Is There a Place Called Middle East
Content
Is There a Place Called 'the Middle East'?
Sedat Laciner
printable version
2 June 2006
The regions, in geographical and political terms, are classified
according to their common and similar characteristics. For instance,
‘continents’ are vast territories surrounded by seas. Peninsulas,
mountains, rivers etc. determine the boundaries of geographical and
political regions. Religions, sects or languages and dialects etc. may
also be used to define a region (as for Islamic World, Latin America
etc.). The income level is also useful for defining regions (like NorthSouth). In short, for a territory to be distinctive from the others, it
must have some meaningful particularities or at least some common
characteristics.
When considered on the basis of these criteria, there is no region
called the Middle East. Such a name was even non-existent up until
the 20th Century. If we examine it carefully, the region presented in
the recent years as “the Greater Middle East” is formed of different
regions and the commonalities among the countries and people of
the region, contrary to the general view, are quite few:
This so-called region neighbors two oceans (Indian and Atlantic) and
six seas (Mediterranean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Black Sea, Aegean
Sea and the Caspian Sea). It extends to three continents (Africa, Asia
and Europe). It consists of ten sub-regions (Southern and Northern
Caucasus, Northern Africa, Arabia, Greater Palestine and Syria,
Mesopotamia, the Caspian Basin, Central Asia (Turkistan), Indian
Peninsula). Three monotheistic religions (Islam, Christianity and
Judaism), with their numerous sects and schools of thought, exist in
this region. Thousands of religious and moral faith, including atheism
and paganism, are practiced in this wide geography and thus, it is
one of the largest laboratories of the world. Although viewed by the
West as all-Arab, the region consists of tens of different ethniclinguistic communities, with Turks, Arabs and Persians as the main
ones.
In other words, the region named as “the Greater Middle East” is,
perhaps, the last geography to be named as a region in terms of
homogeneity. As a matter of fact, it will be easily understood how
different countries we are talking about when we compare the AfroArabic culture of Sudan and Franco-Afro-Arabic culture of Tunisia. Or
when Turkey and Afghanistan is compared, it will be easily noticed
how different these two countries are. It is equally strange to
compare Egypt and Azerbaijan and to address them within the same
region. Saudi Arabia and Kyrgyzstan, Cyprus and Qatar are too
different to be included in the same region.
So, why is this claim? Why everybody keeps on insisting on saying
the Middle East? How did this region that cannot be a region emerge?
And while the Middle East cannot be a region, how did this “Greater
Middle East” emerge?
The Midde East: An Anglo-American Invention
As we pointed out before, the term “Middle East” was not pronounced
until the 20th Century. If it is compared with the names Anatolia,
Mesopotamia or Caucasus, it can be argued that the “Middle East” is
an artificial, produced, or even invented term. As for all the
inventions, there are expectations from this invention as well. The
term has a function and considered from this point, the region called
the “Middle East”, in fact, means Britain, and then American Zone of
Interest.
The French, up until the beginning of the 20th Century, made up the
term “Near East” for the Ottoman territories. This territory begins
where the Ottoman territory begins but its end point was not defined.
There is agreement that regions like China and Japan are Far East.
Particularly, the economic and military expansion of the British
Empire towards China and its periphery in the 19th Century led to
more frequent use of the distinction between the Near East and Far
East.
The expression “Middle East” was first seen in September 1902, in
London based National Review journal. The “inventor” of the
expression was a naval military officer and scholar Alfred Thayer
Mahan (1840-1914). Mahan is the owner of the theory that the ruler
of the world would be the power which ruled the seas. Mahan, who
especially specialized on the naval force of the British Empire, was
not an ordinary scholar. During his three-day visit to Britain in 1894,
the British showed him close interest; he met with important
personalities including the premier and the leader of the opposition
and discussed significant issues with them. Cambridge and Oxford
universities also granted him honorary doctorate title. The Times
newspaper went even as far as comparing him with Copernicus.
The name of Mahan’s article in National Review was “The Persian Gulf
and International Relations”. For Mahan, Britain, which needed to
assure the security of India and Far East, needed to keep the route to
these regions secure as well. And this would happen by making the
Persian Gulf secure. Russia’s trans-Siberian line and its advance in
the Central Asia in particular made the Russians get dangerously
closer to the Pacific and India. In this context, Persian Gulf was the
most important “jump stone” after the Suez Canal for passage to
India. In order to contain the Russians, the Britain should, if
necessary, cooperate with the Germans and watch out for the
Russians. Hence for Mahan, here was “the Middle East”, that is,
Persian Gulf and its periphery. According to this view, “the Middle
East” would be most useful in keeping the Russians away from the
Pacific and India. It also had a strategic significance in the
preservation of the domination in the seas.
Mahan’s “Middle East” term attracted wide interest and The Times
republished the article, then it published Vanatine Iganitius Chirol’s
(1852-1929) articles “The Middle Eastern Question”. Later on, this
article serial was collected in a book named “The Middle East
Question or Some Problems of Indian Defence” in 1903. Chirol’s
“Middle East” was larger than that of Mahan’s. Chirol, when using the
term “Middle East”, not only implied the Persian Gulf but also all the
territories on the way to India, that is, Iraq, Eastern Arabia,
Afghanistan, Tibet and other regions of Asia. So, Chirol had a “much
more enlarged Middle East concept” and his “Middle East” was also
appropriate for new enlargements. According to Chirol, Anatolia and
the Balkans were “the Near East”.
For Chirol, the most important function of the Middle East was the
protection of India. But Russia’s exploitation of oil in Baku, the
Caucasus was also an important factor. Russia’s oil wealth was a
significant superiority and Britain had to “take care of” the Caucasus
in a short while. Moreover, the Germans were getting stronger in the
Near East, that is, in Anatolia and the Balkans and “the Middle East”
would be a great acquisition for this “attack”. Finally, Chirol touched
upon the importance of the Middle East while the rise of Japan in the
Far East was taken into account.
The Greater Middle East Zone of Interest
In short, the Middle East was “British Zone of Interest”. Apart from
that, it had no distinctive geographical or political peculiarity
originating from its own. A non-“regional” power was giving a name
and a mission to a territory which it was paying attention to for its
own interests.
The Britain’s Middle East concept expanded as far as Egypt during
and after the First World War. The increasing importance of oil and
the World War were influential in the expansion of the definition of
the region. The US used the terms “Near East” and “Middle East”
together in the wake of the Second World War. But in essence,
Britain’s “zone of interest” passed to the US hereafter. Now, it was
the US which would define and expand the term.
To put it short, there is no region as Middle East in fact. The Middle
East is neither “the middle of the East”, nor it is a region with
homogeneous characteristics. The Middle East is the name given to a
“zone of interest” and it implies an appetite which has no sense of
getting full. The more the appetite grows, the larger the region
becomes.
Note: For further information about the emergence of the term
“Middle East”, see: Roger Adelson, “London and The Invention of the
Middle East: Money, Power and War, 1902-1922” (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press: 1995).
e-mail: [email protected]
Translated by Noyan Ozkaya, USAK 2 June 2006
Fuente: http://www.turkishweekly.net/print.asp?type=4&id=2117
Sedat Laciner
printable version
2 June 2006
The regions, in geographical and political terms, are classified
according to their common and similar characteristics. For instance,
‘continents’ are vast territories surrounded by seas. Peninsulas,
mountains, rivers etc. determine the boundaries of geographical and
political regions. Religions, sects or languages and dialects etc. may
also be used to define a region (as for Islamic World, Latin America
etc.). The income level is also useful for defining regions (like NorthSouth). In short, for a territory to be distinctive from the others, it
must have some meaningful particularities or at least some common
characteristics.
When considered on the basis of these criteria, there is no region
called the Middle East. Such a name was even non-existent up until
the 20th Century. If we examine it carefully, the region presented in
the recent years as “the Greater Middle East” is formed of different
regions and the commonalities among the countries and people of
the region, contrary to the general view, are quite few:
This so-called region neighbors two oceans (Indian and Atlantic) and
six seas (Mediterranean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Black Sea, Aegean
Sea and the Caspian Sea). It extends to three continents (Africa, Asia
and Europe). It consists of ten sub-regions (Southern and Northern
Caucasus, Northern Africa, Arabia, Greater Palestine and Syria,
Mesopotamia, the Caspian Basin, Central Asia (Turkistan), Indian
Peninsula). Three monotheistic religions (Islam, Christianity and
Judaism), with their numerous sects and schools of thought, exist in
this region. Thousands of religious and moral faith, including atheism
and paganism, are practiced in this wide geography and thus, it is
one of the largest laboratories of the world. Although viewed by the
West as all-Arab, the region consists of tens of different ethniclinguistic communities, with Turks, Arabs and Persians as the main
ones.
In other words, the region named as “the Greater Middle East” is,
perhaps, the last geography to be named as a region in terms of
homogeneity. As a matter of fact, it will be easily understood how
different countries we are talking about when we compare the AfroArabic culture of Sudan and Franco-Afro-Arabic culture of Tunisia. Or
when Turkey and Afghanistan is compared, it will be easily noticed
how different these two countries are. It is equally strange to
compare Egypt and Azerbaijan and to address them within the same
region. Saudi Arabia and Kyrgyzstan, Cyprus and Qatar are too
different to be included in the same region.
So, why is this claim? Why everybody keeps on insisting on saying
the Middle East? How did this region that cannot be a region emerge?
And while the Middle East cannot be a region, how did this “Greater
Middle East” emerge?
The Midde East: An Anglo-American Invention
As we pointed out before, the term “Middle East” was not pronounced
until the 20th Century. If it is compared with the names Anatolia,
Mesopotamia or Caucasus, it can be argued that the “Middle East” is
an artificial, produced, or even invented term. As for all the
inventions, there are expectations from this invention as well. The
term has a function and considered from this point, the region called
the “Middle East”, in fact, means Britain, and then American Zone of
Interest.
The French, up until the beginning of the 20th Century, made up the
term “Near East” for the Ottoman territories. This territory begins
where the Ottoman territory begins but its end point was not defined.
There is agreement that regions like China and Japan are Far East.
Particularly, the economic and military expansion of the British
Empire towards China and its periphery in the 19th Century led to
more frequent use of the distinction between the Near East and Far
East.
The expression “Middle East” was first seen in September 1902, in
London based National Review journal. The “inventor” of the
expression was a naval military officer and scholar Alfred Thayer
Mahan (1840-1914). Mahan is the owner of the theory that the ruler
of the world would be the power which ruled the seas. Mahan, who
especially specialized on the naval force of the British Empire, was
not an ordinary scholar. During his three-day visit to Britain in 1894,
the British showed him close interest; he met with important
personalities including the premier and the leader of the opposition
and discussed significant issues with them. Cambridge and Oxford
universities also granted him honorary doctorate title. The Times
newspaper went even as far as comparing him with Copernicus.
The name of Mahan’s article in National Review was “The Persian Gulf
and International Relations”. For Mahan, Britain, which needed to
assure the security of India and Far East, needed to keep the route to
these regions secure as well. And this would happen by making the
Persian Gulf secure. Russia’s trans-Siberian line and its advance in
the Central Asia in particular made the Russians get dangerously
closer to the Pacific and India. In this context, Persian Gulf was the
most important “jump stone” after the Suez Canal for passage to
India. In order to contain the Russians, the Britain should, if
necessary, cooperate with the Germans and watch out for the
Russians. Hence for Mahan, here was “the Middle East”, that is,
Persian Gulf and its periphery. According to this view, “the Middle
East” would be most useful in keeping the Russians away from the
Pacific and India. It also had a strategic significance in the
preservation of the domination in the seas.
Mahan’s “Middle East” term attracted wide interest and The Times
republished the article, then it published Vanatine Iganitius Chirol’s
(1852-1929) articles “The Middle Eastern Question”. Later on, this
article serial was collected in a book named “The Middle East
Question or Some Problems of Indian Defence” in 1903. Chirol’s
“Middle East” was larger than that of Mahan’s. Chirol, when using the
term “Middle East”, not only implied the Persian Gulf but also all the
territories on the way to India, that is, Iraq, Eastern Arabia,
Afghanistan, Tibet and other regions of Asia. So, Chirol had a “much
more enlarged Middle East concept” and his “Middle East” was also
appropriate for new enlargements. According to Chirol, Anatolia and
the Balkans were “the Near East”.
For Chirol, the most important function of the Middle East was the
protection of India. But Russia’s exploitation of oil in Baku, the
Caucasus was also an important factor. Russia’s oil wealth was a
significant superiority and Britain had to “take care of” the Caucasus
in a short while. Moreover, the Germans were getting stronger in the
Near East, that is, in Anatolia and the Balkans and “the Middle East”
would be a great acquisition for this “attack”. Finally, Chirol touched
upon the importance of the Middle East while the rise of Japan in the
Far East was taken into account.
The Greater Middle East Zone of Interest
In short, the Middle East was “British Zone of Interest”. Apart from
that, it had no distinctive geographical or political peculiarity
originating from its own. A non-“regional” power was giving a name
and a mission to a territory which it was paying attention to for its
own interests.
The Britain’s Middle East concept expanded as far as Egypt during
and after the First World War. The increasing importance of oil and
the World War were influential in the expansion of the definition of
the region. The US used the terms “Near East” and “Middle East”
together in the wake of the Second World War. But in essence,
Britain’s “zone of interest” passed to the US hereafter. Now, it was
the US which would define and expand the term.
To put it short, there is no region as Middle East in fact. The Middle
East is neither “the middle of the East”, nor it is a region with
homogeneous characteristics. The Middle East is the name given to a
“zone of interest” and it implies an appetite which has no sense of
getting full. The more the appetite grows, the larger the region
becomes.
Note: For further information about the emergence of the term
“Middle East”, see: Roger Adelson, “London and The Invention of the
Middle East: Money, Power and War, 1902-1922” (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press: 1995).
e-mail: [email protected]
Translated by Noyan Ozkaya, USAK 2 June 2006
Fuente: http://www.turkishweekly.net/print.asp?type=4&id=2117
