Professor Dr. Johan Franzén is a historian of the modern Middle East. He joined the University of East Anglia in 2009 after finishing a PhD in modern Middle Eastern history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he also completed an MA in Middle Eastern studies. Before coming to England, he read Middle Eastern history and Arabic at Lund University in his native Sweden. Franzén is the author of Red Star over Iraq: Iraqi Communism before Saddam (2011), which in 2012 was shortlisted for the Book Prize of the British Association of Middle Eastern Studies. In an exlusive interview he answered our questions loke the following:

Gulan: How did Islamic legal, social, and political institutions influence the adaptation of European models of governance in the new Arab states after WWI? And how did it affect the legitimacy and effectiveness of these models?

Professor Dr. Johan Franzén: This is quite difficult to ascertain. Across the region, a multitude of different institutions had emerged, consolidated, and developed in varied circumstances. For the most part, traditional forms of Islamic institutions, whether relating to Shariah courts or the ‘Ulama’ more generally, had been vastly transformed by the time Western states intervened directly in the Middle East. Both the Ottoman and Qajar Empires embarked on extensive reform programmes in the nineteenth century, which led to dramatic changes in traditional institutions. In Ottoman areas, the Shariah court, which was formerly presided over by an Islamic judge – the Qadi – had been largely replaced by a more secular system in which the Qa’im-Maqam served as the local representative of the state. Many Islamic legal traditions, which were based on centuries of monarchical rule but ultimately linked to Shariah through hadiths and precedents, were also in the process of being replaced by legal systems based on European models. The so-called Tanzimat period (1839-76) introduced numerous changes, primarily through a top-down process in which successive Sultans issued imperial decrees that promised greater freedoms.

When Britain and France took over much of the Arab region after WWI, they continued this process of modernisation. The Arab states that were created under the auspices of the League of Nations in the 1920s, that is, Mesopotamia (later named Iraq), Palestine (later with Trans-Jordan sectioned off as its own area), and Syria (with Lebanon eventually administered separately), were all intended to be ‘modern states’ modelled on Western nation-states. However, due to a lack of resources and also because local administrators had to adopt a more pragmatic approach, many traditional aspects of governance were retained.

For instance, in Iraq, Britain was faced with a large tribal population that was heavily armed and reluctant to submit to urban rule. British options were limited in terms of how to approach this problem. Ideally, the tribes would have been defeated and forced to yield to the new state, accepting living under its new laws and upholding order. However, this was something that the Ottomans had never achieved for hundreds of years, and the British quickly realised that they would be equally impotent in defeating the tribes. Therefore, a policy of appeasement was enacted, whereby the tribes were allowed to maintain traditional forms of governance and systems of justice in exchange for preserving order. This system, initially introduced as a temporary measure during the war, was eventually made permanent through the Tribal Disputes Regulation, which effectively created a two-tier legal system in the new Iraqi state: a European-inspired law for urban areas and tribal customary law in the countryside.

In terms of how such compromises affected the legitimacy of the new state, I believe they fundamentally undermined the very idea of the new state. Undoubtedly, the tribes were happy to be allowed to retain much of their traditional ways of life. Still, their appeasement also signalled that the foreign power administering the new state was relatively weak. Whilst appeasement was the astute thing to do (and perhaps the only option local British decision-makers realistically had), it ultimately led to a loss of prestige and consequently hindered the effective administration of the mandate. As for the urban notables and nationalists, some of whom cautiously supported British and French efforts to modernise, they also viewed the failure to deal with the tribal problem as a betrayal. When nationalist forces rose to power throughout the region (in Turkey and Persia immediately after the war and in Iraq in the 1930s), their primary focus was to once and for all deal with the tribal problem. Thus, the nationalist Turkey that emerged from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s, Reza Shah’s nationalist regime in Persia (now renamed Iran), and various Iraqi cabinets following the country’s formal independence in 1932, all brutally put down tribal uprisings in the name of progress.

Gulan: To what degree did the Sykes-Picot Agreement and other imperial interventions pre-determine the political trajectories of the modern Arab states? Do you believe that this agreement is about to be superseded by the dramatic developments of recent years and months?

Professor Dr. Johan Franzén: The Sykes-Picot Agreement has in many ways become synonymous with imperialist duplicity. However, in reality, this agreement was not particularly significant, as it was essentially a wartime arrangement agreed under specific circumstances to facilitate the continuation of the war effort. It was largely superseded by developments towards the end of the war and following its conclusion. In short, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret understanding between Britain and France regarding how to divide and reorder the Middle East in accordance with their respective imperial interests after the war. It also involved Russia, which was to be given Istanbul and an access route to the Mediterranean through the Bosphorus, and Italy, which would acquire territories in Cilicia and some islands off the Turkish coast. When the Bolsheviks seized power after the Russian Revolution, they exposed this secret agreement. For Britain, in particular, this revelation caused considerable embarrassment, as it revealed that Britain had offered France zones of direct control and spheres of interest in the region, which it had also simultaneously promised to Sharif Hussein and his sons in exchange for their rebellion against the Ottoman state. Ultimately, however, many of the original stipulations of the Sykes-Picot Agreement were never enacted. Russia washed its hands of the agreement under the Bolsheviks and did not acquire Istanbul. The Italians attempted to assert their “right” to promised territories by staging an invasion of Cilicia, but were eventually compelled to withdraw and sign an agreement with the new nationalist Turkish government under Atatürk. France had been promised the Mosul vilayet in the original agreement. Still, Britain, which had conquered this region by the war’s end, reneged and kept Mosul to itself, later incorporating it into the new Iraqi state.

I believe the primary legacy of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, or rather the spirit it engendered, was its determination to disassemble the Ottoman Empire and establish “nation-states.” This approach was in keeping with the general Zeitgeist of the time and also reflected the sentiment that informed the creation of the League of Nations and the European peace after the war, which led to the breakup of the Habsburg Empire and the establishment of many new states based on ethnic and linguistic ties. Whilst the approach to the Middle East was much less informed by national considerations and more by imperial interests, the general idea of states comprising one group of people who all spoke the same language was nevertheless a part of Western thinking. Thus, for instance, in the extensive correspondence that took place between Sharif Hussein and the British High Commissioner in Cairo, Sir Henry McMahon leading up to the former’s declaration of a rebellion, the British were adamant that any future areas promised to the Sharif should be inhabited only by “Arabs” and that areas perceived by the British not to be “purely” Arab (e.g. Lebanon) were to be excluded from the limits of the future “Arab Kingdom”.

The legacy of these “nation-states” that ultimately emerged from the original Sykes-Picot Agreement has proven to be exceptionally durable. Despite the dubious process through which many of the new states were created, they remain, which suggests that, at some fundamental level, they are perceived as at least partially legitimate. This observation needs to be qualified by some remarks, though, as the legacy of certain choices made by British and French decision-makers was undoubtedly controversial and lacked legitimacy. Thus, for instance, the inclusion of the Mosul vilayet with a majority Kurdish-speaking population and diverse religious and ethnic minorities in a predominantly Arab state was obviously controversial and was undoubtedly done for political, military and strategic reasons rather than out of concern for the well-being of the people who inhabited this area. Likewise, toying with the idea of allowing a greater Kurdistan to come into existence but ultimately deciding it would be too difficult politically to enact would fall into the same category. The partitioning off of Lebanon from Syria enraged Syrian and Arab nationalists alike but delighted Lebanese Christian groups, especially the Maronites, who now got their “own” state. The sectioning off of Trans-Jordan from Palestine was a political decision to refuse Jewish immigration beyond the Jordan River, thus laying the foundation for the Arab-Israeli conflict. The resulting new state, Trans-Jordan (later simply Jordan), arguably lacked any legitimacy at all and was largely without urban centres or resources at its inception.

Gulan: To what extent did the post-WWI international order—rooted in Wilsonian ideals but implemented through imperial mandates—predispose Arab states toward authoritarianism rather than democracy?

Professor Dr. Johan Franzén:  At first glance, there is nothing to suggest that a Western desire to create modern states based on the rule of law and parliamentary political systems would inevitably lead to authoritarianism. On the other hand, it is irrefutable that all of the “mandates” that were created by the League of Nations – with the possible exception of Lebanon – at one stage descended into authoritarianism, and whilst Lebanon has managed to retain its peculiar consociationalist political system which has at least the veneer of democracy, it has also suffered two civil wars and foreign interventions on numerous occasions.

The issue is quite complex, as the stated intention of US President Woodrow Wilson was to create a new world in the aftermath of WWI that would do away with imperialism, the Great Power concert, and secretive deals and instead enact a system based on international law and mutual understanding. Within this vision, he asserted the right of every people to determine their own future. Many in the Middle East took those words to heart. They believed that when the war was over and the Ottoman Empire was defeated, a new democratic future would emerge, where the people of the region would govern themselves. However, Wilson’s idealism did not extend beyond what he considered the “civilised” world. Thus, when he spoke of “self-determination,” it was clear that he referred to European peoples, not people in the Ottoman Empire. The situation was also complicated by the fact that the US never declared war on the Ottomans, and thus, in the post-war peace negotiations, the Americans were mostly interested in the European peace and much less concerned with what might happen in the Middle East. He agreed, however, that lands that the Ottomans had previously administered could not be allowed to return to their possession. Thus, a compromise was reached whereby the League of Nations should act as the guarantor of the well-being of the Ottoman peoples. However, since the new organisation had no resources of its own to undertake such a task, it was “mandated” to Britain and France, who became the Mandatory Powers acting on behalf of the League. This was undoubtedly a compromise, and the implementation of the new mandates became a drawn-out process, which saw the United States and Wilson ultimately opting to stay out of the new League due to domestic opposition. Without Wilson’s influence, the “mandate” system, originally intended as a new form of governance to counter older forms of colonialism, was largely shaped by Britain and France, who closely aligned it with their own imperial interests.

Although both Britain and France had to adhere to certain administrative principles and were encouraged to develop local involvement in government, ultimately, the lack of oversight of the system meant they were, by and large, able to administer the new states not too dissimilar from previous imperial holdings, in particular the British protectorates in Egypt and Aden. However, the lack of local input in the political process and the perception that the Mandatory Power’s representative (the High Commissioner) ultimately governed the state led to frustration among local elites and urban notables who sought a quicker route to complete independence. They did not accept the “mandate” as a transition phase towards independence but saw it as colonialism in disguise. Such was the hatred of the term “mandate” that in Iraq, Britain had to omit it altogether and instead sign a “treaty” with the new state incorporating the necessary clauses of the mandate.

It was this discrepancy between Western intentions, which ultimately aimed to control the new states to serve their own imperial interests, and local nationalist ambitions, which sought to wrest the state away from imperialism and steer it in a direction desirable for them, that was the fundamental flaw in the mandatory system. As time wore on, the rift between imperialism and nationalism grew wider and more intense. Whilst in the immediate aftermath of the war there were moderate nationalists willing to work with Britain and France to achieve their objectives, by the 1930s and 40s, a new generation of radicalised nationalists emerged who were more uncompromising. In the end, this militant nationalism was incompatible with imperialism and eventually, the British and French were forced to relinquish power. The mandates ended in an unplanned manner (except for Iraq, where the mandate was terminated following an agreement in 1932), and the nationalist forces that came to power in the 1940s in Syria and the 1950s in Iraq blamed the Western-imposed mandates for the perceived subordination the countries had undergone. “Democracy” was a byword for Western domination. Instead, military strength, often preached by radicalised sections of the armies of the new states, was highlighted as the route to freedom from the West. Yet, when military officers began seizing power for themselves after World War II, it became clear that the path to authoritarianism had been irrevocably opened.

Gulan: Was the transition into “modernity” a rupture from the Islamic past, or a negotiated continuity that blended Ottoman-Islamic traditions with Western state structures?

Professor Dr. Johan Franzén: The transition to “modernity” was undoubtedly a rupture from the Islamic past. However, I would argue that most of that rupture was caused by the Ottomans before Western states were directly involved in governing areas of the Middle East. To what extent Ottoman reform itself was caused by Western pressure and influence is impossible to say. However, it is beyond doubt that the incentive to reform the empire came from a position of weakness vis-à-vis the West. As long as the Ottomans considered themselves superior to the West and later on par with it, there was clearly no obvious desire for reform. Thus, the reforms originated in military defeats at the hands of the Russians and the Austrians and were initially a means to defend the empire. Only after decades of military reform did the impetus for transition spread also to the political, social, and legal spheres. When the Ottoman Empire finally came to an end with the abolition of the Sultanate in 1922, the existing state was a far cry from its Islamic past. In that sense, the Turkish Republic, and to a lesser extent the Arab mandates, were essentially a continuation of the Ottoman modernisation process, which by then had already been going on for over a hundred years.

To answer the question more specifically, I would say that the Ottomans attempted to find a negotiated path to modernity that honoured the Islamic legacy and, importantly, did not upset traditional opinion too much. However, it is essential to note that they undertook this process under exceptional duress. The empire’s territory was being eroded at its edges, and it faced enemies to the West, North, and East (and, following Britain’s increasing influence in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Peninsula, also from the South). It was an unenviable position to be in. The military defeats the Ottomans suffered from the late eighteenth century onwards made it clear that the European powers had not only caught up with them but had also surpassed them in military technology and organisation. From that perspective, it was clear that they had to do something. The subsequent defensive reform process was the logical outcome. However, few people in the empire genuinely desired real reform. It was a very top-down process. Due to the conservative nature of traditional elites and the ‘ulama’, it was difficult to generate any enthusiasm for the reform programme. I think it was this tension between traditionalists and progressives that ultimately shaped the reforms: a half-hearted modernisation based on Western principles and institutions, but with a populace that continued to adhere to older forms of social organisation.

Gulan: Can the failures or fragilities of certain Arab states today be traced back to unresolved tensions between these competing models of legitimacy?

Professor Dr. Johan Franzén: A considerable amount of time has obviously passed since the creation of the Arab states following WWI, and undoubtedly, there have been opportunities and possibilities to alter the trajectories of those states. I don’t believe they were necessarily pre-determined to fail. However, it is also unavoidable to reach the conclusion that the process by which these states were created, and especially the actors making the states, who were not indigenous to the region and therefore acted in the interest of outside forces, was instrumental in shaping these states. The lack of an organic process of state formation inevitably led to fragility and very weak government institutions.

However, it should also be noted that alternative state formation processes, i.e. where a foreign government did not directly intervene in the region, would not necessarily have led to better outcomes. The Ottoman Empire, although carrying some legitimacy through its ruling dynasty’s claim to be an Islamic state, was a relatively weak state by the nineteenth century, unable to assert full control over its territory. Tribal and rural areas often only nominally accepted Ottoman authority, and in Kurdistan, many regions were beyond the tax collectors’ control for long periods of time. A government that cannot fully assert itself over all its territory and cannot enforce a monopoly on the use of violence is always weak. The state, although it may appear fierce and strong due to its large army, is ultimately weak because it lacks popular legitimacy. For the Ottomans, this situation was further compounded towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, when the ideas of nationalism began to spread. These ideas further undermined the legitimacy of the state – an empire built on military conquest – as it challenged the very notion of what the state ought to be. The Turkish elites began advocating for turning the empire into a Turkish nation-state, which upset and worried other groups, especially Arabs and Kurds. When the Young Turks seized power before WWI and introduced a radical Turkification process, this further strengthened notions of Arab identity as being separate from the empire, thus further delegitimising the state.  

Gulan: Given the legacy of imperialism, Cold War interventions, and authoritarian governance, is the current turmoil in the Middle East a continuation of historical patterns or a fundamentally new phase?

Professor Dr. Johan Franzén:  It is impossible to disregard the impact of historical processes that have laid the foundations for many of the problems the Middle Eastern region experiences. One cannot understand what is going on today without knowing the past. The state-formation process, the influence of foreign powers, the establishment of Israel, the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the local responses to these developments, which often led to authoritarian rule, have all contributed to the current situation. With that being said, each phase brought its own set of issues and elicited reactions and counter-reactions. In other words, it was not a foregone conclusion that we would end up where we are today when Britain decided to invade Mesopotamia in 1914. There was no pre-determined trajectory stipulating a hundred years of chaos. A series of events was key:

1)      The opportunistic decision on the part of Britain and France to take over most Ottoman territories without a clear plan for how this would be achieved.

2)      The political decision to support the Zionist movement and the issuing of the Balfour Declaration promising a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine.

3)      Running the League of Nations’ mandates as semi-colonial possessions with no intention of actually allowing real independence, which infuriated local nationalists and radicalised their ideology.

4)      The polarisation seen during the Cold War, which forced national leaders who came to power to choose sides (e.g. Nasser), ultimately leading to authoritarianism.

What we witness today in the Middle East is a continuation of the process that began following the end of the Cold War, when the United States emerged as the sole Superpower. During this phase, the US has gradually imposed its vision on the region, a vision that has been based on two fundamental goals: to secure oil and its existing alliances in the region, and to safeguard Israel by taking out its enemies one by one.

In some ways, US foreign policy in the Middle East since 1990 has been relatively successful. Israel is more powerful than it ever has been before, and its traditional enemies have either been militarily defeated, forced into signing peace agreements, or overthrown in rebellions. On the other hand, there has been a certain degree of overreach and unintended consequences, such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was done without any real planning for the aftermath and therefore was woefully unprepared for the post-war situation. This, in effect, handed the initiative to Iran, which has since made full use of the situation. So, while Iraq was defeated and removed from Israel’s list of mortal enemies, arguably, the US inadvertently created a bigger and more dangerous enemy in a regionally powerful Iran.

What we have witnessed in the region over the last two years is the culmination of this situation, whereby Iran had reached the zenith of its power and influence across the Middle East with a powerful army and oil-fuelled economy at home, a useful ally in Bashar al-Assad in Syria, potent proxies in Hezballah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and the Houthi movement in Yemen. Add to this the possible existence of a nuclear weapons programme, and it is clear that from the American and Israeli position things were looking very worrying and that US policy over the last four decades had not been entirely successful.

However, Iran arguably overplayed its hand by allowing Hamas to stage the October 2023 attack inside Israel, which caused the unprecedented response we are still witnessing today. A response which has significantly reduced Iranian capability by more or less destroying Hamas militarily (along with most of Gaza’s civilian population and infrastructure), incapacitating Hezballah and decapitating its leadership, removing the Syrian alliance altogether through the overthrow of the Assad regime, and partially destroying the Iranian nuclear programme through direct attacks inside Iran itself.

It is this situation we are in now, which is undoubtedly a continuation of historical processes, but at the same time, is unprecedented in the one-sidedness of the balance of forces in the region. In some ways, it is almost as if we have come full circle to the aftermath of WWI when the only significant regional force had been militarily defeated and Western forces entered the region to determine its future…

Gulan: How do current upheavals—civil wars, sectarian conflicts, and popular uprisings—reflect unresolved tensions between imported state structures and local conceptions of political order?

Professor Dr. Johan Franzén:  Each form of upheaval that the region has experienced, of course, had its own immediate causes and contexts. However, as a general rule, it is possible to say that most of them originate in the failure of the modern state system to deliver representative forms of government that can provide resources that allow for a good life for the majority of people.

Unavoidably, we must return to the process of state formation that occurred in the region a little over a century ago. Due to the inability of local actors to form their own states, the process of entering modernity largely fell to outside forces, who modelled these states on Western precedents and to suit their own interests. The question of what the state should be and for whom it should serve was never asked. Instead, Western representatives taught a select few the art of statecraft and invested them with powers they had not earned in their own right. Overnight, some groups became elites, and the rest remained disenfranchised. To add to this already difficult situation, the tribal problem that had haunted the region for centuries, if not millennia, remained unresolved. At the same time, certain heterodox groups and religious and ethnic minorities, who in the Ottoman state had enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy and relative safety, were now to be fully integrated into the modern “nation-state” regardless of their own desire to do so.

Undoubtedly, this process created irrevocable antagonism between groups that previously had been relatively settled in their relationships. The fact that Britain and France had been unwilling to commit enough resources to see the state-formation process through successfully added to the explosive situation. When disparate groups of people, whether tribal, nationalist, ethnic, or religious, realised how weak the new states were in terms of both resources and legitimacy, they began to challenge their authority. The failure of the new states to impose themselves on all of the territory they supposedly controlled, and the inability to make the population yield to the new states, either voluntarily or by force, added to the perception of the state as being weak. Most importantly, the failure to disarm the rural and tribal populations meant that the state could not even ensure that it had a monopoly on the use of violence – a fundamental condition of any functioning state.

I would argue that it is this fundamental issue that has caused and continues to cause challenges to the Middle Eastern state system: a lack of legitimacy and the failure to ensure a monopoly on violence. Most conflicts can be traced back to this basic truth, whether the outbreak of sectarian violence in Iraq in 2006, the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the Houthi movement in Yemen, the various Kurdish wars from the 1960s onwards in Iraq, the Arab Spring in 2011, the Syrian Civil War from 2012 onwards, etc.

Gulan: Looking ahead, do you foresee the region moving toward more cohesive national identities, regional integration, or further fragmentation?

Professor Dr. Johan Franzén:  It is challenging to predict anything when it comes to the Middle East, and as a historian, I am usually loath to do so anyway. There are, of course, certain historical trajectories that the region follows, as outlined, and there seem to be certain clear tendencies and tensions that I am fairly certain will continue, such as the predominance of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the importance of oil. That being said, unexpected turns and developments that no one had predicted may occur. Perhaps these will see some stronger national identities and a rebuilding of regional cooperation. However, it seems unlikely that this will be in the immediate future. It seems much more likely that the region will continue to disintegrate. At the moment, a lot seems to hinge on what US President Trump decides, and he, of course, has proven to be extremely fickle when it comes to foreign policy.

Gulan: Could alternative state-building models (e.g., federative or confederal structures) have emerged if local actors had more autonomy in shaping the post-Ottoman political map?

Professor Dr. Johan Franzén:  It is plausible that alternative models could have materialised after WWI. The situation in Lebanon is a good example where local actors were allowed to sit down and agree on a formula for power-sharing in a consociational model based on confessional identities. That model, whilst far from perfect, at least afforded Lebanon a modicum of stability for decades and taught people to operate within a set political framework where they knew the rules. It also taught political actors to respect the political process and to vacate their offices when their terms expired. Both of these lessons are essential for fostering a democratic mindset in a population. However, the Lebanese system is arguably too static to allow for dynamic change. It perpetuated a demographic situation that existed in the 1920s for the foreseeable future and created a Maronite-dominated state. Yet, over the decades, the demographic situation has changed dramatically to the point where the Maronites (and probably not even all the Christians put together) are no longer the majority. However, the system was unable to incorporate this fundamental change, and eventually, the tensions became too great, leading to civil war.

The other problem was that for a system like the Lebanese to emerge, it needed approval from the foreign power controlling the state – in this case, France. Both Britain and France had clear instructions from the League of Nations to set up certain structures that allowed for the creation of modern states in a Western pattern. This mandate also arguably influenced the type of systems that were created in Iraq and Syria.

In other places where a League of Nations mandate did not exist, such as in what became Saudi Arabia, Britain took a more hands-off approach. It allowed local state formation to take place relatively unhindered. Instead of trying to stop Ibn Sa‘ud from conquering much of the Arabian Peninsula (and even ousting its previous ally, Sharif Hussein, from the Hejaz), Britain allowed this process to unfold. The result was a more organic state-formation process in which Ibn Sa‘ud, through a process of warfare, intimidation, coercion, and appeasement, created the beginnings of a modern state by uniting the various disparate tribal forces that had fought each other since time immemorial. Similar processes played out in the smaller Gulf states, where the Pax Britannica, imposed through British naval supremacy in the region, created lasting dynasties out of previously relatively insignificant groups.

Whilst neither of these two processes can be said to have been particularly democratic or representative of the wishes of the wider population, at least they led to stability and the creation of lasting institutions and a political framework, which did not happen in the areas where Western interference was more prominent.