The Last Word with... Prof. Ehud R. Toledano

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Mavi Boncuk |
The Last Word with... Prof. Ehud R. Toledano[1]

Ehud R. Toledano is professor of Ottoman and Middle Eastern history and the Director of the Program in Ottoman and Turkish Studies at Tel Aviv University. He spoke to Turkish Review about nation-states in the modern Middle East.

With the rise of structures like Hamas and the Islamic State and the rising number of failed states in the region, the future of the Middle East seems increasingly unknowable. Do you expect further disintegration or the emergence of supranational bodies?

There is no denying that the national state (or nation-state) has been facing major challenges since the beginning of the Arab Spring uprisings. These have come from two different sources: Supranational movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State and subnational groups within existing states that seek to split them up along ethnic, tribal, religious or sectarian lines, such as in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen. At the same time, it is quite remarkable that the actual breakdown of states in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has not occurred, even if in practice some of those states have lost control over significant parts of their sovereign territory. The states that were established by post-World War I agreements have enjoyed international legitimacy and the leading powers have shown great reluctance to split them up and carve out new entities instead. Although borders -- such as those of Libya and Yemen or between Syria and Iraq -- have largely remained only on maps, the desire to resuscitate them and the states among which they had been drawn still seems to have force behind it. At this point in time, international attempts are still ongoing to defeat Islamic State and the Houthis, and to negotiate settlements in Libya and Syria. It is too early to predict at this stage which of the old states will survive and which will disintegrate.

Are there intrinsic reasons for the failure of nation states in the Middle East?

National or nation states require the presence of a dominant, hegemonic national group to uphold them while offering minorities a share in the “nation” with equal rights and economic opportunities to integrate and prosper. Except for Egypt, Israel and Tunisia, none of the other MENA states have clear national majorities, and when discontent from within bursts out, nation states have failed to contain them and retain control over their entire domains. The national movements and nationalist ideologies that had sustained them have failed to take root and create genuine commitment to the nation state. Decades of repression have thus been required to maintain the appearance of national unity, and when the state has been weakened by uprisings against that repression -- which also applied to large parts of the national majority groups -- the specter of disintegration has loomed large.

For established states like Israel and Syria, what poses the greater security threat: nation-states or non-state actors?

Faced with enormous domestic and foreign challenges, the national states in the Middle East and North Africa have virtually lost their capacity to threaten the security of established states such as Turkey, Iran and Israel. It is then the activities of non-state actors that constitute the only serious threat remaining in the region. These are relatively easy to handle by the strong states mentioned above, perhaps with the exception of Turkey’s inability to deal with the Kurdish issue. Without substantial international and regional intervention, the weaker states in the region might collapse and disintegrate. As you have suggested, then, weaker enemies are more dangerous than hostile stronger state actors.

Do you foresee similar processes in Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other MENA countries?

Lebanon has suffered from the current ills of the region for decades due to its internal communal splits and weak central government, and it is currently attempting to avoid a “Syrian future.” Jordan might face a serious Islamist challenge, either from within or from ISIL, but it seems strong enough at the moment to sustain itself, with the tacit support of its immediate neighbors, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The latter is actively resisting any attempts to destabilize its vicinity, such as in Yemen and the Gulf, and with Arab and US backing is likely, at least in the near future, to survive.

Is there a stable and sustainable alternative to the nation-state in the Middle East?

Thus far -- and we need to acknowledge that these are still early days -- no such alternative has emerged. Sunni caliphal frameworks are clearly unsustainable, as is the Iranian Shiite one. The question is how stable those national states that will survive the current upheavals can possibly be. In the long run, it seems that if these states do survive, a new social, political, economic and cultural accommodation among the various groups within them will be required in order to enable a sustainable degree of stability.

[1] Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East | EHUD R. TOLEDANO
9780295976426
softcover only
PUBLISHED: 1997

BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION: 204 pp.
CONTENTS

In the Ottoman Empire, many members of the ruling elite were legally slaves of the sultan and therefore could, technically, be ordered to surrender their labor, their property, or their lives at any moment. Nevertheless, slavery provided a means of social mobility, conferring status and political power within the military, the bureaucracy, or the domestic household and formed an essential part of patronage networks. Ehud R. Toledano's exploration of slavery from the Ottoman viewpoint is based on extensive research in British, French, and Turkish archives and offers rich, original, and important insights into Ottoman life and thought.


In an attempt to humanize the narrative and take it beyond the plane of numbers, tables and charts, Toledano examines the situations of individuals representing the principal realms of Ottoman slavery, female harem slaves, the sultan's military and civilian kuls, court and elite eunuchs, domestic slaves, Circassian agricaultural slaves, slave dealers, and slave owners. Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East makes available new and significantly revised studies on nineteenth-century Middle Eastern slavery and suggests general approaches to the study of slavery in different cultures.