This paper will be a comparative analysis of the role of Diaspora communities among the Kurds of the Fertile Crescent and the Berbers of North Africa - the two most prominent cases of ethno-national “imagining” in the MENA region in recent years, Kurds and Berbers are both “non-dominant” ethnic groups, in Miroslav Hrosch’s term, operating within the realm of territorial nation-states dominated by a different ethnic group (Arab, Turkic, Persian), one which has been historically hostile towards alternative conceptions of the political and social order. In the increasing globalized world, and in the face of repression by “national” governments, members of each group have migrated in significant numbers to Western Europe. There they have benefited from political freedoms and a new global discourse on minority language and cultural rights to engage in important intellectual, cultural and political activities on behalf of their respective causes which, at bottom, challenge the hegemonic ethos of existing national-territorial states in the MENA region. Inevitably, this has also sharpened the hybrid nature of their identities, in ways which distinguish them from those still residing in the “homeland.” Our paper, part of a larger ongoing comparative study of the nature of Kurdish and Berber ethnic self-assertion, will address the following subjects: 1. The impact of the Diasporas on nation-building and state-building in their respective communities. What are the political dynamics of the two-way street: how do the Diaspora branches of the Kurdish and Berber movements, respectively, interact with their “home” branches? What are their relations with their “host” states? How do they act to mobilize their own Diaspora communities? 2. Identity inputs – how do Diaspora identity projects – intellectual, cultural, social – contribute to the shaping of modern Kurdish and Berber identities, both in their “home” countries and outside, respectively? What is the role of the “new media”, from satellite TV to Facebook, in the building of trans-national Kurdish and Berber communities? 3. How attuned, and how much interaction is there between Berbers and Kurds in the Diaspora, and with other European ethno-cultural/sub-national/trans-national groups, e.g., the Catalans, the Basques, the Bretons?

Two events triggered a heated public debate in Turkey in 2007, revealing the complex relationship among collective memory, state discourses, national identity, freedom of expression and the role of intellectuals as knowledge producers. First, Elif Safak faced charges for her latest novel, The Bastard of ?stanbul, under article 301 of the Turkish criminal code, which criminalizes any form of expression degrading Turkish national identity. Her novel brought up various perspectives of Armenian-Turkish history that are considered taboo in Turkey. Later, the controversial novelist Orhan Pamuk, who was also prosecuted under article 301 for acknowledging in the international arena the Armenian genocide and the Kurdish question, became the first Turkish Nobel Prize winner in literature. Historically and politically contextualizing and analyzing the representations of those events within the commentary sections of two national newspapers (Milliyet and Zaman) that represent the political spectrum of Turkish intellectuals, this paper addresses the following questions: What are the challenges introduced by globalization for local intellectuals in redefining their identities against/within the discourses of the state, collective memory, nationalism and universal rights of expression? How does globalization lead to the interrogation of the relationship between Turkish identity and the locally established political views of leftism, secularism and Islamism? By analyzing the Turkish columnists’ responses to Orhan Pamuk becoming the first Turkish Nobel Prize winner in literature on the same day that the French parliament passed a law criminalizing denial of the Armenian genocide, this paper also illustrates the impact of globalization on domestic journalism. One of the challenges that globalization poses for domestic journalism is the increasing necessity to bridge the difference and tension between local sensibilities and transnational realities for the local population. As Turkish columnists, who function as public intellectuals in Turkey, increasingly see their job as mediators between the nation and extra-societal global public sphere, they offer alternative interpretations to state ideologies.

The intellectual discourse in the Arab Middle East is divided into four main types which are not completely separate: the Political-Islamic discourse, the national Pan-Arab discourse, the Socialist-Marxist discourse and the Liberal discourse. The liberal Arab discourse, which is the focus of this presentation, developed from traditions that were influenced from both modern Western history and the Arab-Muslim history of the region. The Arab liberal discourse of the last two decades is the main - if not the only - discourse that challenges the domination of political-Islam. The historical foundation of the recent ideological liberal current occur after contextual and historical changes within the Arab left; the revival of this current philosophically begins in the last sixties with philosophies who contested the Marxism within the Arab left. This process came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 (the political defeat of the Marxism), the gulf war and in 1991 (the political defeat of Pan-Arabism) and the triumph of the American liberalism. This decade witnessed a remarkable liberal rise which expressed by abandoning Marxism and Pan-Arabism in favor of liberalism. Accordingly, this phenomenon is a direct manifestation of transforming the general enlightened thoughts to positivist well-define ideology that gives total respond to the contemporary political, economical, social and cultural questions. The liberal contemporary Arab ideology is predominantly political; its preference and distinguished issues are political freedom within the borders of the local nation-states (its domestic requests), a regional vision of peace (the idea of New Middle East), pluralism, secularism and individualism mainly in the social and cultural manners. A representing example for this contemporary intellectual and political trend could be found in the biography of the Lebanese intellectual Hazem Saghieh; in the political manner, he supports the idea of the nation-state. His general approach based on progress towards a Middle Eastern regional order that would incorporate Israel. In the social and cultural manner he had wrote many works and articles that focus on cultural and social issues like Individualism and pluralism. The presentation will be divided into two main parts: The first part will present the historical definition and development of the liberal phenomenon in the last two decades, its ideological structure, its interests and ideological aims. The second will present the issue from a vertical outlook; It will examine the phenomenon through the representative personal and intellectual development of the Lebanese liberal ex-Marxist Hazem Saghieh.

In 1950 `Abd al-Rahman Badawi, who was known at the time as “the first modern Arab philosopher”, announced that he had devised a new philosophy for “our generation.” Khalid Muhammad Khalid wrote Min huna nabda (From Here we Begin), a scathing attack on the clergy and a call for religious reform. Suhayl Idris, a young Beiruti intellectual, left for Paris and returned in 1953 as a devoted existentialist. He founded the powerful literary magazine al-Adab and contributed greatly to the transformation of Beirut into the capital of Arab thought. Literary critic Mahmud Amin al-`Alim and mathematician Abd al-`Aziz Anis published Fi’l-thaqafa al-misriyya (On Egyptian Culture), accusing the Arab intellectual establishment of exemplifying a detached, “ivory tower” attitude. They believed in the so-called “Arab masses” and ushered in a Marxist-inspired aesthetics of social realism. Iraqi poet Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayyati committed himself to an exploration of the Arab human condition in the wake of colonialism. Inspired by Albert Camus, he believed in self-liberation and “rebellion against reality.” These were some of the best minds of Arab thought during the era of de-colonization. They were secular cultural optimists, members of the “proud generation” who sought to re-invent a new Arab subject: proud, modern, independent, self-sufficient, and, above all, free. By the 1967 this generation was defeated as many of its members experienced intellectual life as a process that involved alienation, suppression, statelessness, besiegement, material poverty and disillusionment with the political process. But what were the causes and precise mechanisms underlying the rise and fall of this promising group? Were their designs for a new era superficial? Was their secular cultural vision inapplicable to an essentially religious society? Where they, as some suggested, suppressed by new forms of Western domination? In as much as these questions are being asked at all, the mainstream responses of scholars like Fuad Ajami, Adeed Dawisha, Hisham Sharabi and many others, is that the war defeated the unitary political aspirations of Pan-Arab nationalism and thus left the so-called “Arab masses” without an ideology and hence a future. This explanation is in need of revision. As part of a book project and based on hitherto unstudied Arabic source material, I wish to explore in depth the collective biography of this generation by way of writing an intellectual history of 1967.