The marginalisation of the Ottoman Empire's state formation legacy in the Middle East: a case of Eurocentrism?

Our PhD candidate Nilüfer Günes has recently published a new article in Turkish Studies, which examines nineteenth-century reforms in Iraq and Syria in an effort to rectify the Eurocentric spatio-temporal ordering of events and unveil the centrality of the West in historical narratives of the region.

Abstract

"Dominant academic conceptualisations of state formation in the Middle East are exclusively associated with the impact of Western colonialism in the post-World War One partition. Through the growing ‘Global International Relations’ agenda, this paper critiques this narrative to be Eurocentric in the way that it undermines state-building prior to the French and British mandates. Albeit often marginalised, the Ottoman Empire’s long-lasting rule in the Middle East, particularly during the Tanzimat period, has left behind an important legacy of statecraft, without which one cannot fully understand the foundations and contemporary dynamics of the region. This paper seeks to rectify the Eurocentric spatial-temporal ordering of events and unveil the centrality of the West in historical narratives of the region by analysing state-building processes and instruments developed during the Tanzimat reforms in Iraq and Syria."