On the Making of the Modern Middle East, Nationalism, the Arab Uprisings, Iraq, and the Kurdish Question

Professor James L. Gelvin is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and an internationally recognized scholar of the modern Middle East. His research focuses on the social, cultural, and political history of the region, particularly Greater Syria and the contemporary Arab world. He holds a Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. His major books include The Modern Middle East: A History, now in its sixth edition, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A History, The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know, The New Middle East: What Everyone Needs to Know, and Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire. A former member of the Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association, Gelvin was also the recipient of the association’s Undergraduate Education Award. His scholarship is widely used in the study of nationalism, state formation, popular politics, conflict, and political transformation across the modern Middle East.

GULAN: In the sixth edition of The Modern Middle East: A History, you examine how global modernity has transformed the region’s political, social, and economic life over approximately five centuries. While preparing this new edition, which historical force did you find most useful for explaining the political transformation occurring in the Middle East today?

James L. Gelvin: In my The Modern Middle East: A History, I define the modern period as the epoch in which the modern territorial state and the global economy spread worldwide. Territorial states are states that possess a central government and rule over a bounded territory.

I cite three factors that facilitated that spread: integration and peripheralization, defensive developmentalism, and imperialism. Borrowing from the sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein, I define integration and peripheralization as the process whereby areas of the world are brought into a common economic system (integration) but as subordinate units (i.e., mostly raw materials suppliers) to the industrialized core (peripheralization). Defensive developmentalism was the policy of centralization and state expansion undertaken by governments in the Middle East and elsewhere to strengthen their power and promote economic activity. In the Ottoman Empire, this was known as the tanzimat, but similar policies were enacted in Egypt, Tunisia, and even Iran. Finally, imperialism. Borrowing from historian Ronald Robinson, I define imperialism as “a process whereby agents of an expanding society gain inordinate influence or control over the vitals of weaker societies by . . . diplomacy, ideological suasion, conquest and rule, or by planting colonies of its own peoples abroad.”

All three process had an impact on the Middle East. So to answer your question, I am loath to identify one in particular as most useful for explaining the region’s political transformation. All three transformed economic, social, and political relations in the region. All three transformed the region’s relationship with the West.

Defensive developmentalism—the tanzimat in the Ottoman Empire—is commonly overlooked or downplayed. In many ways it is the most important. During the nineteenth century, Middle East governments directly or indirectly transformed subjects of sultans or shahs into citizens of territorial states. They also created the conditions for those citizens to believe they were cogs in a national machine contributing to the greater good of their societies. The fact that most Kurds think of themselves as part of a larger Kurdish community is, in large measure, a result of defensive developmentalism.

Understanding defensive developmentalism is key to understanding why “the modern” is not a “gift from the West,” to borrow a phrase from historian Bernard Lewis. Rather, nationalism, capitalism, citizenship, the concept of “society,” etc. all have indigenous roots. And while borrowings from the West did occur, the fact that the region consists of developmental, territorial states is, in large measure, a factor of indigenous efforts.

GULAN: Your scholarship presents nationalism not simply as the expression of an ancient identity, but as a modern political project shaped by governments, education, public institutions, and resistance to foreign rule. Why have these nation-building projects produced relatively cohesive identities in some Middle Eastern states while intensifying ethnic or religious divisions in others?

James L. Gelvin: Good question. First off, in my work I don’t say that nationalism is “not simply…the expression of an ancient identity.” I say it’s not an expression of an ancient identity at all. In other words, nationalism is a modern aberration. And no identity—be it ethnic, religious, or national—is a “genuine” or “real” identity. There is no such thing, for example, as a true or false nationalism. All nationalisms are true: they create nations where no nations had existed before. All nationalist movements are false: the nations they create are mere figments of peoples’ imagination. One therefore cannot measure nationalist movements in terms of truthfulness or falsity. Rather, one must measure them in terms of success or lack of success. And success has nothing to do with intrinsic value or truthfulness of the nationalism which nationalist movements profess. It comes from extraneous factors, like foreign assistance to a national movement, its financial resources, or the charisma of a nationalist leader. The same goes for ethnic or religious identities.

Who is a Greek? In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Greek nationalists claimed to be the heirs to the Byzantine Empire. They wanted to reconstitute that empire and unite large swathes of the Mediterranean region from present-day Greece through Anatolia and the Black Sea. When this idea—the Megale idee—ran afoul of Balkan and Turkish nationalisms, Greek nationalists changed course. All of a sudden, the dominant form of Greek nationalism presented Greeks as heirs to ancient Athens and Pericles. Which was real? Obviously, the latter, but only because it won out.

Why do sectarian or national identities arise in the first place? Sectarianism and nationalism emerge when political opportunists use it to advance a political agenda. Those opportunists might be governments, political parties, or aspiring politicians seeking position. They seize upon a set of symbols and a historical narrative that resonates with a population. Those symbols and that narrative seem to be a good fit and are symbolically rich. They serve to reinforce an identity to which populations might aspire.

I discussed earlier the importance of the Ottoman tanzimat and similar projects during the nineteenth century for the creation of notions of citizenship, rights, and a social order to which all citizens belong. They create possibilities; from then on, things are in the hands of politicians. Just what the identity and nature of that social order is or will be is never predetermined. It might be a sectarian identity, for which true believers demand autonomy or rights within a broader community that includes other sects. Or it might be a national identity, for which true believers demand sovereignty in a world system of nation-states. And identities are changeable. It is entirely possible that a young person who thought of themselves as an Ottoman would, in middle age, come to think of themselves as an Arab or a Syrian, and then, as an elder, come to think of themselves as a Palestinian. Which is the valid identity? All are. None are.

GULAN: The Arab uprisings generated extraordinary expectations for political change, yet countries such as Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Yemen experienced authoritarian restoration, civil war, or state fragmentation. Fifteen years later, should their most important legacy be measured by the governments they failed to change or by the political consciousness they created among a new generation?

James L. Gelvin: If we think of the period of the Arab uprisings as stretching from December 2010, when the Tunisian uprising broke out, to March 2011, when it was Syria’s turn, it is easy to be discouraged. The Tunisian uprising ultimately led to the empowerment of an autocrat; Egypt and all the monarchies ended up with governments that exercised unprecedented levels of repression; political violence still ravages Libya and Yemen; Syria remains fragile and continues to be the site of others’ conflicts; sectarianism and proxy wars have become commonplace; and the regional order has become unhinged as Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran vie against one another. Finally, the domain of neo-liberal economics, along with humanitarian crises, have crippled much of the region.

But there is another way of looking at the Arab uprisings, one that is more optimistic. If we trace the uprisings back to 1980, with the onset of the “Berber Spring” in Algeria, and extend the period through the present day, one cannot help but be struck by an epochal shift that has taken place in the region. From Morocco to Iran, people power movements have replaced vanguardist/Leninist guerilla-style movements as the primary means by which populations have voiced grievances and demanded change. Just look at the Rojava project, which is a mass-based, popular project. Furthermore, calls for human rights, along with demands for social and economic justice, have replaced national self-determination as the primary focus of oppositional movements.

The uprisings of 2010-11 might be seen as one episode in a broader struggle that has spanned decades and crossed geographic boundaries as the discourse of human rights became globalized. The “people power” epoch in the Middle East includes numerous pre-Arab uprising episodes, such as initial phases of the Iranian Revolution (1978-79), the Bahraini intifada (1994-99), the Damascus Spring (2000), Damascus Declaration Movement (2005), a Blue and Orange Revolution in Kuwait (2002-5, 2006), Kefaya in Egypt (2004), Cedar Revolution in Lebanon (2005). It extends to the post-Arab uprising period as well. Beginning in early 2018, protests once again broke out in a number of states—Tunisia, Jordan, Sudan, Algeria, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Oman, Morocco, and Syria—leading some commentators to coin the phrase “Arab Spring 2.0.” And, of course, the events of October 7, 2023 and their bloody aftermath in Gaza (and the West Bank) eclipse in popular memory mass-based Palestinian mobilizations, such as the March 15 movement, the Bilin and Bab al-Shams protests, and the “Great March to the Sea”—all mass protests, all predominantly peaceful, all demanding respect for human rights and social and economic justice.

You ask whether the legacy of the Arab uprisings should be measured by the governments they failed to change or by the political consciousness they created among a new generation. I would answer that the legacy of the uprisings should be measured by the political consciousness they represented and kept alive—and continue to keep alive.

GULAN: Iraq’s difficulties since 2003 are commonly explained through sectarian rivalry, but the country also inherited a history of centralized authoritarian rule, war, sanctions, and weakened institutions. Which of these historical legacies best explains why Iraq has struggled to establish stable and effective political institutions after 2003?

James L. Gelvin: You are absolutely correct to cast doubt on attributing Iraq’s problems to sectarian divisions, as real as those divisions appear at the present time. But as I write in The Modern Middle East, sectarian identities are not primordial or preordained. They emerge as a result of political circumstances, such as when one religious community is treated differently from others by a different religious community, a colonial power, or a state as a matter of policy. That is when communal boundaries harden and the social and economic histories of religious communities begin to diverge. Sunnis and Shi‘is who had never given their identities a second thought become committed Sunnis and Shi‘is out of necessity or expedience. Religious affiliation thus becomes the platform from which populations assert political claims. We see this in various places in the Middle East: Lebanon, Syria (whose government deliberately triggered the onset of sectarianism as a strategy during the recent civil war), at various times in Iraqi history (again, deliberately triggered), etc. In no place is it a natural process; rather, the process is deliberate and is engineered by political operatives.

In 1920, Iraqi Sunnis and Shi‘is fought side-by-side against the British mandate. Why not? Both Sunnis and Shi‘is faced the same enemy and, in general, wanted the same thing. Then the British made promises to empower Sunni notables. They switched sides. Time after time in Iraqi history, both Sunni and Shi‘i political opportunists repeated the same British tactic: Saddam Hussein in 1991 (“No Shi‘is after today”), Muqtada al-Sadr in 2003, Nuri al-Maliki in 2006, the Islamic State in 2014. There is no rationale reason for intercommunal hostility. As is well-known, before the American invasion intermarriage between the two sects was widespread.

But if sectarianism is a result of political division, not its cause, what explains the current situation in Iraq? The current weakness of the Iraqi state is a result of the American invasion and occupation of the country, and America’s inability or unwillingness to replace the regime of Saddam Hussein with one of equal reach and might.

During the cold war, the United States encouraged the consolidation of strong, pro-Western states in the region. Strong, pro-Western states could ensure economic development and regional peace. Economic development, American policy makers believed, would discourage populations from becoming anti-Western and pro-Soviet. It would also reduce the incentive for states to go to war, particularly war against Israel. Only strong states could promote a pro-Western agenda. The human rights of those who lived in the Middle East was of secondary concern to American policy makers—when it was of any concern at all.

In contrast, the United States encouraged the emergence of opposition movements and movements for autonomy or independence in those states which were not in the Western camp—Syria, Libya, Yemen, and, often, Iraq. Hence, American support for Iraq’s Kurds when it was politically expedient to support their aspirations. When it was not, the United States was more than willing to abandon Iraq’s Kurds to Saddam Hussein’s vengeance.

The American occupation of Iraq proved more difficult and costly than policy planners had expected. It was easy for the Americans to walk away, leaving behind a weak and divided Iraq. They did so not only because they could not find a suitable, obedient minion to take Saddam Hussein’s place, but because of the way American policy makers viewed Iraq. They viewed Iraq as hopelessly divided by sect and ethnicity. In other words, they viewed Iraqis as flawed and Iraq as ungovernable. And even were that not the case, American policy makers were committed to neo-liberal principles. According to those principles, the less government intervention into politics and economics the better, and too little government intervention is better than too much. Thus, it was not just that Americans viewed Iraqi society as hopelessly divided, it was that Iraq became a laboratory in which American policy makers could experiment with their state building fantasies.

GULAN: The Kurdish movement in Iraq survived the Anfal genocide, established self-government after 1991, and secured constitutional recognition of the Kurdistan Region in 2005, yet the 2017 independence referendum did not produce statehood. From a historical perspective, what best explains why Kurdish nationalism in Iraq has succeeded in achieving autonomy but not independence?

James L. Gelvin: There is really no mystery as to why Kurds in Iraq have been able to achieve autonomy but not independence. First off, an overwhelming number of nationalist movements fail to achieve their goals of sovereign control over a piece of territory. In the Middle East alone, Palestinians and Sahrawis in the western Sahara have not been able to establish true states in spite of years of trying. Second, the history and memory of Kurds reflects the experience of their national communities more than the history of a single, unrealized Kurdish nation. Turkish Kurds have their PKK and the Turkish state’s counterinsurgency, Syrian Kurds have Rojava, and Iraqi Kurds have the tragic memory of the Anfal genocide.

Third, Kurds make up parts of the Iraqi, Turkish, Syrian, and Iranian populations. For most of their independent existence, these were strong states. They did not tolerate any movement that would impinge on their sovereignty and unity. We are not talking about post-cold war Czechoslovakia, after all. After the end of the cold war, Czechoslovakia peacefully divided into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic in what became known as the “Velvet Divorce.” Nor are we talking about Canada, which, in 1993, voluntarily ceded a huge expanse in the north to autonomously-ruled indigenous territory called Nunavut. Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran have waged armed counterinsurgency against their Kurdish populations.

The final reason Iraqi Kurds have been able to achieve autonomy but not sovereignty has to do with the international political system. For nearly four hundred years, the primary unit in international relations has been the sovereign territorial state. States are supposed to recognize the inviolability of each other’s borders (although they frequently do not). This principle has been reiterated countless times since the Treaty of Westphalia ended Europe’s Thirty Years’ War in 1648. It is embedded in the United Nations’ Charter, in the Final Communique of the Bandung Conference of 1955, in the Helsinki Accords of 1975, and in other international agreements. When states break up, as Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union did, the international community has tried to mediate or stood neutral to prevent the breakup. This is why Israel’s recognition of an independent Somaliland and the UAE’s support for southern secessionists in Yemen are such scandals. The international community will not support a Kurdish nationalist movement that might fragment any or all of the states in which Kurds live. The international community prefers failed states to fragmented ones, and will throw its support behind states that defend their integrity no matter how brutal they might be. Contemporary Libya and Syria are good examples of this.