Nationalism, Sectarianism, and Identity Politics in the Middle East

In the aftermath of the Islamic State’s takeover of large swaths of Iraq and Syria, Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced, “This blessed advance will not stop until we hit the last nail in the coffin of the Sykes-Picot conspiracy.” Not only leaders from the region itself, but many contemporary scholars and policymakers have attributed the current instability in the Middle East to the drawing of artificial borders for new nation-states in the aftermath of WWI, pointing to the ethnic and religious tensions that have developed by competing communities within these new countries. This oft-cited narrative of ancient ethnic hatreds and religious fanaticism betrays a much more nuanced reality, one in which the Middle East of a century ago had already experienced radical social transformations as part of the late Ottoman Empire since the early 19^th century. When President Woodrow Wilson advocated for the self-determination of nations on February 11, 1918, he thrust the U.S. into the middle of competing nationalisms in the region, an entanglement that deepened throughout the 20^th and early 21^st centuries.

Dr. Robert Riggs offers a counter-history of the early foundations of 20^th century nation-states in the Middle East, one that will focus on the competing claims of Jewish, Arab, and Turkish nationalists. In doing so, he will show how modern political and religious sectarianism is a product, rather than a cause, of contemporary political tensions in the Middle East.