Turco-British relations,Cold War and reshaping the Middle East: Egypt,Greece and Cyprus (1954–1958)

This article tries to shed light on Turco-British relations in the early Cold War era. It focuses on the two states’ cooperation in Middle Eastern defence, as well as their interactions with Egypt and Greece. Immediately after the Second World War, the Soviet Union and communism were accepted as common threats directed against Turkey, Greece, Britain, the entire Western camp and a broad range of Middle Eastern countries. Washington and London were in search of alliances with regional actors; however, due to the anti-Western attitudes of Egypt in particular, and the anti-Israeli attitudes of the Arabic realm in general, the West was not satisfied with the defence system established in the region. In regard to the relations between the four abovementioned states, while Turkey and Britain joined forces against the Egyptian cause in the Suez issue and the Greek cause on the Cyprus issue, Greece and Egypt sided with each other against the British positions.     

Princes,Pashas and Patriots: The Kurdish Intelligentsia,the Ottoman Empire and the National Question (1908–1914)

Abstract

This article surveys the attitude of the Ottoman-Kurdish intelligentsia and the nascent Kurdish movement towards the issue of nationality in the period between the 1908 Constitutional Revolution and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. The existing academic literature has tended to regard the Kurdish movement in this period as being primarily cultural and apolitical in orientation. However, while the majority of the Kurdish intellectual and professional classes were committed to the Ottoman polity, their activities were far from apolitical. This is not to suggest that the emergent Kurdish movement was unified. On the contrary, the often varied relationship between the Ottoman polity and different elements of the Kurdish elite resulted in a significant degree of factionalism. However, while some of this elite began to think of the Kurds as an oppressed 'minority' locked inside the Ottoman (read Turkish) 'prison house' of nations, most tended to regard the Kurds as both a distinct people and an integral part of the Ottoman 'nation'.     

The Qadi,the Big Merchant and Forbidden Interest (ribā)

While the imposition of interest on loans is expressly forbidden by the Quran, over the generations Muslims in fact found it difficult to observe this prohibition and lent to and borrowed from one another. The Muslim big merchants (tujjār), who held large amounts of liquid capital, were prominent among the lenders. The religious prohibition on the one hand, and everyday constraints on the other, caused a certain cognitive dissonance among many ulema, as manifested in the religious (shar‘i) courts. The records of these courts in various regions in the Middle East from the sixteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century include cases in which judges (qadis) exempted borrowers from full or partial repayment of interest on the grounds that a demand for payment of interest violates the precepts of Islam. The present article provides examples of such cases and discusses the possible effects of the courts’ retroactive annulment or amendment of contracts on the development of capitalist economies in Muslim countries during the nineteenth century when Middle Eastern economies began integrating into the global economic system. Inter alia, the discussion of this question sheds new light on the historians' critiques of Max Weber's observation regarding ‘Kadijustiz’ (qadi's justice) and its effect on the development of modern capitalism.     

Sovereignty–Security Nexus,Domestic Constraints,and the Taiwan Independence Policy (1988–2010)

Abstract

This article explains the rise and fall of the so-called Taiwan independence policy during the period of 1988–2010. It defines the Taiwan independence policy as an internal political move by the Taiwanese government to establish Taiwan as a separate and sovereign political entity on the world stage. It reviews two existing prevailing theses – electoral politics and shifting identity – and points out their weaknesses, the former's being its indeterminacy and unfalsifiability, and the latter's being its inadequacy to explain policy change. A new explanation focusing on relative power shift (military balance, alliance strength, and diplomatic standing) and domestic constraints (resource and political constraints) is then proposed to explain the rise and fall of the Taiwan independence policy. A brief examination of the 1988–2010 cross-strait history lends strong support to the theory.     

On race,sport, and politics in South Africa’s past and present

There has been a steady emergence of quality writing about sport, politics, and the intersection between them in South African society in recent decades. This review essay looks at a number of recent works on soccer, rugby, and cricket, placing them within a larger context of race, sport, and politics in South Africa’s past and present.