From the Guest Editor/Misafir Editorden.

• Author: Aydin, Mustafa
• Position: Editorial

The Levant region--from the French le Levant (rising), where the sun rises, referred to since the days of the Cold War as the Eastern Mediterranean--consists of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Cyprus, and parts of Egypt and Turkey. It has historically played an important role as a region, where the East and the West and converge, be it through conflict or dialogue. In modern times though, the individual states that make up the Levant have not been system-determining states in world politics. The Levant as a region has maintained its relevance in international politics due to geostrategic positioning, proximity to Islamic, Christian and Jewish religious sites, and more recently its hydrocarbon resources. Powerful regional actors and their diverse military, political and economic interests, in addition to multitude of ethnicities, faiths, and beliefs as well as continuing interests and interventions of non-regional states, have created numerous fault lines and drivers of conflicts in the region.

Traditionally an area of confrontation between Islam and Christianity, the Levant has seen the addition of a Jewish state into the mix into the 20th century. Yet, throughout its history, the Levant had also been known for its cosmopolitanism as well as its "diversity and flexibility". (1) It has accommodated different cultures, religions, political inclinations, economic orders, and rulers side by side for centuries, and managed to keep their encounters and divergences confined within the region. The Levant's diversity has become somewhat difficult to contain during the 20th century, however, and the region has seen its quarrels emanate outward from the region to ever-widening circles since the end of the Cold War.

Thus, the outbreak of the Arab Spring in late 2010, with popular uprisings against autocratic regimes in the Middle East and North Africa, has ushered an entirely new era with unsettled regional balances, complicated and shifting alliance patterns, fully-fledged sectarian strife, intertwined crises in Iraq and Syria, and the involvement of the United States and the Russian Federation, reminiscence of Cold War confrontations. The combination of these dynamics, together with decaying non- representative regimes, troubled economies infected with corruption and inequality, as well as demographic pressure on resources and the environment continue to threaten stability and prosperity for all.

The widespread breakup of state apparatus, oftentimes termed as state failure, has provoked polarization, sectarianism and occasional civil wars, leading to emergence of powerful non-state actors in the region. Disagreements between the key regional powers, external interventions and shifting alignments between regional and international actors in a multipolar constellation have added new layers to the already complex and unpredictable situation. In this intricate existence, the region needs to find ways to establish a regional order; otherwise the possibility of its final explosion seems imminent. Whether it could reinvent its famed cosmopolitanism of the past is an important query, the result of which is important for...