thousand people should prove to be
insufficient to buy favour. Comparatively democratic leaders are consequently not
satisfied by the outcome of losing a war while retaining power through subterfuge
and collusion; the desires of the larger winning coalition of the selectorate are not
satisfied by a small gift to each member; the selectorate, and thus the winning

coalition, wants a future, a sense of security, and so forth. These require persistent
and thoughtfully applied capital investment of considerable scale.
As such, if one accepts the general theme of the Western narrative of the Syrian
conflict, Assad has a much smaller coalition than the leaders of the anti-Assad
factions, even with a steep discount for the corruption and inefficiency of the anti-
Assad forces (which, on occasion, associate with terrorist and extremist factions) and
an allowance for the much bigger bureaucracy within the Assad government. If it is
reasonable to assume that the winning coalition Wpro-Assad = 0.1 Wanti-Assad, then the
choice between war and negotiated settlement, as described by the selectorate model,
will appear as follows. (Contractions of pro-Assad and anti-Assad are used
occasionally in subscripts for formatting purposes.)
It is first necessary to assign probabilities to the victories of either the Assad regime
or the anti-Assad coalition. To describe war, a lottery-based model may be used, with
the binary variable mAssad signifying the proportion of the 100 (monetary) unit-
strong war chest RAssad that is used for the war, with the equivalent for the anti-
Assad faction. The same variable with the corresponding subscript is used for
the amalgamated anti-Assad faction. Money that the leadership of either combatant
does not spend on the military effort is converted into private goods for the
corresponding winning coalition.3 Thus, the probability of the pro-Assad faction
winning the war is:
PAssad(Win) = p(mAssad, manti-Assad) = (1 + 2 * mAssad) / (2 + 2 * mAssad + 2 * manti-Assad)
The probability that the anti-Assad faction wins is 1 PAssad(Win).
By entering the corresponding values of m into the equation, the following

probability-of-win distribution is derived:
The expected utility of waging war (in this case for the anti-Assad coalition) can be
written as a function of the constants and variables manti-Assad, v (a monetary unit

value of the prize for winning the war, in this case = 20), Panti-Assad(Win), k (cost of
war, exogenous, in this case = 1), Ranti-Assad (currency unit value of the war chest, in
this case = 100) and Wanti-Assad (the size of the anti-Assad Winning Coalition, in this
case = 100). The resultant formula may be seen below.
EUanti-Assad(war | mAssad, manti-Assad)

=
f(v = 20, Panti-A(Win), k = 1, manti-A, Ranti-A = 100, Wanti-A = 100)
=
v * Panti-A(Win) k + (1 manti-A)(Ranti-A / Wanti-A)
=
20 * Panti-A(Win) 1 + (1 manti-A)(1)
=
The corresponding payoff matrix, a normal-form game with cardinal payoffs, may
thus be written and solved.
By applying the concept of dominant strategy (one that always offers the better
outcome, regardless of the opponents choice) and best response (the choice to do
that which is most beneficial given perfect knowledge of all payoffs and of the
opponents dominant strategy), the expected utility for war for both factions is
shown. In order to compare the value of going to war with that of a negotiated
settlement that splits the public good v into two parts, equations for the expected
utilities of the peace settlement are needed. For the Assad-aligned faction, this may
be written as follows:
EUpro-Assad(peace) = (1 x) * v + (Rpro-A / Wpro-A)
And for the anti-Assad faction as below:
EUanti-Assad(peace) = x * v + (Ranti-A / Wanti-A) .

The received fraction of the public good is multiplied by the value of the victory
prize v, and the resources R, no longer needed to wage war, are divided between
members of the winning coalitions.
Plotting these functions in Figure 1 on a graph of x (the point at which the public
good v is split between the combatants) and U(x) (the utility gained from a certain
value of x) shows that Assad should be willing to accept a much smaller share of the
prize/public good v than the opposition. To find the bargaining range, the
equilibrium utilities of war are set equal to the expected utilities of peace, in order
to find values of x that would make the combatants indifferent between fighting and
settling the conflict, and consequently derive a bargaining range. As the utility
curves for peace indicate, there is a range of x such that the resultant distribution of
v would make both parties better off than continuing to fight.
The bargaining range derived by comparing the utility curves bodes ill for Russia
and Iran, Assads primary foreign backers. As news reports indicate, military
assistance of any sort is extremely liquid in the Levant, meaning that, by the logic of
the selectorate bargaining model, Assads resolve is only weakened by infusions of R
from abroad.4 If such empirical evidence is unacceptable, one may refer to logical
reasoning to solidify the claim that military assistance increases the volume of

resources at a regimes disposal. By assuming part of the costs of sustaining
operations, a foreign backer essentially liquidates the equivalent volume of resources
for their proxy.
In order to improve the wars outcome for their proxy, be it in the form of a
settlement or a military victory, Assads backers should aim to incorporate
representatives of the anti-Assad opposition into the ranks of his selectorate, thereby
shrinking Assads resource-to-winning coalition ratio while increasing it for the anti-
Assad factions. Simultaneously, Russias military involvement in the Syrian war may
be slightly reduced so as to force the Syrian Arab Army and associated militant
groups to assume a greater role in the preservation of the state, stretching resources
even thinner. The decision by the Russian military to remove its Su-24 bomber fleet
from the Latakia airbase in the run-up to the Astana talks lends credence to this
hypothesis. As long as the shifts in r/w ratios do not destabilise the Nash
Equilibrium in the payoff matrix, the following graph depicts this changed situation
(albeit without representing the shifts in the expected utilities of war, which would
occur in accordance with the formulas for expected utility, as the change in r/w is
not quantified in this analysis).
Admittedly, this variable change is a deviation from the classic interpretation of the
selectorate model, and complicates the interpretation of the expected utilities of war

for both parties. Bueno de Mesquita et al. are already criticised for lenience towards
control variables, for instance, by Clarke and Stone, who argue that a lack of control
5
for democracy induces omitted variable bias. However, it is reasonable to believe
that an unquantified shift may be deduced from such a comparison of expected utility
functions. As such, the proposed strategy has the potential to improve the outcome
of the negotiations at least marginally for Assads backers.
An alternative scenario is also possible. Assads foreign backers may be inclined to

create such conditions as to induce Assad and his winning coalition to be more
amenable in negotiations. Sporadic media reports citing al-Hayat have recently
stated that Damascus is unprepared to accept the draft constitution proposed by the
Russian delegation at talks in Astana. Specifically, the Syrian leadership opposes
having the president hand over legislative functions to the parliament.6 In this case,
depending on their priorities, shifting the resource-to-winning coalition ratio in the
opposite direction may be preferable for Assads backers. Russia is likely to prioritise
a successful settlement on its terms over the exact nature of the peace agreement,
provided that the agreement does not challenge its influence in the country or the
right of its forces to remain stationed at Tartus and Khmeimim. Facing the
possibility of running yet again for president in 2018, Vladimir Putin would benefit
from being at least partially responsible for a resolution of the Syrian conflict,
regardless of its precise nature, as long as it secures key Russian interests in Syria
and the Middle East. Iran is less likely to focus on the political capital a successful
settlement would provide the brokers, given its comparatively small role in the
public diplomacy surrounding the negotiations and its immediate proximity to the
conflict area.
A shortcoming of this analysis concerns the intersection between aids ability to

influence a belligerents resolve and its immediate strategic purpose. While proxy
coordinators may find it useful to modulate the volume and nature of their aid to
the beleaguered regime in order to encourage it to fight or to settle, the strategic
importance of aid may outweigh any bargaining considerations. Nevertheless, with
the existential crisis of the Assad regime seemingly averted and an uneasy trend
towards declining violence between the regime and the opposition, extreme
applications of military force by Assads backers are no longer required in order to
keep him in power. It is thus in this perhaps fleeting moment of stability that
Moscow and Tehran may attempt to influence the Syrian governments bargaining
position by modulating aid without infringing on military priorities.
A mathematical and strategic complication, mentioned briefly above, also arises from
changing the resource-to-winning coalition ratios of the regime and the opposition.
Given the possibility of international backers miscalculating the sizes of these shifts,

changes to the Nash Equilibrium calculation may occur, potentially changing the
preferred actions for one or both parties. As Frieden, Lake, and Shultz write in World
Politics, miscalculations with respect to bargaining positions have the ability to cause
7
conflict, even in midst of crisis negotiations. As a result, manipulating the
amenability of the belligerents is made more complex, but the possibility of such an
approach should not wholly be discounted, especially if it is combined with gradually
forcing the two parties to commit to negotiations by guiding them through
incremental steps towards a peaceful resolution. By making a return to open
aggression costlier, foreign backers will lessen the inconvenience arising from using
liquid aid as a means of political influence, and the approach proposed in this
argument will retain its value.
Hawks circle Assad: if he wants a say in his future, he must satisfy both domestic
and foreign power brokers, along with a critical mass of Syrians. It is not certain that
Assads supporters will prove loyal to him if he exclusively prioritises his own
interests over those of his foreign backers. If, on the other hand, Assads foreign
backers force his hand, adding responsibility for a wider array of people onto his
shoulders while the opposition can benefit from signing a peace agreement, Assad
may have the opportunity to influence Syrias political environment during the
transitional period, somewhat allaying his existential concerns. It may even give him
the chance to emerge as the first leader to recompose and better his state in the
abortive aftermath of the Arab Spring.
Kirill Mazourine is a student of international relations at New York University.
notes
1. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival (2003), xi.
2. Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), 91.
3. Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), 233.
4. Aris Roussinos, Lebanons Illegal Arms Dealers, Vice News, 25 February 2014.
5. Kevin A. Clarke and Randall W. Stone, Democracy and the Logic of Political
Survival, American Political Science Review 102:3 (2008), 387.
6. smi: Damask ne soglasilsya s ryadom punktov v podgotovlennom proekte
konstitutsii, Gazeta.ru, 27 January 2017.
7. Jeffry A. Frieden et al., World Politics: Interests, Interactions, Institutions (2013), 94.

myths, militias, and the future of syria
Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi
middle east forum
As the Syrian civil war enters its seventh year, it is increasingly clear that analysts
will have to pay greater attention to the internal dynamics of the Bashar al-Assad
regime, which now has a clear edge over the Syrian opposition following the
conquest of Aleppo in December 2016. That advantage is certain to be consolidated
as the remaining insurgent strongholds in the wider Damascus area, most notably
East Ghouta, are cleared out, having been weakened significantly by infighting and
siege warfare.
No analysis of the regime and its ascendancy is complete without a look at

militiafication, a phenomenon that can most broadly be traced to manpower
shortages. Damascus has struggled to bolster the ranks of its army in the face of draft
avoidance and defections, especially by Sunni servicemen. Consequently, the Syrian
regime has had to enlist the support of both local and foreign groups to compensate
for its armys shortcomings.
Local formations in particular represent the most understudied aspect of the Syrian
war, the result of misconception and poor analysis. Arguably, the most common
misconception is that the regime side has fragmented into a chaotic array of militias,
not unlike the opposition, marking the virtual collapse of the Syrian state.
Complementing this myth is the inexplicable tendency of analysts to simply list the
names and number of armed formations involved in Syria without situating these in
a coherent politico-military context.
Besides the fact that this approach fails to take into account key distinctions between
the militias (force size and capabilities, for one), the question also arises of how far
one goes in classifying larger entities as collections of independent groups. For
instance, one of the most well-known pro-Assad militia networks is Colonel Suheil
al-Hassans Tiger Forces. The network is home to multiple contingents, all with
separate names, ideological agendas, and leaders. When creating an infographic or
citing statistics, does one list these formations as separate or as a single force?
At best, misleading representations of the militias supporting the Assad regime

misinform readers, and, at best, they deceive them. Their detrimental impact on
popular understanding of the Syrian conflict is compounded as they are distributed
across social media: for an example, look to an infographic promoted by analyst
Charles Lister, which asserted that most of the militias on the side of the regime
were foreign in origin. It contained multiple mistakes, basic ones at that, with some

Syrian militias classified as foreign and some foreign groups said to be involved in
Syria all without any factual basis. These glaring errors did not stop the image
from being widely distributed, with prominent rebel group Ahrar al-Sham citing it
to support its propaganda, which holds that less than 10 per cent of pro-Assad forces
are actually Syrian in origin.
The rise of pro-Assad militias deserves much more nuanced consideration, in no

small part because of the problems militiafication has created for the regime. For
one, militias have been able to act with impunity and take the law into their own
hands, with the weakened Syrian state unable to rein in such excesses. In the
predominantly Druze province of Suwayda, located in southern Syria, internal
security has been largely delegated to militias some ideologically loyal to Assad,
others more tactical in their alignment with the regime. As a result, reports of
kidnappings in Suwayda have grown more and more frequent.
Other problems include the tendency of many militias to engage in systematic

looting upon retaking areas from insurgents, as seen in Aleppo and Homs. The
regimes ability to restrain such transgressive behaviour has been dubious, to say the
least. Reliance on militias has also complicated the regimes war effort, with the
existence of multiple chains of command and occasional infighting severe obstacles
to achieving unity of command and tactical coordination on the battlefield. The
establishment of the Fifth Legion (also known as V Corps) in November 2016, a unit
backed by Russia and Iran, appears to have been intended to address this problem
by uniting commanders from a range of militias to lead assault units.
Taking these points into account allows for deconstruction of the myths obscuring
the role of pro-Assad militias. Their presence on the battlefield does not mean the
Syrian state has collapsed. It has kept sectors such as education intact, and continues
to pay salaries to those in areas not under regime control. Although militias on the
side of the regime have engaged in non-military activities, they cannot be said to
offer a political alternative. (The same cannot be said for opposition formations in
territories like Idlib province, where factions compete over who has the most popular
judiciary and can best provide social services.)
Pro-Assad militias have long since accepted that the foundations of the Syrian state
and Assads rule itself are to be preserved. Among them, even groups that are
ideologically and ideationally at odds with the regime, most notably the Beirut-based
Syrian Social Nationalist Party, no longer contest Syrias political future. The
militias have long since abandoned any hope of unseating either Assad or the pro-
Assad elite. Instead, they have sought to achieve more limited political goals.

Militias may also undertake political initiatives to help solidify the regimes political
standing. A good case in point is Liwa al-Baqir, a militia that consists of Shiified
Bekara tribesmen from the Aleppo area and has received training from Iran and
Hezbollah. Having lost hundreds of fighters since its formation, Liwa al-Baqir
successfully promoted an officially independent candidate in the parliamentary
elections of April 2016. Working with the Iranians, Liwa al-Baqir also helped bring
about reconciliation between Bekara tribe chief Nawwaf al-Bashir and the regime.
Finally, it is important to acknowledge the continuity of militiafication. Competition

between different sects and factions existed in Syria well before the onset of the civil
war. As seen in pre-war Syria and under the divide and rule strategy used by other
Baathist governments past and present, militias have sided with the regime and its
security services as a means of balancing.
As the regime continues to gain ground in Syria, analysis of that countrys conflict
must remain grounded in reality. Promotion of myths that benefit one side or the
other is not simply an analytical error. It risks the adoption of harmful and
counterproductive policies towards the Syrian conflict, in which one more wrong
move could prove the last.
Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi is a fellow at the Middle East Forum, an American think tank,
and an associate fellow at Kings College Londons International Centre for the Study of
Radicalisation and Political Violence. His research on jihadism has been featured in al-
Jazeera, the New York Times, and Vice News, and he has appeared before the British House
of Commons Defence Committee in an advisory capacity.

changes in turkey from 2003 to the present
Mustafa Kemal
If one were to approach the average Turkish citizen in the 1930s and proclaim that
the Islamic caliphate would one day return, one would encounter nothing but
derision. Kemal Atatrk abolished the caliphate, and for good reason, the Turk
would respond: We have a republic now. More than 80 years on, faint whispers
have emerged, warning that the Kemalist century has ended and that Atatrks
secular state will soon be no more. The illegally-built 1,100-room vanity project
Recep Tayyip Erdoan has selected as his new residence, unironically called the
White Palace, stands on a green space created by Atatrk and has cost Turkish
taxpayers a whopping $615 million. It suggests that Erdoans delusion of grandeur
has peaked, and that he fancies himself something of a sultan or a caliph.1 This sad
state of affairs reflects a monumental shift in Turkish political discourse from
Republicanism to autocracy. To fully understand the nature of this regression, the
economic, political, and societal changes effected by the Erdoan government since
2003 must be re-examined. This paper attempts to do so, and finds that even if
Erdoan cannot be reasonably declared the sultan of Turkey, he has certainly come
to see himself as one.
Erdoan was first elected for economic reasons. The government he succeeded, that
of prime minister Blent Ecevit, saw the implementation of leftist policies, including
high spending and taxation. By the end of Ecevits tenure in 2002, the
2
unemployment rate in Turkey had grown to over 10 per cent. Moreover, Turkey
owed $23.5 billion to the International Monetary Fund, making it difficult for the
3
government to dedicate funds to job creation. Economic adversity particularly
impacted Anatolia, which had historically lagged behind urban areas such as Istanbul,
Ankara, and Izmir. Ecevits policies disillusioned rural Turks, a category that
accounted for the majority of the countrys population. Consequently, when
Erdoan, himself a member of a working class family, campaigned on a platform of
galvanizing Anatolia and developing it to the point where it could compete with the
likes of Istanbul and Ankara, his Justice and Development Party (akp) won the 2002
election comfortably, securing almost 60 per cent of the seats in Turkeys parliament.
Erdoans promise of rural development and economic liberalisation has been put to
the test during his excruciatingly long tenure. To his credit, employment has risen
in rural areas. The Erdoan administration has invested in Anatolias infrastructure
and tirelessly promoted culture and tourism in rural provinces of religious
significance provinces like Konya improving local economies and helping many

Turks find jobs. The cash flow from rural investments between 2002 and 2012 caused
a growth of 64 per cent in real gdp and a 43 per cent increase in gdp per capita.4
Yet, the economy on the whole has declined. A major cause of Turkeys economic
woes is the governments obsession with construction projects, an easy way to create
jobs for unskilled labourers. The erection of malls highlights several problems
associated with Erdoans development mania. Before his rise to power, Istanbul had
5
five shopping centres. Today, it is home to more than one hundred of them. While
this has created jobs for unskilled labourers and sustained the akps popularity, it
has proven disastrous for the nations economy. Like a true sultan, Erdoan appoints
his notables (people close to him) to oversee these ventures, a classic form of
corruption. In addition, Erdoans determination to keep these projects afloat has
resulted in excessive borrowing. Overall unemployment has risen from 10.3 per cent
6
in 2002 to 11 per cent in 2010. Inflation is also at an all-time high at 9 per cent. In
2005, one dollar was worth a mere 1.29 Turkish liras. By 2016, one dollar was worth
3.44 Turkish liras on average.
Erdoan has clearly failed to keep his promise of a stable economy. Since rising to
power, he has relentlessly pursued initiatives that primarily serve his interests and
those of the akp, focusing economic policy on the retention of his voter base. It is
clear that Erdoan has the political ambitions of a prince from both his policies
and his new home, an outrageously large presidential palace. Tellingly, he had
planned to call it a klliye, a term that typically refers to mosques commissioned
by Ottoman sultans.
Proto-sultanism aptly describes the political future sought by the Erdoan

government. Depending on its outcome, the constitutional referendum proposed by
Erdoan and set to take place in April 2017 may grant Erdoan unprecedented
powers. The office of the prime minister may be abolished. The president may
obtain the power to appoint and sack parliamentarians, hold snap elections, and
dissolve parliament at his leisure, and to unilaterally shape fiscal policies concerning
public expenditures. Coalition governments may be outlawed and the executive
powers of the cabinet may be transferred to the office of the president. If these
proposals take effect, the Republic of Turkey, once one of the few strongholds of
capitalism and democracy in the Middle East, will effectively become a sultanate, as
warned by Selin Bke, deputy leader of the Turkish opposition.7
As such, it is important to recall the political changes that took place under Erdoan
and have now made this once-free republic a proto-sultanate. Before taking on the
traditionally ceremonial role of president in 2014, Erdoan spent 11 years as prime
minister. The liberalisation and secularisation observed over the past 80 years came

to a grinding halt upon his rise to power in 2003. At first, none could credibly accuse
Erdoan of governing like an authoritarian. But in 2007, a crisis forced Erdoan to
show his true colours. When the Turkish military opposed Erdoans nominee for
president, Abdullah Gul, disquieted by his Islamist tendencies, Erdoan responded
by fabricating, with the help of Fethullah Gulen and a number of Gulenist
prosecutors, evidence of plans for a military coup against Turkeys democratically
8
elected government.
An unprecedented crackdown on Turkish society from the military and the police
to journalists, academics, and businesspeople began. Erdoan set about routinely
imprisoning without trial critics of his regime, levelling specious yet spurious
charges of terrorism, espionage, and, ironically, attempts to undermine Turkish
9
democracy. The states case against the military was authored by Erdoan himself
10
and exposed his authoritarian nature. His fabrication of evidence and forcible
elimination of opposition to Gul offered a window into Turkeys future. What
transpired when a state of emergency was declared in response to the events of July
2016 simply confirmed that Erdoans authoritarianism is rooted in an unorthodox
brand of Ottomanist ideology that holds that there can be no opposition to his one-
man rule.
The most important changes effected by the Erdoan government have been rooted
in faith, and have contributed above all else to the regression of a free republic into
a proto-sultanate. Since Erdoans rise to power, Turkey has abandoned its secular
democratic roots and contorted into a violently polarised land where civil liberties
are a distant memory and the only reformists around seek to Islamise the country.
Erdoan, who has declared that he envisions the growth of a religious generation
of Turks, has sought to systematically reverse Kemalist secularism, to which Turkey
owes its prosperity, by imposing Sunni Islam on Turkish society.11
His government has overseen the transformation of the Directorate of Religious

Affairs, hitherto an advisory body, into what Svante Cornell calls a supersized
government bureaucracy for the promotion of Sunni Islam.12 The budget of the
Directorate has quadrupled under Erdoan to at least $2.5 billion per annum, and it
now employs between 120,000 and 150,000 people.13 The Directorate has
deregulated the wearing of religious symbols. It has greatly increased the number of
Sunni-oriented mam Hatip schools and reduced the number of secular public
schools, forcing less fortunate families to send their children to centres of
indoctrination.14 It has increased the number of registered Sunni mosques in the
country to an unprecedented 77,500,15 and now issues fatwas decrying the
consumption of alcohol and tobacco, condemning Western clothing, advocating

family norms that are consistent with Islam, and politicising most areas of life for
16
Turks.
This transformation has caused the vilification of, and motivated acts of violence
against, Alevis, Jews, Christians, and those who have adopted Western ways of life.
In 2009, Islamist supporters of Erdoan attacked an dil Biret concert, outraged by
17
the fact that wine was being served at the venue. More recently, pro-Erdoan
journalist Ali Karahasanolu refused to condemn the New Years Eve attack on
Istanbuls Reina nightclub in the midst of a shrill debate on whether celebrating
18
New Years Eve is consistent with Islam. On his side stands the Directorate, which
has issued a fatwa declaring the celebration of the Western New Year incompatible
19
with Islam. Such events reflect how profound the change caused by Erdoans
politicisation of religion has been at the societal level.
With Westernism now a taboo, Turkey has completed a stark volte-face. The
inclusive and secular tradition of that perfect republic seems to have been overturned
in favor of the authoritarianism of a Sunni-oriented proto-sultanate. Turkeys sultan,
for his part, may also fancy himself the Caliph of Islam. Having once stated in quite
a sincere manner that he would like to be to Turkey what Queen Elizabeth II is to
the United Kingdom, it is not implausible to imagine Erdoan attempting to emulate
Elizabeths precedence over the Church of England by declaring himself the caliph
of Islam as he increases the power of the executive.20 The difference is that Elizabeth
is very much a constitutional monarch to her country, while Erdoan is the
constitution in his.
Upon close scrutiny, it appears that Erdoan has succeeded in creating a proto-
sultanate dominated by Sunni Islam in which religious minorities, potential and
actual critics of his regime, Kemalists, and other secularists do not enjoy the same
rights as Erdoan loyalists. One blue-eyed, blond-haired Ottoman general once
addressed the youth of Turkey, declaring that their duty, first and foremost, was to
conserve and defend their freedoms and the Republic of Turkey.21 If the republic
ever came under siege from those who wished to do harm to its foundations for their
own political aims, he said, it was the duty of the Turkish youth to save their republic
from such a plot.22 It is truly disheartening to see the youth, which should be up in
arms against a tyrannical order intent on destroying everything that made a once-
great republic thrive, committed to safeguarding a different legacy: that of Recep
Tayyip Erdoan.
Mustafa Kemal is the pseudonym of an anonymous contributor.

notes
1. David Lepeska, From Atatrk to Erdogan, al-Jazeera, 22 January 2015.

2. Official statistics found on the website of the Turkish Statistical Institute.
3. Turkeys Flirting with imf Comes to an End, Hrriyet Daily News, 3 October
2010.
4. Dani Rodrik, How Well Did the Turkish Economy Do Over the Last Decade?
Dani Rodriks Weblog, 13 March 2017.
5. Mert Ozkaya, Shopping Malls in Turkey and Retail Legislation, hg.org, 10
January 2014.
6. stihdam 1.6 milyon kii artti, Milliyet, 17 August 2010.
7. chp'li Bke: Meclis'e sunulan padiahlk teklifidir, Sputnik Trkiye, 11 December
2016.
8. Steven A. Cook, How Erdogan Made Turkey Authoritarian Again, The Atlantic,
21 July 2016.
9. Cook (2016).
10. Yigal Schleifer, Turkey: What Happens after the Sledgehammer Verdict?
Eurasianet.org, 25 September 2012.
11. Patrick Cockburn, President Erdogan Could Be Using the Coup against Him to
Turn Turkey towards Full-Scale Islamisation, The Independent, 18 July 2016.
12. Svante Cornell, The Rise of Diyanet: The Politicization of Turkeys Directorate
of Religious Affairs, The Turkey Analyst, 9 October 2015.
13. David Lepeska, Turkey Casts the Diyanet: Ankaras Religious Directorate Takes
Off, Foreign Affairs, 17 May 2015.
14. Lepeska (2015).
15. Official statistics found on Diyanets website.
16. Cornell (2015).
17. dil Biret'in Topkap Saray Konserine Saldr Musiki Dergisi, 24 March 2017.
18. Ali Karahasanolu: Reina'da lenler "ehit" deil, abc Gazetesi, 3 January 2017.
19. Asim Ali, Under Erdogan, Turkey Is Going the Way Pakistan Did with Zia-ul-
Haq, The Wire, 17 January 2017.
20. Raziye Akkoc, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan: I Want to Be Like the
Queen of UK, The Telegraph, 30 January 2015.
21. Mustafa Kemal Atatrk, Ey Trk Genlii! 20 October 1927.
22. Atatrk (1927).

religion: friend or foe of kurdish nationalism?
Sam Wyatt
I leave it to Gods wisdom / The Kurds in this worlds state / Why are they
deprived of their rights? / Why are they all doomed? / See, from the Arabs to the
Georgians / Everything is Kurdish and, as with a citadel, / The Turks and the
Persians besiege them / From four sides at once / And they both make the Kurdish
1
people / Into a target for fates arrow. Ehmed Xan
With a population spread between five states, the Kurds have long been considered
one of the worlds largest stateless nations. Indeed, although the 1920 Treaty of
Svres proposed an autonomous Kurdish homeland, since the 1923 Treaty of
Lausanne, any thoughts of a Kurdistan have been brutally crushed by Turkish forces
2
seeking to control the separatist region. Indeed, such is the anti-Kurdish feeling
among Turks that there is a striking silence from the Turkish state regarding the
Kurdishness of the Kurdish question. Instead, Ankara has focused on economic
3
grievances and social problems.
Oppression of the Kurds is not limited to Turkey. Saddam Husseins violent

suppression of Masoud Barzanis Kurdish rebellion in 1991-92 led the international
community to provide a no fly zone to protect the Kurds in Northern Iraq.4
Consequently, persecution has become a focal point of Kurdish identity. The forcible
homogenisation of national identity in Turkey, whereby all citizens are referred to
as Turks, is a particularly pressing grievance for Kurds, who feel marginalised
within Turkish society.5 A strong ethno-cultural identity has persisted despite
pressure from the state, with Kurds fighting literally and otherwise for autonomy
and independence.
What is rarely addressed is religions role in the construction of Kurdish identity. It

is widely assumed that since the countries that host Kurdish concentrations are
predominantly Muslim, religion is not a particularly pressing issue. However,
religion has been utilised by the Kurds on numerous occasions in order to
differentiate themselves from the Turkish, Syrian, and Iraqi regimes.6 This essay
will primarily focus on the Turco-Kurdish conflict, looking at religions
instrumentalisation and its use as a means of political communication. This is not to
lessen the importance of religion in other conflicts involving the Kurds, but rather
to highlight that it is here where religion is used most effectively. The essay will
start by looking at the historical importance of religion to the Kurdish cause. What
follows is an analysis of how religion has been used as an instrument of opposition

against the nationalisation of an anational space. Finally, it will explore the
relatively meagre importance of religion under the more ethno-nationalist secular
movement that is the Kurdistan Workers Party (pkk).
As William Tucker argued in 1989, nationalism and religion have been intertwined
from the beginning for the Kurds, forming a platform through which they could
7
protest the secular and nationalistic reforms of Kemal Atatrk. The role of the
Sheikh in Kurdish society is emblematic of this symbiosis, linking religion and
8
Kurdish nationalism. Indeed, as traditionally religious figures, the support of the
Sheikhs for the fledgling Kurdish nationalist movement lent it a religious brand of
legitimacy that enhanced the movements standing. In return for this support, these
religious figures have historically held roles of prominence in military and political
groups devoted to achieving Kurdish autonomy. This gave religion a crucial role in
9
the formation and subsequent shaping of the nationalist movement. For Robert
Olson, the support of the Sheikhs for the nationalist movement played another role,
whereby tarikats (religious sects) and tekiyyes (dervish lodges) became sources of
support for Kurdish nationalism.10 Religion and nationalism fed off one another to
enhance the cause of the Kurdish people.
Religion was also instrumentalised as a tool with which to protest secular Turkey.
The Kurdish minority in the Ottoman Empire vehemently protested the collapse of
the caliphate. Although this could be seen as a sign of support for religious
governance and a longing for Shariah, in fact, the rules of the Shariah were almost
non-existent under the Ottomans. They existed alongside the Kanun, a secular legal
system that often supplanted tenets of the Shariah. Consequently, it must be argued
that opposition to the collapse of the caliphate was not a direct consequence of
differing views regarding the role of religion. Rather, this constituted opposition to
the logic of a one-nation state and fear of the whitewashing of minorities, which had
achieved impressive levels of autonomy under the Ottoman Empire. In other words,
the Kurdish resistance of 1925 opposed the nationalisation of an anational space.11
Furthermore, by pledging loyalty to the Sultan caliph, Kurds could oppose a
Westernist centralised bureaucracy that would marginalise the Kurds in favour of
more Turkic regions to the West of the country.12
As mentioned previously, this loyalty to the caliphate was of vital importance to the
Kurds because it maintained the status quo through which the Kurds enjoyed an
autonomous existence.13 However, it is clear that in this case, it was not religion in
itself that Kurdish nationalism utilised, but rather the institutions connected to Islam
that provided opposition to the nationalisation of space. Besides, although the
Turkish forces had managed to stir up religious resentment between Kurds and
Christian Armenians, the peace agreement that followed in 1919 created a basis upon

which both could attack the secularism of the Young Turks. Willingness to work
across religious lines shows that religion was not the sole issue that the Kurds focused
on. They also observed the Kemalist oppression of Christians and Muslims alike,
claiming that the radical nature of Atatrks secular nationalism affected the right to
practice all religions. Indeed, given this union, it must be argued that it was the
freedom to practice religion, not religion itself, that drove Kurdish nationalism.
Freedom to practice religion became more important to Kurdish nationalism as time

went on. In terms of faith, the Kurds are a diverse group, with indigenous religions
such as Zoroastrianism coexisting alongside Abrahamic religions including
Christianity, Islam, and Alevism. Indeed, many Kurdish nationalists in the 1920s
and 1930s took pride in their deviation from the Arabian Religion of Islam, viewing
14
it as a way to express Kurdish spirit against Arab and Turkish domination.
However, it would be deceitful to suggest that the vast majority of Kurds were not
Muslim, or that religion did not matter to the average Kurd. In fact, these
nationalists who had previously celebrated their shift from Islam quickly discovered
that to increase the readership of their propaganda, they had to accommodate Islam,
a difficult compromise for those who felt that Islam was one of the forces behind
oppression of Kurds.15 Especially problematic for the nationalist movement was the
traditional tendency among sections of the Kurdish people to see their identity as
synonymous with Sunni Islam, a policy that, if adopted, was bound to alienate the
16
significant religious minorities that existed in their midst. We can see that religion
became a significant hindrance to the nationalist cause, keeping the Kurds from
creating a truly united front.
The need to accommodate all Kurds also changed the nature of rebellion. Although
the revolts of the 1920s were predominantly religious, over the course of the 1930s,
the religious element declined, with an increasing focus on the liberation of the
Kurds.17 This would suggest that the role of religion in Kurdish nationalism faded as
time went on. A look at the modern ethno-nationalism of the Kurds seems to support
the assertion that what began as a religious movement is now undermined by
religious elements. Kurdish minorities are even seen by some as the spearhead of
secularisation in the Middle East, having experimented with laws that give the lgbt
community access to civil partnerships, a highly liberal policy for a conservative
region of the world, and achieved levels of gender equality unusually high for the
Middle East.
Furthermore, the Kurdistan Communities Union, an umbrella group for groups such
as the pkk, Democratic Union Party, and Kurdistan Free Life Party, has declared
that in the war against isis, it is only willing to work with secular Syrian movements
for Syria can only be secular.18 More recently, with Turkey going down the path

of authoritarian Islamism under Erdoans Justice and Development Party (akp),
the Kurds have increased their secular rhetoric through the process of othering.
Classifying an individual or group as not one of us is crucial to Kurdish claims to
nationhood, with the self, in this case Kurdishness, constituted against the other
against Turkishness. Consequently, when Turks identified themselves as secular,
the Kurds identified themselves with religion, and, when Turkey later underwent
Islamisation, the Kurds shifted to secularism. As such, it is understandable why the
current Kurdish movement has an agenda that appears to be focused on secular
conceptions of human rights and democracy. It is constituted against an increasingly
authoritarian and Islamic Turkish state.
This seems to suggest that the Kurds predominantly identify on a primordial ethnic
basis, not faith. However, Kurds are incredibly proud of their heritage, which has
produced many great Islamic scholars, the likes of Said Kurdi. Indeed, during the
period of high Kemalism, the madrassas of Kurdistan were the only places in Turkey
19
where one could receive a high quality traditional Islamic education. Indeed, even
today, Kurdish political parties cannot gain power unless they have the support of
the Sheikhs. Undeniably, Islamist groups have been crucial to their decades of
political success in Kurdistan. However, Michiel Leezenberg argues that support for
Islamist groups was less a sign of re-Islamisation and more a case of tactical voting.
The Kurds simply sought to limit the power of the leading pro-Turkification
parties.20
Indeed, socio-political tensions in Turkey represent a dichotomy between ethnic and

religious groups, a division that straddles both ethnic Turks and ethnic Kurds.21
Based on this, Faruk Ekmekci argues that religiosity and political satisfaction tend
to be better predictors of support for Kurdish nationalism than socio-economic
factors, with increased religiosity and lower political satisfaction making populaces
more predisposed to support Kurdish nationalism.22 However, religion has also been
used by the Turkish state as a tool to co-opt the Kurds.23 Many Kurdish activists
were outraged in 2015 when Erdoan brandished a Kurdish copy of the Quran, and
claimed that Erdoan was exploiting the Quran for political gain and using it to
silence dissent.
It appears as if the relationship between the Kurdish national movement and

religious identity is far from monolithic. Although religion provided the early
Kurdish movement with a tool of differentiation against a secular Turkey, and
represented a potent means of mobilisation, it has also alienated vast swathes of the
Kurdish population belonging to religious minorities. Furthermore, while the
Kurdish regions may have served as the bastion of traditional Islamic scholarship at
the height of Kemalism, in recent years, the Islamism of the akp has weaponised

religion against the Kurdish national movement, forcing the movement to turn to
secularism. On balance, religion has proven both a friend and a foe of the Kurdish
nationalist movement.
Sam Wyatt is a student of international relations at King's College London. He plans to

pursue humanitarian aid work in Turkey following his graduation.
notes
1. Ehmed Xan, quoted in David Romano, 16. Michiel Leezenberg, Political Islam
The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: among the Kurds, paper presented at the
Opportunity, Mobilization, and Identity conference Kurdistan: The Unwanted
(2006), 3. State, Jagiellonian University, Polish-
2. Nick Danforth, Forget Sykes-Picot. Its Kurdish Society, Krakow, Poland, 29-31
the Treaty of Svres That Explains the March 2001.
Modern Middle East, Foreign Policy, 10 17. C. J. Edmonds, Kurdish Nationalism,
August 2015. Journal of Contemporary History 6:1 (1971),
3. Mesut Yeen, The Turkish State 91.
Discourse and the Exclusion of Kurdish 18. Salih Muslim, pyd Leader: sdf
Identity, Middle Eastern Studies 32:2 Operation for Raqqa Countryside in
(1996), 216. Progress, Syria Can Only Be Secular,
4. Who Are the Kurds? bbc News, 14 ara News, 28 May 2016.
March 2016. 19. Van Bruinessen (2000).
5. M. Hakan Yavuz, Five Stages of the 20. Leezenberg (2001).
Construction of Kurdish Nationalism in 21. S. Erdem Ayta and Ali arkolu,
Turkey, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics Ethnicity and Religion in Shaping
7:3 (2001), 1. Threat Perceptions: Evidence from a
6. Yavuz (2001), 5. Survey Experiment in Turkey, paper
7. William F. Tucker, Introduction, in The presented at the conference Political
Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Economy of Islam and Muslim Societies,
Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880-1925, edited by University of Oxford, Association for
Robert Olson (1989), xix. Analytical Learning about Islam and
8. Yeen (1996), 223. Muslim Societies, Oxford, United
9. Yeen (1996), 223. Kingdom, 15-16 May 2015.
10. Olson (1989), 16. 22. Faruk Ekmekci, Understanding Kurdish
11. Yeen (1996), 223. Ethno-Nationalism in Turkey: Socio-
12. Sylvia Kedourie, Turkey: Identity, Economy, Religion, and Politics, Ethnic
Democracy, Politics (1998), 221. and Racial Studies 34:9 (2011): 1608-17.
13. Kedourie (1998), 221. 23. Piotr Zalewski, A Turkish War of
14. Martin van Bruinessen, Religion in Religion: Kurdish Activists See a
Kurdistan, in Mullas, Sufis, and Heretics: Conspiracy, Time, 4 June 2012.
The Role of Religion in Kurdish Society,
edited by Martin van Bruinessen, 13-36
(2000).
15. Van Bruinessen (2000).

israel-palestine: a conflict of identity?
Farhana Akthar
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is largely cognitive, with Israelis and Palestinians

seeking to assert their national identities in the contested homeland. As such, the
intractability of this territorial dispute owes much to clashing national identities.
The present article explores the importance of identity in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, considering national identity as a source of distinctiveness, unity, and
continuity. As Herbert C. Kelman notes, these three factors contribute ones claim
to ownership of land as well as control of its resources, and assists the development
1
and maintenance of a groups distinctive culture, religion, and way of life. In the
Israeli-Palestinian case, this has created conflicting meta-narratives of the conflict
that continue to obstruct its peaceful resolution.2
The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 is often referred to as the focal point of
Israeli and Palestinian national identity perceptions and the origin of Israeli-
Palestinian othering. For Palestinians, growing concern surrounding their identity
stems from the Palestinian exodus of 1948, which saw 750,000 Palestinians displaced
during the formation of the Israeli state. From a Palestinian perspective, the exodus
3
entails the compulsory transfer of the Arab population to create a Jewish state.
Thus, national identity is rooted in the very idea of a Palestinian homeland,
particularly for Palestinian refugees living in overseas diasporas. Consequently, since
the exodus, Palestinians have premised their right to return home on claims of
national identity, illustrating how both territory and its absence undergird
Palestinian identity.
Simultaneously, the right to return argument also concerns the Israeli settlement,
a practice informed by the Jewish right to return as reinforced in the Israeli Law of
Return Act, which legitimizes Jewish migration to the Middle East. Concurrently,
this comprehension is also used to justify growing Israeli settlements today.
Therefore, for Israelis, the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine did not constitute
an injustice to the Arabs who resided there as they were not seen as distinctly
Palestinian. Instead, they propose that these Arabs were no different than those in
surrounding countries, and had never exercised sovereignty in Palestine.4
Consequently, clashing national identities have led to the constant negation of the
other to bolster the justice of ones own cause.5 For instance, as mentioned already,
the continued erection of Israeli settlements in internationally recognized
Palestinian territories is practiced in order to assert the Israeli claim to the contested

territory. Indeed, according to Alon Ben-Meir, the Israeli settlement policy has
always had a dual purpose; 1) to provide security for Israel and 2) to assert the Jewish
right to settle in Palestinian territories.6 It thus provides tangible, physical evidence
7
of Israels claim to exercise its historical rights.
The Palestinian national movement emerged in the early 1960s, but was only
officially recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people
in the United Nations in 1974. Yet, the Palestine Liberation Organization proved
unable to facilitate either (decisive) peaceful negotiation or the return of Palestinian
land, thus disillusioning many Palestinians. Their discontent underwent a
transformation during the second Intifada, with Palestinian grievances developing
an explicitly religious dimension. Since then, Hamass national Islamic movement
has come to occupy a central place in the Palestinian national movement. This is
evident in Hamas prevailing over Fatah in the 2006 parliamentary elections. On the
other hand, recent political discourse has seen Palestinian national identity take a
new turn, with the recently reached agreement between Palestinian parties to form
a united government, which raises interesting questions regarding Palestinian
national identity.8 Nonetheless, whether its religious dimension will subside or grow
in prominence remains to be seen.
Interactions between statehood, territorial claims, and globalization are worth

considering. David Newman argues that the individual defines him/herself with
reference to a hierarchy of both social and spatial identities ranging from the family
9
to the national collective. This perspective has been adopted by many Israelis,
particularly post-Zionists, who view territory as a constraining element in their
movement towards non-exclusive forms of binational participation.10 Indeed,
Israelis and Palestinians have begun to gradually accept certain shared elements of
national identity as part of the reconciliation process, highlighting the possibility of
re-defining the Israeli state as all-inclusive and blind to ethnicity, faith, and
nationality. With each step away from an exclusively nationalistic understanding of
identity within the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, peace is made easier to
achieve.
However, Newman also highlights that for most of the Jewish population of Israel,
even a state that adopts a more pluralistic and less Zionist outlook will still retain a
well-defined social and national identity.11 Consequently, while an all-inclusive
definition of a post-conflict Israeli state, one including the Palestinians, can
reformulate the territorial configuration of the state with neither claiming exclusive
territorial control over any part of the area, binational resolution is of concern to
Israelis.12 This is particularly since the Palestinians return home is widely viewed
as a demographic threat to the Jewish polity. Although it appears that national

identity will remain a dominant aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is one
worth integrating into the wider Israeli-Palestinian discourse.
This article has explored the role of national identity within the context of the
unfortunately, prolonged Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Such a methodological
approach has brought to light key factors that ought to be taken into consideration
in future analyses of the struggle: the dynamic between identity and territory and
the influence of ideological and geographical identifications. The article also
accentuates the exclusive, not inclusive, character of national identity among Israelis
and Palestinians. As Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov concludes, the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict is at the centre of a clash between different worlds, between East and West,
13
that have yet to find a way to coexist.
Farhana Akthar is a student of international relations at King's College London. Her

research focuses on the intersection between identity politics and security studies.
notes
1. Herbert C. Kelman, National Identity and the Role of the Other in Existential
Conflicts: The Israeli-Palestinian Case, address delivered at conference
Transformation of Intercultural Conflicts, University of Amsterdam,
Amsterdam, Netherlands, 7 October 2005.
2. Yehudith Auerbach, National Narratives in a Conflict of Identity, in Barriers to
Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, edited by Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, 99-134
(2010).
3. Yezid Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National
Movement, 1949-1993 (1999).
4. Kelman (2005).
5. Kelman (2005).
6. Alon Ben-Meir, Territory and National Identity, 11 September 1988.
7. Meir (1988).
8. Fatah and Hamas to Form Unity Government, al-Jazeera, 18 January 2017.
9. David Newman, From National to Post-National Territorial Identities in Israel-
Palestine, Geojournal 53:3 (2001): 235-46.
10. Newman (2001).
11. Newman (2001).
12. Newman (2001).
13. Bar-Siman-Tov (2010).

revisiting the saudi-qatari feud of 2011-14:
causes and consequences
Sami Zahed
From 2011 to 2014, the state of Qatar, headed by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani
and subsequently his son Sheikh Tamim, pursued a foreign policy of throwing its
resources and diplomatic weight behind Islamists in the wake of the Arab Spring,
causing alarm bells in the neighbouring Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The resulting
feud was bitter and unprecedentedly public and created a deep rift that rippled
1
through the Gulf Cooperation Council (gcc).
When the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, both Qatar and Saudi Arabia
proactively engaged the challenges that emerged. Riyadh saw the uprisings as both
a challenge to regional stability and an opportunity to weaken Iranian influence over
2
a number of states. While a key aim of both nations was to weaken Iran, variations
existed between their respective strategies that owe to the Qatari-Saudi feud.3 While
the Saudis had traditionally adopted a quiet and cautious approach to regional
turmoil, Doha now sought to raise its profile through mediation. It now had the
opportunity to support the rise of more favourable governments in a region
4
undergoing transformation.
The various directions that the Qataris and Saudis took during the Arab Spring
proved to be game-changing, repositioning the gcc from a relatively unified body
concerned by Iranian expansion into a divided bloc that threatened to unravel. The
gcc achieved a moderate victory in its support for the Syrian revolution by
dislodging Hamas from Irans resistance axis.5 However, the equation changed when
Qatar filled Irans shoes and became Hamass main sponsor, laying the foundations
for the Iran-Gulf rift to later transform into a Qatari-Saudi rift.
Dohas embrace of change, particularly regarding the rise of Islamist movements,

stood in stark contrast to the line taken by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
and, to a lesser extent, Bahrain.6 Qatar explained its own support for Islamists by
arguing that the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates had led the uprisings, and
that it was Qatari policy to consistently support popular movements.7 By doing this,
the leadership abandoned its traditional role as a neutral broker by throwing its
weight behind an Islamist vision of the regions political future.8
As the Arab Spring progressed, events elevated Qatar on Saudi Arabias list of
problems. First, in February 2012, the gcc accused Qatar of giving political support
to the Houthis in Yemen and sabotaging a deal establishing a transitional

government in Sanaa. Doha eventually withdrew from the negotiations that resulted
9
in then-Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Salehs ousting. Qatar also infuriated the
Saudis by hiring a new al-Jazeera head, just a day after the new Qatari emir, Sheikh
Tamim, met with Saudi king Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. The new appointee
was known regionally for his confrontational stance towards Saudi Arabia, the uae,
10
and Bahrain.
The conflict significantly escalated in 2014, when it became apparent that Qatar was
failing to honour pledges made in the Riyadh Agreement of November 2013. These
conditions included non-interference in neighbours affairs, the withdrawal of
support for groups that threatened regional stability, and others concerning al-
Jazeeras hostile broadcasting. The uae had previously summoned the Qatari
ambassador when Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an influential Brotherhood-linked cleric, was
given a platform on al-Jazeera to condemn the Saudis and Emiratis.11
Perhaps the most dramatic instance that threatened to turn Qatar into a pariah
among its neighbours was its refusal in April 2014 to sign a gcc report crucial to the
implementation of the Riyadh Agreement. For the first time, the possibility of
sanctions was raised, signalling that the Saudi-Emirati-Bahraini bloc could take steps
12
to bring Doha back into line. The allies maintained while that they did not wish to
lose Qatar, their patience was wearing thin.13 By August 2014, this patience appeared
to be at an end when Saudi Arabias then-foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, threatened
to blockade Qatar by land and sea during a meeting between the foreign ministers
of the gcc.14
The intense friction between Riyadh and Doha that has resulted from the gcc schism
has profound implications for the Middle East at large. In Syria, both Qatar and
Saudi Arabia competed for influence over the opposition by funding rival groups.
Such a dynamic resembles the Libyan conflict, during which Qatar was accused by
secularists of backing rebels affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.15
Another implication had been the politicisation of foreign aid, a trend best
demonstrated by the financial backing that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have given to
various Egyptian administrations. During the rule of the Supreme Council of the
Armed Forces, Riyadh provided budget assistance, aid, and credit worth
approximately $2.7 billion.16 Later, under the Brotherhoods Mohamed Morsi,
Qatars assistance to Egypt involved $1 billion in grants, $4 billion in Central Bank
deposits, and $3 billion in acquisition bonds, ultimately totalling around $8 billion.17
The Sisi government promptly returned the Central Bank deposits when it came to
power in 2013, illustrating that the aids linkage to specific regimes and not to the
Egyptian state itself.18

By early 2014, it had become apparent that Qatar was losing its gamble on the staying
power of Islamist movements. Problems started for Doha in July 2013, just as Sheikh
Tamim acceded to the throne. It was barely 72 hours later that the Brotherhood was
removed from power in Egypt as the result of a military coup. A few weeks later,
the Islamist ruling party, Ennahda, agreed to give up power in Tunisia and called
for elections that they subsequently lost. In addition, Qatar also lost its place vis-a-
19
vis Syrian opposition groups. In Syria, one analyst remarked that politically,
20
[Qatar] is in the back seat or maybe not even in the car. Doha has seen its foreign
policies strained on numerous fronts and has yielded to Saudi Arabia as the main
21
Arab backer of the Syrian opposition in terms of arms and funds.
Ultimately, Qatars involvement in virtually every Middle Eastern and North

African flashpoint overstretched the emirate. International pressure turned Qatars
hand and forced it to decrease the support it gave to groups such as Islamist militias
in Libya.22 Reconciliation was finally achieved in November 2014 when an
unannounced meeting between the gcc leaders ended with the resolution of the
dispute with Qatar. Following an eight-month absence, the Saudi, Emirati, and
Bahraini ambassadors to Doha returned to their stations once Qatar belatedly
23
pledged to abide by the Riyadh Agreement.
A key aspect of Gulf reconciliation was that Qatar became friendly towards Saudi
Arabia and the uaes ally Egypt and recognised the legitimacy of president Sisis
rule. Shortly before official reconciliation was announced, Doha bowed to pressure
and asked its Muslim Brotherhood guests to leave the country. At this point, it was
clear that the attempt to counter Saudi Arabia by backing Islamists in the region had
completely unravelled.24 In March 2015, Saudi Arabia launched Operation Decisive
Storm against the Houthi coup in Yemen in support of president Abd-Rabbuh
Mansour Hadi. The military intervention proved to be another significant turning
point for Qatari-Saudi relations: Doha played an active part in the anti-Houthi
alliance, alongside the rest of the gcc save Oman.25
The Arab Spring was a turning point for Saudi foreign policy. What began as an
opportunity to undermine Iranian regional influence became a battle to contain
Qatari expansion, carried out under the guise of stabilising the region. The
Kingdoms leaders came to see their country as having two enemies: Iran and
Islamists. King Abdullahs successor, king Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, has since
adopted a stance that is more accommodating of Islamists.26 However, such a change
from Riyadhs new leadership does not seem to have encouraged a Qatari reversion
to backing Islamists, with the emirate keeping a much lower profile in recent years.

Its failed foreign policy gambles, which left it isolated among traditional allies, have
clearly given rise to a new policy: deference to the gcc.
Sami Zahed is a Middle East analyst and a graduate of Royal Holloway. His analysis has
been published on al-Arabiyas website, and he has worked with the American Task Force
on Palestine.
notes
1. Ana Echage, Emboldened Yet Vulnerable: 17. Echage (2014), 8; Dahlia Kholaif, Will
The Changing Foreign Policies of Qatar and the gcc Survive the Qatari-Saudi
Saudi Arabia (2014), 2. Rivalry? al-Jazeera English, 18 March
2. Echage (2014), 1. 2014.
3. Hassan Hassan, Syria: The View from 18. Echage (2014), 8.
the Gulf States, European Council on 19. Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi, Qatars Annus
Foreign Relations, 13 June 2013. Horribilis, al-Monitor, 26 June 2014.
4. Echage (2014), 7. 20. Dickinson (2014).
5. Hassan (2013). 21. Echage (2014), 9.
6. Abdulmajeed al-Buluwi, Saudi, uae 22. Yaroslav Trofimov, Qatar Scales Back
Coordination Signals Differences with Role in Middle East Conflicts, The Wall
Qatar, al-Monitor, 26 May 2014. Street Journal, 28 December 2014.
7. Jane Kinninmont, Future Trends in the 23. Saudi, uae, and Bahraini Envoys Return
Gulf (2015), 56. to Qatar, al-Arabiya, 16 November 2014;
8. Echage (2014), 1. Tariq Alhomayed, The gcc Crisis and
9. Hassan Hassan, Making Qatar an Offer the Challenges Ahead, Asharq al-Awsat,
It Cant Refuse, Foreign Policy, 22 April 19 November 2014.
2014. 24. David D. Kirkpatrick, Muslim
10. Salman Aldossary, Will the Gulf Lose Brotherhood Says Qatar Ousted Its
Qatar? Asharq al-Awsat, 25 August 2014. Members, The New York Times, 13
11. Elizabeth Dickinson, How Qatar Lost September 2014.
the Middle East, Foreign Policy, 5 March 25. Saudi Decisive Storm Waged to Save
2014. Yemen, al-Arabiya, 25 March 2015.
12. Qatar Not Complying with Riyadh 26. Hussein Ibish, Saudi Arabias New
Agreement: Official, Asharq al-Awsat, 20 Sunni Alliance, The New York Times, 31
August 2014. July 2015.
13. Aldossary (2014).
14. David Hearst, Saudi Arabia Threatens
to Lay Siege to Qatar: Cooperation or
Confrontation? The Huffington Post, 3
September 2014.
15. Colin Freeman, Qatar Playing with
Fire as It Funds Syrian Islamists in
Quest for Global Influence, The
Telegraph, 27 April 2013.
16. Echage (2014), 15.

democracy in egypt: an end or a means?
Malak M. Taher
Mankind has witnessed the rise and fall of nations, the establishment and destruction
of political institutions, and the birth and extinction of ideologies. Democracy
promotion is the most recent example of such cyclical change. In recent years,
revolutions have been carried out in the name of democracy in opposition to powers
responsible for creating socio-economic crises. Yet, the uprisings that overthrew
them were accompanied by crises of legitimacy.
The Arab Spring famously engendered anger, fear, and hope among Arabs. Deep
distrust towards the political institutions managing Arab societies was a product of
structural, economic, and political crisis, with power relations enforced through
intimidation and the use of force. The degradation of material conditions, poverty,
and political disenchantment were not enough to result in such a huge transnational
social movement calling for freedom, equality, and social justice. It was the Arab
worlds emotional mobilisation that harnessed resentment against flagrant injustice
to empower purposive social change.
With reference to the Arab Spring, this paper focuses on democracys role with
respect to the nation and governance. It distinguishes democracys role as a means
to an end from that as an end in itself. The paper argues that democracy is not the
end. A nations aspiration to democratise has never been and should never be the
goal of bottom-up change in the Arab world, and authoritarianism has similarly
never served as the root cause of Arab uprisings. The Arab Spring stemmed from
abysmal material conditions that dissatisfied the people of the Arab world, from
economic and political insecurity to blatant injustice, discrediting the old regimes.
Democracy should be regarded as a tool for the achievement of political, economic,

and social progress and not as the ultimate end, with a value inherent and
independent of anything else. It should be regarded as an instrument overturning
structures of inequality, repression, and economic contraction. Indeed, the value of
this instrument depends on whether it has worked effectively to produce the
outcomes it is employed for. Sometimes, the tools at ones disposal do not function
properly or as one expects them to. Democracy and prosperity ought not be equated.
Rather, democracy should be considered one of the conditions conducive to
prosperity and one that does not always take hold.
Democracy is no straightforward affair, being a contested concept with meaning that

has evolved over time. The legal and structural aspects of democracy make it difficult

for practitioners and scholars to agree upon a single definition. For this essays
purposes, however, democracy can be defined as the rule of the majority, with respect
1
to the minority. Ronald Dworkin argues that democracy is government by the
people as a whole, acting as partners in a joint venture of self-government.2 What is
also central to understanding democracy, as Lincoln A. Mitchell suggests, is the
difference between procedural democracy laws and process and substantive
3
democracy outcomes and equality. Democracy is a socially constituted
interpretive concept. It could be implied that procedural democracy is easy to apply,
as constitutional re-arrangements could make a country nominally more democratic.
However, substantive democracy is hard to come by; it requires a change in the
mindsets of those in power and of the people themselves.
From 2011 onwards, Arab streets were filled with chants calling for bread, freedom,
and social justice, signalling discontent towards ruling regimes. A tectonic shift of
normative orientations forced those in power to permit limited democratisation.
Despite such concessions, demonstrators maintained that the shift is ongoing and
4
the end is not yet in sight. A 28-year-old protester remarked, upon having his ribs
broken by the police, I dont care just look around you. The energy of the
Egyptians is amazing. Were saying no to unemployment, no to police brutality, no
to poverty.5 The Arab revolts were a retrieval of the rights suppressed under the
duress of tyranny.
Desire for those rights does not make democracy the end goal. To be a democratic
country has never been the end goal. Even within democracies, the make-up of the
political system is applied towards the achievement of national objectives, making it
a means towards a desired end. Democracy is used to promote accountability and
transparency, making it a pathway to economic, political, and social development.
The Arabs believed that their deficit of freedom undermined development. Their
calls for freedom and democracy were an attempt to ensure participatory governance
was restored. The inherent value of democracy does not lie within itself it depends
on whether the objectives sought have been reached. The Arab uprisings constitute
efforts to channel democracy in a way that achieves desired ends. Taking advantage
of the perceived benefits of democracy and seizing opportunities to end tyranny
makes democracy an instrument used to attain certain aims.
Means other than democracy are also viable in the pursuit of such objectives,
authoritarianism included. For one, South Korea was developed under an
authoritarian regime. Democracy is not invariably appropriate for the task of
achieving prosperity. The Gulf countries have experienced decades of economic and
political prosperity despite authoritarian approaches to governance. The oil-rich and,
in the case of Qatar, natural gas-rich countries have developed their own kind of

legitimacy. The United Arab Emirates, for example, has achieved progress in
development, urbanisation, tolerance, co-existence, and sustainability. It is a prime
example of an undemocratic country realising the principles of harmony and equality
and looking ahead, not to the past, as evidenced by plans for 3d-printed buildings
and the generation of power through clean energy.
By contrast, India, one of the largest democracies in the world, continues to struggle
with poverty and a lack of efficient structural equality policies. Fifty per cent of
Indians lack proper shelter, 35 per cent lack access to water sources, and 85 per cent
7
of villages are a considerable distance away from the nearest secondary school.
Poverty and inequality have been pervasive in democratic India. Democracy is not
always the key to achieving prosperity, and should not have been viewed as the only
tool available to the Arabs when their authoritarian regimes failed them.
From another angle and with reference to substantive democracy, it can be argued
that democracy is not only a system of government that helps a country reach its
national objectives, but also a way of life among ordinary people, regardless of the
nature of the ruling regime. Indeed, democracy is a universal value. Hassan Hanafi
contends that democracy is a cognitive power before being a political power.8 It
follows that democracy is, arguably, what people make of it, and its interpretation
and implementation differ from one culture to another.
The Egyptian experience of nation-building in the twentieth century took place

under authoritarian ruler Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, a military despot. Regardless
of the political regime there, the socio-cultural revolution was embodied in the rise
of liberal thinkers like Om Kalthoum, Naguib Mahfouz, Taha Hussein, and Abbas
el-Akkad intellectuals who showed Egyptian art, music, and literature to the world.
Both economic prosperity and human development be brought about without
democratisation.
Despite the nature of its government, Egypt became a cultural power, raising well-
known and respected poets, artists, and authors that represented the nations
prosperity. Democracy cannot take credit for their emergence, and only sometimes
serves as the appropriate means to a given end. The value of democracy is not
inherent, but situational, as a tool employed to achieve political, social, and economic
objectives. Democracy is never, and should never be, called upon for its own sake. It
is called upon to accomplish an end.
Malak M. Taher is a student of international relations at King's College London. She has
interned at the Egyptian Ministry of International Cooperation.

notes
1. The Merriam-Webster definition of democracy as of April 2017.

2. Ronald Dworkin, What Is Democracy? In Constitution for a Disunited Nation: On
Hungarys 2011 Fundamental Law, edited by Gbor Attila Tth, 25-34 (2011).
3. Lincoln A. Mitchell, The Democracy Promotion Paradox (2016).
4. Anna M. Agathangelou and Nevzat Soguk, Rocking the Kasbah: Insurrectional
Politics, the Arab Streets, and Global Revolution in the 21st Century,
Globalizations 8:5 (2011): 551-58.
5. Quoted in Agathangelou and Soguk (2011).
6. Hassan Hanafi, Democracy, an End or a Tool? Oriente Moderno 87:2 (2007): 431-
36.
7. Poverty in India: Causes, Effects, Injustice, and Exclusion, Poverties, 15 October
2013.
8. Hassan (2007).

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aswaat

Kings College London

1. Introduction by Dhia Muhsin, Lincoln Pigman,

Aswaats inaugural volume features contributions from a community of scholars

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 1

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 2

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 3

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 4

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 5

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 6

Negative appraisal of president Barack Obamas Middle East policy further

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 7

1. Benjamin Grob- the Middle East, 31. Kampfner (2004), 211.

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 8

Selectorate theory offers a game theory-based examination of how sub-state actors

Offering a rather rare realist systematisation of the impact of sub-state actors,

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 9

PAssad(Win) = p(mAssad, manti-Assad) = (1 + 2 * mAssad) / (2 + 2 * mAssad + 2 * manti-Assad)

The probability that the anti-Assad faction wins is 1 PAssad(Win).

By entering the corresponding values of m into the equation, the following

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 10

EUanti-Assad(war | mAssad, manti-Assad)

EUpro-Assad(peace) = (1 x) * v + (Rpro-A / Wpro-A)

And for the anti-Assad faction as below:

EUanti-Assad(peace) = x * v + (Ranti-A / Wanti-A) .

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 11

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 12

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 13

An alternative scenario is also possible. Assads foreign backers may be inclined to

A shortcoming of this analysis concerns the intersection between aids ability to

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 14

Kirill Mazourine is a student of international relations at New York University.

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 15

No analysis of the regime and its ascendancy is complete without a look at

At best, misleading representations of the militias supporting the Assad regime

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 16

The rise of pro-Assad militias deserves much more nuanced consideration, in no

Other problems include the tendency of many militias to engage in systematic

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Finally, it is important to acknowledge the continuity of militiafication. Competition

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 18

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 19

Proto-sultanism aptly describes the political future sought by the Erdoan

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 20

His government has overseen the transformation of the Directorate of Religious

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 21

Mustafa Kemal is the pseudonym of an anonymous contributor.

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1. David Lepeska, From Atatrk to Erdogan, al-Jazeera, 22 January 2015.

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 23

Oppression of the Kurds is not limited to Turkey. Saddam Husseins violent

What is rarely addressed is religions role in the construction of Kurdish identity. It

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 24

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 25

Freedom to practice religion became more important to Kurdish nationalism as time

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 26

Indeed, socio-political tensions in Turkey represent a dichotomy between ethnic and

It appears as if the relationship between the Kurdish national movement and

aswaat | Volume 1 (2017) 27

Sam Wyatt is a student of international relations at King's College London. He plans to

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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is largely cognitive, with Israelis and Palestinians

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Interactions between statehood, territorial claims, and globalization are worth