Condtradictions- Middle Eastern Politics and Society

Over the next few weeks I  am adding a new feature that I will update periodically. I call it “Contradictions.” The idea of the section it to give you an idea of how complicated Turkey is by dissecting some of my courses and discussing their unique nature being taught here in Turkey. And so, here goes the first:

Pols 317 Middle Eastern Politics and Society: Now, you’d expect a Middle East class to be pretty straightforward over here. What should the class contain? An outline of the region, the political forces that exist there and why conflicts arise. But, instead (at least up until this point) we have gotten a heavy dose of lecture about European domination along with numerous articles about the way Europe views the region. At this point, it starts to get confusing. Europe dominated the Middle East- well, Turkey is the Mid-East but, it is also Europe. It held a large empire (the ottoman one) that dominated the whole of Syria and Egypt yet, it was dominated too by the British at times. Therefore, the study domination becomes increasingly complex over here and it’s starting to get somewhat baffling. Midterm coming up on Thursday too…