2013/05/01 by Aviel Roshwald · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies #Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics #Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts #Middle East #Nationalism #Political science #History #Ancient history #Law #Politics
paper · doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199209194.013.0011
openalex publication_date 2013/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
Abstract The period under consideration was one of profound political, ethnographic, and ideological transformation in the Middle East. The centralizing policies and Turkish-nationalist agenda of the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (Young Turks) in the years following the Ottoman Empire’s 1908 Revolution led to tensions with sociopolitical elites in the empire’s Arabic-speaking regions. Ottomans’ entry into the First World War was the occasion for the organization of the Armenian Genocide, while the Greco-Turkish conflict of the early 1920s culminated in the massive transfer of Muslim and GreekOrthodox populations between Greece and Turkey. Ottomans’ defeat in the First World War also led to the partition of the Arab Middle East between Britain and France under the cover of League of Nations mandates. Britain’s Balfour Declaration created a framework for the resumption and acceleration of Jewish immigration to, and land purchase in, Palestine under the auspices of the Zionist movement. With the disappearance of the Ottomans’ pan-Islamic and supra-national framework of political legitimacy, the region’s Arab elites embraced the nationalist idea as the organizing principle of their political praxis. Yet the division of the region into separate European-ruled territorial entities (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Palestine) created long-term tensions between the ideals of Pan-Arab unity and loyalty to one’s individual state.