Mustafa Aksakal – författare

In a world grappling with refugee crisis, political unrest and economies on the verge of collapse, temporary migration has become an increasingly common phenomenon.This volume presents a comprehensive picture of the transformative and development potential of temporary transnational migration in political, legal, economic, social and cultural aspects.This book:analyses how temporary migration is distinct from more permanent and circular forms of migration;brings together case studies from five Asian countries (China, India, the Philippines, Thailand and Turkey) and six European countries (Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands and Ukraine);is based on exhaustive interviews of over 800 migrants, returnees and migrants’ family members, along with about 300 field experts, politicians, authorities and actors in civil society;illustrates the diverse nature of temporary migration, the continuing globalisation of the labour market and the interrelated changes to immigration, integration and emigration policies on local, national and international scales.This volume will be indispensable to scholars and researchers of development studies, international politics, international relations, migration and diaspora studies, public policy, sociology and social anthropology. It will also be of importance to government think tanks and non-governmental organisations working in these areas.

Why did the Ottoman Empire enter the First World War in late October 1914, months after the war's devastations had become clear? Were its leaders 'simple-minded,' 'below-average' individuals, as the doyen of Turkish diplomatic history has argued? Or, as others have claimed, did the Ottomans enter the war because War Minister Enver Pasha, dictating Ottoman decisions, was in thrall to the Germans and to his own expansionist dreams? Based on previously untapped Ottoman and European sources, Mustafa Aksakal's dramatic study challenges this consensus. It demonstrates that responsibility went far beyond Enver, that the road to war was paved by the demands of a politically interested public, and that the Ottoman leadership sought the German alliance as the only way out of a web of international threats and domestic insecurities, opting for an escape whose catastrophic consequences for the empire and seismic impact on the Middle East are felt even today.

Why did the Ottoman Empire enter the First World War in late October 1914, months after the war's devastations had become clear? Were its leaders 'simple-minded,' 'below-average' individuals, as the doyen of Turkish diplomatic history has argued? Or, as others have claimed, did the Ottomans enter the war because War Minister Enver Pasha, dictating Ottoman decisions, was in thrall to the Germans and to his own expansionist dreams? Based on previously untapped Ottoman and European sources, Mustafa Aksakal's dramatic study challenges this consensus. It demonstrates that responsibility went far beyond Enver, that the road to war was paved by the demands of a politically interested public, and that the Ottoman leadership sought the German alliance as the only way out of a web of international threats and domestic insecurities, opting for an escape whose catastrophic consequences for the empire and seismic impact on the Middle East are felt even today.

A new history that tells the story of how European imperial ambitions destroyed the Ottoman Empire during the Great War and created a divided and unstable Middle EastThe Ottoman Empire’s collapse at the end of the First World War is often treated as a foregone conclusion. It was only a matter of time, the story goes, before the so-called Sick Man of Europe succumbed to its ailments—incompetent management, nationalism, and ethnic and religious conflict. In The War That Made the Middle East, Mustafa Aksakal overturns this conventional narrative. He describes how European imperial ambitions and the Ottoman commitment to saving its empire at any cost—including the destruction of the Armenian community and the deaths of more than a million Ottoman troops and other civilians—led to the empire’s violent partition and created a politically unstable Middle East.The War That Made the Middle East shows that, until 1914, the Ottoman Empire was a viable multiethnic, multireligious state, and that relations between the Arabs, Jews, Muslims, and Christians of Palestine were relatively stable. When war broke out, the Ottoman government sought an alliance with the Entente but was rejected because of British and French designs on the Eastern Mediterranean. After the Ottomans entered the fight on the side of Germany and were defeated, Britain and France seized Ottoman lands, and new national elites in former Ottoman territories claimed their own states. The region was renamed “the Middle East,” erasing a robust and modernizing 600-year-old empire.A sweeping narrative of war, great power politics, and ordinary people caught up in the devastation, The War That Made the Middle East offers new insights about the Great War and its profound and lasting consequences.

In a world grappling with refugee crisis, political unrest and economies on the verge of collapse, temporary migration has become an increasingly common phenomenon.This volume presents a comprehensive picture of the transformative and development potential of temporary transnational migration in political, legal, economic, social and cultural aspects.This book:analyses how temporary migration is distinct from more permanent and circular forms of migration;brings together case studies from five Asian countries (China, India, the Philippines, Thailand and Turkey) and six European countries (Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands and Ukraine);is based on exhaustive interviews of over 800 migrants, returnees and migrants’ family members, along with about 300 field experts, politicians, authorities and actors in civil society;illustrates the diverse nature of temporary migration, the continuing globalisation of the labour market and the interrelated changes to immigration, integration and emigration policies on local, national and international scales.This volume will be indispensable to scholars and researchers of development studies, international politics, international relations, migration and diaspora studies, public policy, sociology and social anthropology. It will also be of importance to government think tanks and non-governmental organisations working in these areas.