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President Erdogan's victory in the April 2017 referendum granted him sweeping new powers across Turkey. The constitutional reforms transform the country from a parliamentary democracy into a "Turkish style" presidential republic. Despite being democratically elected, Turkey's ruling AKP party has moved towards increasingly authoritarian measures. During the coup attempt in July 2016, the AKP government declared a state of emergency which Erdogan saw as an opportunity to purge the public sector of pro-Gulenist individuals and criminalise opposition groups including Kurds, Alevites, leftists and liberals. The country experienced political turmoil and rapid transformation as a result. This book...
Based on a connected, relational and multidisciplinary approach (history, ethnography, political science, and theology), Mission and Preaching tackles the notion of mission through the analysis of preaching activities and religious dynamics across Christianity, Islam and Judaism, in the Middle East and North Africa, from the late 19th century until today. The 13 chapters reveal points of contact, exchange, and circulation, considering the MENA region as a central observatory. The volume offers a new chronology of the missionary phenomenon and calls for further cross-cutting approaches to decompartmentalise it, arguing that these approaches constitute useful entry points to shed new light on religious dynamics and social transformations in the MENA region. Contributors Necati Alkan, Federico Alpi, Gabrielle Angey, Armand Aupiais, Katia Boissevain, Naima Bouras, Philippe Bourmaud, Gaetan du Roy, Séverine Gabry-Thienpont, Maria-Chiara Giorda, Bernard Heyberger, Emir Mahieddin, Michael Marten, Norig Neveu, Maria Chiara Rioli, Karène Sanchez Summerer, Heather Sharkey, Ester Sigillò, Sébastien Tank Storper, Emanuela Trevisan Semi, Annalaura Turiano and Vincent Vilmain.
This book sheds light on how Hizbullah has transformed religious rituals and supernatural narratives in order to mobilize the Shi’a community. The author examines how Hizbullah has altered its institutional structure and reconstructed Lebanese Shi’a history in a manner similar to that of nationalist movements. Through fieldwork and research, the project finds that Hizbullah has centralized around the concept of Wilayat al-Fagih (Gaurdianship of the Islamic Jurists): in essence, the absolute authority of Iran’s Supreme Leader over the Shi’a “nation.”
An incisive account of Erdoğan's Turkey - showing how its troubling transformation may be short-lived Since coming to power in 2002 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has overseen a radical transformation of Turkey. Once a pillar of the Western alliance, the country has embarked on a militaristic foreign policy, intervening in regional flashpoints from Nagorno-Karabakh to Libya. And its democracy, sustained by the aspiration to join the European Union, has given way to one-man rule. Dimitar Bechev traces the political trajectory of Erdoğan's populist regime, from the era of reform and prosperity in the 2000s to the effects of the war in neighboring Syria. In a tale of missed opportunities, Bechev explores how Turkey parted ways with the United States and Europe, embraced Putin's Russia and other revisionist powers, and replaced a frail democratic regime with an authoritarian one. Despite this, he argues that Turkey's democratic instincts are resilient, its economic ties to Europe are as strong as ever, and Erdoğan will fail to achieve a fully autocratic regime.
"As Turkey's regional and global roles and influence growth, this volume provides a critical understanding of how the current Turkish foreign policy within the "Enterprising and Humanitarian Framework" operates in practice to achieve Turkey's foreign policy ambitions"--
This book explores the stagnation of democracy in the Western Balkans over the last decade. The author maps regional features of rising authoritarianism that mirror larger global trends and, in doing so, outlines the core mechanisms of authoritarian rule in the Balkans, with a particular focus on Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. These mechanisms include the creation of constant crises, the use of external powers to balance outside influences, as well as state capture. The authoritarian patterns exist alongside formal democratic institutions, resulting in competitive authoritarian regimes that use social polarization to retain power. As the countries of the Western Balkans aspire, at least formally, to join the European Union, authoritarianism is often informal.
Presenting the current debate about cities in the Middle East from Sana’a, Beirut and Jerusalem to Cairo, Marrakesh and Gaza, the book explores urban planning and policy, migration, gender and identity as well as politics and economics of urban settings in the region. This handbook moves beyond essentialist and reductive analyses of identity, urban politics, planning, and development in cities in the Middle East, and instead offers critical engagement with both historical and contemporary urban processes in the region. Approaching "Cities" as multi-dimensional sites, products of political processes, knowledge production and exchange, and local and global visions as well as spatial artefact...
The National Politics of EU Enlargement in the Western Balkans examines the way in which a number of European Union member states, including Germany and France, formulate their policies towards enlargement in the Western Balkans. The six countries of the Western Balkans – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – are on course to become the next members of the European Union. While there has been a lot of work on the ways in which these countries are preparing for accession, and how the EU as a whole approaches the question of expansion, very little attention has been paid to how individual EU member states regard enlargement into a region that pre...
This book presents gendered readings of cultural manifestations that relate to the Ottoman era as a preferred past and a model for the future. By means of claims of authenticity and the distribution of imaginaries of a homogenous desirable alternative to everyday concerns, as well as invoking an imperial past at the national level. In this mode of thinking, shaped around a polarised worldview, Republican ideals serve as a counter-image to the promoted splendour and harmony of the Ottomans. Yet, the stereotypical gender roles inextricably linked with this neo-Ottoman imaginary remain largely unacknowledged, dissimulated in the construction of the desire of an idealised past. Our adaption of a cultural studies perspective in this volume puts special emphasis on agency, gender, and authority. It provides a shared ground for the interrogation, through the contributions comprising this project of knowledge production about the past in light of what constitutes acceptable legitimacy in interpreting not only the canonical literature, but history at large.
This book introduces the reader to the past and present of Jewish life in Turkey and to Turkish Jewish diaspora communities in Israel, Europe, Latin America and the United States. It surveys the history of Jews in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, examining the survival of Jewish communities during the dissolution of the empire and their emigration to America, Europe, and Israel. In the cases discussed, members of these communities often sought and seek close connections with Turkey, even if those ‘ties that bind’ are rarely reciprocated by Turkish governments. Contributors also explore Turkish Jewishness today, as it is lived in Israel and Turkey, and as found in ‘places of memory’ in many cities in Turkey, where Jews no longer exist today.