Ziya Meral (University of Cambridge)
Clash of Narratives: Sources and Implications of Victimhood Memories in the Middle East
This paper deals with the emergence of memories of Crusades, and development of post-colonial memories of being 'victims' at the hands of the 'West', its utilization by global jihadists like Al-Qaida for metaphysical wars and geo-political actors for domestic power-maintenance and how this puts traditional diplomacy to test and conventional ways of conflict prevention and win-win scenarios fail, and how politics of image and 'soft power' has assumed centre stage in undermining conflicts created by these developments.
Ziya Meral is a researcher on the
Middle East, writer and a PhD candidate in Politics at the University
of Cambridge. He read Russian literature at Ankara University for two
years and holds a 1st Class BA Hons from Brunel University in
London, MDiv from International School of Theology in the Philippines
and MSc in Sociology from the London School of Economics. Ziya has
extensive in field research experience in the Middle East, especially
in Iran, Egypt and Turkey. As an expert on human rights issues in the
Middle East, Ziya has delivered talks and lectures in academic
institutions and conferences, spoke at briefings and consultancies at
the UK House of Commons and House of Lords and the U.S. Congress, and
regularly briefed British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and US
Department of State. He has commented widely on the Middle East and
Islamic issues in international and British media. He has published
opinion editorials and academic essays and two books in Turkish on a
wide range of issues from Turkish and Middle Eastern politics to Islam,
human rights, Turkish-Armenian relations, philosophy, social theory,
comparative literature and theology.He is also the author of various
briefings and documents on human rights and political developments in
the Middle East, and the critically acclaimed report on Islam and human
rights, No Place to Call Home: Experiences of Apostates from Islam and
Failures of the International Community, which is based on in depth
field research in 6 countries, legal surveys of Muslim-majority states
and theological surveys of current and traditional Islamic thought. He
currently has a new book in publication process in Turkey, The Idiot: Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky and Jesus at the crossroads, and a play in production for stage in Istanbul.
