Selected by Fred Rhodes

ISLAM, KURDS AND THE TURKISH NATION STATE

Movement, Exile and Place

By Christopher Houston published by Berg
ISBN 1 85973 472 3 price £42.99 hardback
ISBN 1 85973 477 4 price £14.99 paperback

Can Islam, as is often claimed, truly unite Muslim Turks and Kurds and supersede ethnicity? This is a volatile and exciting time for a country whose long history has been characterised by dramatic power play. Evolving out of two years of fieldwork in Istanbul, this book examines the fragmenting Islamist political movement in Turkey. As Turkey emerges from a repressive modernising project, various political identities are competing for influence. The Islamist movement celebrates the failure of western liberalism in Turkey and the return of politics based on Muslim ideals. However, this vision is threatened by Kurdish nationalism and the country’s chequered past.

Is Islamist multiculturalism even possible? The ethnic tensions surfacing in Turkey beg the question can Muslim Turks and Kurds can find common ground in religion? The author argues that such unification depends fundamentally upon the flexibility of the rationale behind the Islamist movement’s struggle.

DIPLOMACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The International Relations of Regional and Outside Powers

Edited by L Carl Brown published by IB TAURIS

ISBN: 1 86064 640 9 price £42.00 hardback

The Middle East has a distinctive diplomatic culture, shaped by history, geography and social structures. Diplomacy in the Middle East is the first work to provide a study of the foreign policies of all the Middle East states, including North Africa, as well as the four principal outside powers involved.

In their search for common themes and disparities in Middle East diplomacy the many distinguished contributors to this volume, including Shaul Bakhash, W. Roger Louis, William B. Quant and William Zartman, pose a number of questions. Do states conduct their foreign policy consistently over time? Do perceptions of interest survive major regime changes? How far do domestic political criteria impact in diplomacy in the Middle East? And, although westerners tend to patronise Arabs for patterns of alliance-making and breaking, unity schemes that go awry, efforts to overthrow the neighbouring regime at one moment and meetings of brother Arabs the next, is there an underlying logic to such actions?

Diplomacy in the Middle East seeks to survey the diplomatic relationships and the foundations of foreign policy-making among the principal players in the region — Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Morocco. Whilst also, importantly, exploring the Middle East policies of the four leading external powers who have played such a crucial role in the region — the US, Britain, France and Russia.

SAHARA MAN

Travelling with the Tuareg

By Jeremy Keenan published by John Murray

ISBN 0 7195 6161 2 price £18.99 hardback

In the autumn of 1999 Jeremy Keenan flew to Algeria, a country that had been virtually closed to the outside world throughout the 1990s by a bloody civil war. He was in search of the Tuareg, the fearsome indigo-veiled nomadic warlords of the Central Sahara with whom he had lived as a young anthropologist during the 1960s. Few outsiders knew more about them than Keenan, but even then their way of life was under threat and after he left in 1971 he could not bear to return, afraid of what he would find. Now, 30 years later, and against all advice, he was going back.

Landing in Tamanrasset, which he remembered as a small French colonial town, Keenan found a sprawling concrete jungle and despaired of ever making contact with his Tuareg friends, until a chance meeting set him on his way. Travelling with them into the vast mountainous area of Ahaggar, in the tracks of bandits and sleeping beside caves decorated with prehistoric cave paintings, Keenan discovered that the Tuareg who, after the horrors of Algeria’s war of independence had learned to survive as tourist guides, were now being starved out of their means of livelihood by the violence in the north. Yet still, much that he recognised remained.

His vivid and fascinating book takes us into the heart of the Sahara — into the lives and minds of the Tuareg, into his own past and into the fearful history and the present-day experience of Algeria itself.

OMAN & THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

By Lou Callan and Gordon Robison Published by Lonely Planet

ISBN 1 86450 130 8 price £9.99 paperback

The Arabian Peninsula has always evoked romantic notions of deserts, ancient cultures and the Bedouin eking out a harsh existence in a rugged and hostile landscape. If you want to see date palm oases, loping camels, burning frankincense, black-shrouded women, bustling market places, Arabian horses in flight across a sea of dunes, you won’t be disappointed. But Oman and the UAE have a lot more to offer the visitor and most people will be surprised at the range of attractions. Best of all, compared with Egypt and much of the rest of the Mediterranean Middle East, Oman (especially) and the UAE remain appealingly untrodden

Whether as a stopover or final destination, Oman and the UAE are Arabia’s two most accessible countries. From Dubai’s exuberance and Muscat’s elegance to remote wadis and serene oases, this guide reveals it all:

• 27 essential maps plus full-colour regional map
• Range of transport options, including detailed directions for self-drivers
• Where to stay and eat for all budgets
• What to do and how to do it, from diving to off-the-beaten-track driving
• Essential shopping guide to everything from camel kitsch to Bedouin jewellery

Copyright © IC Publications Limited 2001. All rights reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means or used for any business purpose without the written consent of the publisher. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure that the information contained herein is as accurate as possible, the publisher cannot accept responsibility for any consequences arising from its use.

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