Recent persecution of Yezidis in Iraq by ISIS has again shown their precarious situation, caused largely by misunderstandings of their unique religious practices and social organization. Over a century ago, as the various communities of the Ottoman Southeast Anatolia were negotiating their own identities within a changing Ottoman society, the Yezidis began attracting a renewed interest from neighboring Kurds and Syriac Christians. In this paper, I will analyze descriptions of the Yezidis presented in the writings of the neighboring Syriac Orthodox and Muslim Kurdish communities. Through this textual analysis I will demonstrate the ways in which these groups’ notables gave meaning to the interplay of religious and political authority within their own changing societies. By projecting these notions of competing modes of leadership upon the neighboring Yezidis, they helped formulate the contours of their own nascent political identities. While traditional historiography on the turn of the century has paid particular attention to the Empire’s ethnic groups’ increasing demands of autonomy and political power, the intricate relationship of religious and political elites’ competing definitions on the identity of the group still warrant further attention. In this paper, I argue that ethnicity was produced and reproduced through contributions of both religious and political leadership developed on the Ottoman periphery. To this end, this paper will explicate Syriac and Kurdish religious-political discourse in the Late Ottoman Empire by examining their portrayal of the Yezidis. Specifically, it will engage a close reading of archival sources of the Syriac Orthodox Church from the late 19th and early 20th centuries alongside Syriac community periodicals. The emerging narrative will then be compared with its Kurdish counterpart. Through this, I will show that regional dynamics mattered; that they formed a localized language of authority distinct from the center and shared across religious and ethnic boundaries. By analyzing these texts, I will discuss ways in which different communities projected their own understanding of the proper relationship between religious and political authority onto one other. At a moment when the Ottoman state was to change its own political structure through constitutional reform, these claims and formulations of authority at the periphery of the Empire gives us insights about the negotiated nature of the authority at the margins of the political power. Furthermore, it will illuminate details of the history of interfaith and intercommunal relations in the Ottoman Empire by exploring how these shared experiences shaped discourse of ethnicity and identity.

Consider the following contesting points of view: In the recent publication, Women of the Islamic State: A Manifesto on Women, authored by the Al-Khanssaa Brigade – an all-female militia set-up by the Islamic State, and translated by the Quilliam Foundation, there is a call for women to righteously serve the ummah and rise against the enemies of the Islamic State. Women, the manifesto professes, are “being kept away from paradise” because the “soldiers of Satan under the guise of development, progress and culture give into temptations of mind and conscience” (20) – pointing to a focus on aesthetics (fashion and beauty) as an example of modern concepts polluting Muslim girls’ minds and the larger ummah. In contrast, there is a growing popularity of Islamic fashion blog sites – where bloggers painstakingly document their daily sartorial journey and memorialize their clothing choices through text and photographs in an attempt to reconcile modernity with faith and fashion within a global Muslim community. Both narratives make an appeal to a universal ummah - an identity represented through singular religious dress. This paper takes up this point and asks the question: Does Islamic dress or fashion as an individual entity exist or is it merely an affectation of image and language? Who is the “modern Muslim personality?” By focusing on the uncensored writings and pictorial stories of Islamic fashion bloggers – operating beyond borders to a non-descript audience, on sites such as Haute Hijab; The Muslim Girl; Days of Doll; Tales of a Muslim Fashionista; Muslim Street Fashion; Yaz the Spaz; and Slice of Lemon, the intent of this paper is to research the ways in which the blogs operate as a forum for public dialogue, without religious authority, on the fashioning of a Muslim self through the performance of dress. The paper seeks to question what is the position they hope to establish? How do they contribute to the debate? And how do they cultivate an Islamic ummah consciousness and construct a gendered “modern Muslim” identity independent from nation-state identity?

The Islamist militant group in Iraq and in Syria that now calls itself the "Islamic State" is deeply concerned about its credentials as a state. The June 29, 2014 announcement of a new Islamic caliphate repeatedly emphasizes that the caliphate has many of the qualities of other states in the international system. Does the Islamic State in fact look like a state? If one measures it according to its legitimacy in the international system the answer is no; however, when one looks at the state from a functional perspective, the Islamic State does indeed perform many of the functions of states in the contemporary state system. This has many implications, including that attempts to degrade and destroy the Islamic State as a group will degrade and destroy the core state functions for millions of Arabs living under its rule. This has the potential to lead to anarchical conditions in a region with extensive existing identity conflict and weapons proliferation. This paper measures the functional success of the Islamic state in six categories, which represent functions of recognized states. They include: 1) tax and labor acquisition, 2) defining and regulating citizenship, 3) providing international security and managing international relations, 4) ensuring domestic security, 5) providing social services, and 6) facilitating economic growth. In addition, the Islamic state's strength is measured using the coding tools of the Fragile States Index to provide comparison with other states in the international system. The paper concludes that the Islamic State has made considerable progress in consolidating its state in the areas of tax and labor acquisition, ensuring domestic security, and providing social services. Its trajectory to date is toward increasing levels of stateness, rather than decreasing state strength. When measured against other states using the Fragile States Index, the Islamic State ranks as the 17th most failed state in the world, meaning that it faces deep challenges in building its state, but has to date succeeded better than 16 other countries currently recognized as states in the international system.

This paper is a comparative study of English-language jihadi e-magazines published by the Islamic State and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). To date, the Islamic State has published six issues of Dabiq, which cumulatively run more than 250 pages. AQAP has published more than 550 pages in twelve issues of Inspire. Using content analysis, I compare and contrast all available editions of both magazines. Articles are coded according to length, kind, and content, allowing for systematic comparison within and across publications. I find that while both magazines draw on religion to justify views, to legitimate the use of violence, and to recruit followers, important differences exist. While Inspire seeks to motivate "lone wolves" to carry out attacks in the West, Dabiq calls on Muslims worldwide to perform hijrah and join its fight in the Middle East. Inspire draws on humor, satire, and celebrity culture; Dabiq does not. Furthermore, Dabiq goes to far greater lengths to demonstrate religious credentials and to explain its strategic vision. Other findings relate to the evolution of group priorities over time, differences in how the magazines use "words of the enemy" against the West, and variation on interpretations of oft-cited Islamic text. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of implications for policy.

The outbreak of the Syrian uprising was viewed by many in Turkey as a rare opportunity for the manifestation of Turkish regional leadership. The rising prestige of Turkey in the Middle East was expected to help the country lead the region towards democratization. The European Union also considered these developments a key moment for the promotion of its own foreign policy agenda in the Mediterranean. The collapse of authoritarian regimes was hoped to pave the path for democratic consolidation and better human rights protection. Yet developments followed an unexpected path. The Assad regime proved more resilient than expected, and secularist, pro-Western and moderate Islamist opposition forces were soon overtaken by two leading jihadist forces, the Al Nusra Front and ISIS. In particular, the rapid growth of ISIS influence, its spread into Iraq and the conquest of the country’s third biggest city Mosul and large parts of Iraqi territory posed a major predicament for Turkey and the international community. While the international community was shocked by the brutality and depravedness of the ISIS regime as well as jihadist attacks in European cities, Turkish authorities appeared less concerned: This raised international concerns about Turkish sectarian tendencies, its willingness to collaborate in the struggle against jihadists as well as its own strategic goals in Syria. Turkey’s determination to bring an immediate end to the Assad regime, apparent preference of jihadists to Kurdish opposition groups in Syria and acquiescence regarding the redrawing of the Middle East map attempted by ISIS appeared to overcome concerns about the regional and global repercussions of a jihadist takeover in Syria distanced Turkey from the international community. This paper aims to discuss the challenges that the rise of ISIS has posed for the conceptual foundations of EU and Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as the motives behind EU and Turkey’s positions on this issue. It will be argued that pragmatist views have pushed Turkey from its original indulgent position on the rise of jihadism in its immediate vicinity to a more circumspect one, which remains however far from mainstream views among the European Union, other Western allies and most Middle Eastern states. This paper will be based on foreign policy analysis literature and literature on EU, Turkish, Syrian and Middle Eastern politics, as well primary sources from Turkish, German and English-language press.