نشریه مطالعات خاورمیانه
سال هجدهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 67، زمستان 1390)

Disputes among the Palestinian gr.oups have always been one of the dilemmas faced by the Palestinian people for concentrating their strength against Israel. Since the occupation of Palestine to the present, the quality of a state that can realize Palestinian rights and save them from insecurity and displacement has been not only the main concern of the residents of that land, but also subject of the resolution of a permanent problem in the Middle East. The most important peace plan between the Palestinians and Israel as advocated by the United States and a number of Arab states is the establishment of two Jewish and Palestinian states in the occupied territories according to the pre-196 war borders. It has been emphasized in many Arab League meetings that unless Israeli military forces withdraw from the Arab territories, they will not be willing to establish relations with Israel. So far Israel has proved that it is not interested in flexibility concerning its security borders, maintaining that only through the use of force and military might, it can attain security benefits. On the other hand, since Israel is regarded as the U.S. strategic agent in the Middle East, any decision on the question of Palestine will be possible just with U.S. approval. Under current circumstances, agreement among the Palestinian groups is understandable in light of the aforementioned points. In this paper, various aspects of the national reconciliation among the Palestinian groups and its impact on the future of Palestine will be examined.

This research seeks to examine challenges to democratization in Iraq from the perspective of constructivist theory of international relations. Iraqi political currents and parties have failed to form a consistent political structure in the country through the democratic functions after U.S. invasion in such a way that after the 2010 parliamentary elections, it took nine months for the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to form his second government. In this period, the political parties and currents were engaged in bargaining and insistence on gaining their shares. In this paper, the author argues that inconsistency in the sociopolitical fabric and structure, despotic and absolute culture governing the currents and disruption in the proper trend of nation-state-building have been the serious challenges to democratization in the country. Adopting and applying the constructivist theory and explaining its three parameters (social structure, identity of actors as well as the nature of structureagency), the author concludes that Iraq’s uneven social structure encourages competitive behavior by the actors including the domestic and foreign ones and on the other hand this competitive behavior has resulted in the formation of a structure based on recognizing this incongruity.

Iraq’s social fabric and geographic mosaic distinguish it from many other countries. Regional actors also have divergent national and security interests towards the Iraqi developments. Iraqi Sunnis have ethnic ties with the Arab World, but the Shia who constitute the majority of Iraqi population do not possess a favorable historical mentality towards the Arab World; for this reason, they feel more connected to Iran. As a minority group, the Kurds have also relations with Iran, Turkey and Syria. Iran and Saudi Arabia are the major regional actors in the Iraqi scene, which have vested interests in Iraq and large capability for exerting influence in the country. Under the Ba’athist rule, given the authoritarian nature of the Iraqi political system, there was little possibility for influencing the Iraqi groups from the outside, but in the current period, this possibility is high. This paper seeks to identify the factors influencing the foreign policies pursued by the Islamic Republic of Iran and Saudi Arabia towards Iraq. For this reason, after three important variables in the foreign policies of these two states including geopolitical and geo-economic location of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two countries’ relations with the trans-regional powers and their political ideologies are examined, their foreign policies towards Iraq will be compared.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has redefined its goals and strategies recently according to the requirements of the post- Cold War world. The post-Cold War world for NATO means a world without a rival and with new threats, which would demand a new identity. NATO took advantage of this chance and by adapting its goals and threats to the goals and threats facing the international community – i.e. those of the United Nations – including war on terror, fundamentalism and weapons of mass destruction, it has presented itself as the international police and the only force protecting world security. NATO has intervened in various regions in its traditional and strategic sphere, but intervention in Libya has been the first case of power projection and a trial for NATO in line of its new redefined identity. Ultimately, NATO seeks to redefine the principles governing the international system (Westphalia system) in order to present itself as the hegemonic power in the new system (protection system), while eradicating the existing anarchy.

The rise of political Islam in a number of Muslim countries put this phenomenon in contrast with the principles of democracy as the most important value and tenet in the modern Western teachings. Political equality is one of the basic pillars of democracy, which is believed by a range of thinkers in both the Westernand Muslim Worlds to be in contrast with political Islam. They have portrayed political Islam as lacking the necessary capacity for realizing political equality. Turkey represents one of the unique examples where the logic of contrast between political Islam and the democratic principles has been challenged considerably. In this writing, using a descriptive-analytical approach, the author has discussed the performance of the Justice and Development Party in materializing the principle of political equality. The author has shown that in theoretical sense, political equality has been emphasized by the Party leaders in their platforms and campaign statements. In practical sense, the Party’s experiences in realizing political equality such as the right to elect, the right to be elected and to assume political positions have been analyzed and assessed. The research findings show the Party’s strong will and determination to realize and expand political equality in the aforementioned areas.

In a historical perspective, since the Westernist reforms were initiated in Turkey particularly under Kemal Ataturk, significant changes took place in the Turkish educational policies along with sociopolitical transformation. By adopting a secular national educational system, Kemal Ataturk sought to realize his goals on the creation of an independent, realist and future-looking nation-state that would transform the Turkish people to a unified and civilized nation-state in the contemporary world. In this period, education became a means for expanding and indoctrinating opinions, thoughts, policies and ideals of government led by Kemal Ataturk. Overall educational policies were adopted by the government, which had a full monopolistic dominance over educational affairs. Therefore, the Turkish educational system underwent fundamental changes in its transition from the Ottoman rule to a republic; hence the educational system in this period became a governmental, secular one. In spite of the efforts made in this period for expanding education, the statistics do not reveal essential changes in this regard.

There are two major paradigms for explaining the rise of Islamism since the 1970s including the responsive paradigm and the civilizational clash paradigm. Due to lack of a comprehensive, logical and realistic outlook on Islam, mere reliance on the conducts of extremist Islamists (not the moderates and reformists) and authoritarianism governing the political and governmental sphere, absolutely negative glance at Islam and the Muslim World arising from a Western orientation, inattention to the historical domestic and foreign roots causing this phenomenon, the civilizational clash paradigm lacks the empirical verification needed for general acceptance. In contrast, the responsive paradigm has received further acceptance because it paid attention to the historical domestic and foreign roots influencing the phenomenon since the 1960s onwards. The author believes that although the responsive paradigm is more acceptable, in order to become the dominant paradigm, some necessities seem indispensable: lack of mere historical reductionism, attention to significant theoretical arguments concerning the consistency between Islam and democracy consistent with the cultural, value and religious grounds in the Muslim countries and attention to further historical verification. In this writing, the hypothesis will be tested with reference to the theoretical arguments, historical evidence and empirical studies.