It has been almost five years now since a new collective consciousness of Arab masses transformed the political landscape of the Middle East and North Africa. In just a short period of time, the people of the Arab world protested against their rulers, putting an end to long-time authoritarian leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, while bringing others to the eve of collapse. Although the uprisings were initially successful, the people's strong will to see honour, dignity, rights, and good governance realized within their respective countries was fiercely combated by the ruling strata of these states and their strategies to ensure authoritarian survival. The changing political landscape and the dynamic processes of the Arab Spring have caught the attention of academics as well. There is a blossoming literature being written on the Arab Spring focusing on social protests, authoritarian resilience and learning, opposition strategies, the rise of non-state actors, state failure, foreign policy, and new the geopolitical landscape. Therefore, with the desire to contribute to this literature, this edited volume aims to address the changing political atmosphere and the challenges of the emerging geopolitical order, particularly focusing on Turkish foreign policy and its response to the Arab Spring. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies.

This book deals with the waves of revolutions in North Africa labelled as the Arab Spring. Each of the countries in the region was affected by the Arab Spring and has experienced specific processes and consequences. Due to the complexity of the phenomenon, any kind of comprehensive research and analyses need an interdisciplinary approach to deal with the Arab Spring from multiple perspectives. This volume brings together a group of scholars from various disciplines covering different aspects of the revolutionary changes in the North African countries. Beyond the Arab Spring in North Africa collects diverse studies with an emphasis on specificity. Chapters deal with a wide range of topics that include both minor as well as major themes. These include the formation of youth movement in Egypt long before the Arab Spring and their subsequent participation in the revolution; analysis of Tunisian women’s participation in Arab Spring events; spatial disparities in Tunisia and their impact on the revolution with special focus on Sidi Bouzid as one of the socio-economically weakest areas; rights and social status of sexual minorities in Tunisia; polemics over the role of New Media as both revolutionary and contra-revolutionary tools; broader discussion over the prospects for multilateral cooperation and regional integration in the studied area; reflection of the Arab Spring in the Czech media; impact of the work of ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq on the debates over political secularism in Islamic society; as well as a general debate over democratization in North Africa, or Arab states as such. Beyond the Arab Spring in North Africa will find its readers in all relevant social sciences dealing in various contexts with the contemporary North Africa.

The Arab Spring occurred within the context of the unravelling of the dominant 'ruling bargain' that emerged across the Middle East in the 1950s. This is being replaced by a new and in- choate system that redefines sources of authority and legitimacy through various devices (such as constitutions), experiences, and processes (mass protests, civil wars, and elections), by reassessing the roles, functions, and at times the structures of institutions (political parties and organisations, the armed forces, the executive); and by the initiative of key personalities and actors (agency). Across the Arab world and the Middle East, 'authority' and 'political legitimacy' are in flux. Where power will ultimately reside depends largely on the shape, voracity, and staying power of these new, emerging conceptions of authority. The contributors to this book examine the nature and evolution of ruling bargains, the political systems to which they gave rise, the steady unravelling of the old systems and the structural consequences thereof, and the uprisings that have engulfed much of the Middle East since December 2010.

This book presents an in-depth analysis of the role played by the EU accession process in Turkey’s democratic evolution and in the empowerment of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the early 2000s. Often moving against the grain of consolidated analytical positions, the author finds that the accession process can have a critical impact on the political evolution and institutional setting of an aspiring member state that goes well beyond the simple Europeanization process (or EU accession conditionality). In the case of Turkey, that process created the essential conditions and environment for the country’s political modernization by helping the emergence of a “periphery” (including Kurds, “conservative” Muslims and non-Muslims) that secularism had pushed into a marginal, secondary status in Turkish society. Turkey’s gradual evolution in an authoritarian direction, following the stalling of the EU accession process, offers further proof of the decisive role that the EU accession can play in a country’s democratic advancement. The book additionally indicates how Turkey’s EU-driven democratic evolution for a number of years had important implications in terms of regional and global order.

This book identifies a new Islamic form in Turkey: Muslimism. Neither fundamentalism nor liberal religion, Muslimism engages modernity through Islamic categories and practices. This new form has implications for discussions of democracy and Islam in the region, similar movements across religious traditions, and social theory on religion.

This book investigates the effects of the Arab Spring on Turkish foreign policy using a multidimensional approach that draws on a wide range of disciplines from international relations to sociology and economics. The demands for democracy that began in Tunisia, when Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in 2010, rapidly spread across the Arab Middle East and Northern Africa. In countries dominated by authoritarian regimes, a freedom and sovereignty movement led by middle-class urbanites changed the quality of politics in the region. The focus and dynamics of the Arab Spring varied across countries where large-scale demonstrations were held, such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Jordan and Bahrain. While protests in Jordan and Bahrain had few consequences, they brought about changes in governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. After the regime in Syria exerted all its strength to stay in power, the issue gained a regional, then international, dimension. The most bloody and complicated struggle caused by the wave of changes continues in Syria, with undoubtedly serious implications for Turkish foreign policy. As a counter-stance against the status quo in the Middle East, the Arab Spring has stimulated many discussions and this has led to the emergence of new regional actors.

A groundbreaking look at America’s role in the Middle East—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Rope and a Prayer Distilling eleven years of expert reporting for the New York Times, Reuters, and the Atlantic, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Rohde presents an incisive look at the calamitous privatization of the war on terror. Beyond War is a clarion call for change in American policies and attitudes toward a rapidly changing Middle East. Rohde argues that using lethal force is necessary at times, but economic growth and Muslim moderates —not American soldiers—will eradicate militancy in the long term. Vast mistakes have been made, but it is not too late. By scaling back our ambitions, focusing on economics and working with Muslim moderates, we will achieve more.

For over 60 years, Israel’s foreign policy establishment has looked at its regional policy through the lens of a geopolitical concept named "the periphery doctrine." The idea posited that due to the fundamental hostility of neighboring Arab countries, Israel ought to counterbalance this threat by engaging with the "periphery" of the Arab world through clandestine diplomacy. Based on original research in the Israeli diplomatic archives and interviews with key past and present decision-makers, this book shows that this concept of a periphery was, and remains, a core driver of Israel’s foreign policy. The periphery was borne out of the debates among Zionist circles concerning the geopolitics of the nascent Israeli State. The evidence from Israel’s contemporary policies shows that these principles survived the historical relationships with some countries (Iran, Turkey, Ethiopia) and were emulated in other cases: Azerbaijan, Greece, South Sudan, and even to a certain extent in the attempted exchanges by Israel with Gulf Arab kingdoms. The book enables readers to understand Israel’s pessimistic – or realist, in the traditional sense – philosophy when it comes to the conduct of foreign policy. The history of the periphery doctrine sheds light on fundamental issues, such as Israel’s role in the regional security system, its overreliance on military and intelligence cooperation as tools of diplomacy, and finally its enduring perception of inextricable isolation. Through a detailed appraisal of Israel’s periphery doctrine from its birth in the fifties until its contemporary renaissance, this book offers a new perspective on Israel’s foreign policy, and will appeal to students and scholars of Middle East Politics and History, and International Relations.

This report aims to inform and stimulate the debate on key policy priorities for poverty reduction and food security in light of the Arab Awakening. Its findings are based on an innovative combination of datasets and rigorous economic analysis. Results suggest that poverty and income inequality in the Arab world are likely higher than official numbers have long suggested. Given that poverty indicators seem to be misleading for many countries in the region, the report introduces a new welfare measure reflecting food insecurity risks at both national and household levels to classify Arab countries into five risk groups. Regression analyses further show that, unlike in the rest of the world, manufacturing- and service sectorled growth, rather than agriculture-led growth, is most pro-poor in Arab countries. In addition, high levels of public spending in the Arab world do not do as much to stimulate growth as in other world regions, particularly in the case of education. Three key policy recommendations emerge from this report: (1) improve data and capacity as the basis for evidence-based decisionmaking, (2) foster growth that enhances food security at national and household levels, and (3) significantly enhance the efficiency and retool the allocation of public spending. More generally, the report argues that the region urgently needs national dialogues about societies' joint vision and economic development strategies. Successful design and implementation of these strategies will require visionary leadership, sound laws and institutions, politicians who are accountable and listen to the voices of the people, and civil society that is patient and accepts the tenets of democracy. The Arab world is awakeit is time to move forward.

The first fundamental truth about the "Arab Spring" is that there never was one. The salient fact of the Middle East, the only one, is Islam. The Islam that shapes the Middle East inculcates in Muslims the self-perception that they are members of a civilization implacably hostile to the West. The United States is a competitor to be overcome, not the herald of a culture to be embraced. Is this self-perception based on objective truth? Does it reflect an accurate construction of Islam? It is over these questions that American officials and Western intellectuals obsess. Yet the questions are irrelevant. This is not a matter of right or wrong, of some posture or policy whose subtle tweaking or outright reversal would change the facts on the ground. This is simply, starkly, the way it is. Every human heart does not yearn for freedom. In the Islam of the Middle East, "freedom" means something very nearly the opposite of what the concept connotes to Westerners – it is the freedom that lies in total submission to Allah and His law. That law, sharia, is diametrically opposed to core components of freedom as understood in the West – beginning with the very idea that man is free to make law for himself, irrespective of what Allah has ordained. It is thus delusional to believe, as the West's Arab Spring fable insists, that the region teems with Jamal al-Madisons holding aloft the lamp of liberty. Do such revolutionary reformers exist? Of course they do . . . but in numbers barely enough to weave a fictional cover story. When push came to shove – and worse – the reformers were overwhelmed, swept away by a tide of Islamic supremacism, the dynamic, consequential mass movement that beckons endless winter. That is the real story of the Arab Spring – that, and the Pandora's Box that opens when an American administration aligns with that movement, whose stated goal is to destroy America.