From the Editor

As fighting continues in the eastern part of Ukraine following Russia’s annexation of Crimea; as violence between Israel and Gaza has reached new heights; as the self-declared Islamic State in northern Iraq has taken Islamic extremism to new levels; and as the rise of China continues to cause friction with its neighbors, 2014 is shaping up to be one of the most dangerous years with respect to international security and stability in recent memory. The present issue of the Mediterranean Quarterly includes an interesting and diverse collection of essays that provide important ideas and perspectives, both in a historical context and with direct reference to current events.

In “Italy’s Amnesia over War Guilt: The ‘Evil Germans’ Alibi,” Filippo Focardi offers an important viewpoint, contending that to this day Italian national memory has still not come to terms with Italy’s role as an ally of Nazi Germany during the Second World War. As Focardi argues, the overwhelming attention for throwing Europe into chaos and engaging in war crimes during the Second World War has been leveled squarely on Germany through the negative stereotype of the “evil German.” Focardi’s essay rebalances the blame and demonstrates that the Italians under Mussolini could be just as brutal as their ally north of the Alps—and it chips away at Italy’s reputation as less than a full participant in war crimes by the Axis powers.

Anthony Eames’s essay, “Margaret Thatcher’s Diplomacy and the 1982 Lebanon War,” examines a key period of British foreign policy and how Great Britain and the United States grew from somewhat hesitant allies during the Falklands War to allies that experienced the rebirth in the Anglo-American “special relationship” between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan. With the benefit of archival evidence from the British National Archives, Eames is able to explain with a great deal of authority how the Iron Lady was able to elevate Britain’s level of standing in Washington, develop a reputation with President Reagan as a reliable partner and valuable European ally, and coordinate Anglo-American strategy with respect to the crisis in Lebanon.

Steven Philip Kramer and Judith Yaphe, in “The European Spring of 1848 and the Arab Spring of 2011: Lessons to Be Learned?” compare and contrast two significant events and their effects on the abilities of societies to reform themselves and become modern democracies in the real sense of the word. As the authors highlight, the 1848 revolutions showed that “the promise of liberal and democratic politics . . . took a long time to fulfill, and the path was rocky.” Certainly the violent establishment of the Islamic State in northern Iraq appears to bear this out, as the Arab Spring has faltered and the region is now seeing a return to reactionary, religious conservatism.

In “Challenging Secular Establishment: Student Movements in Egypt and Turkey in the 1970s,” Ali Erken compares the dissident activities against the governments in both countries. While there are remarkable similarities between the two movements, there are also important differences, which the author analyzes and dissects. Again, with the Arab Spring turning into a very hot and inhospitable Arab Summer, there are important lessons to be learned from the region’s history of forty years ago, perhaps none more important than how the military-bureaucratic establishments in both Egypt and Turkey managed to control religion and religious institutions in order to keep a lid on extremist Muslim ideology. Today, however, both countries, in their own different ways, are dealing with a breakdown of this paradigm. In Egypt, the June 2012 presidential election of Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood barely survived one year before a military coup removed him from office. Meanwhile in Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Islamic-based Justice and Development Party won a third term in office in August 2014, despite corruption scandals and protests against a government in Ankara that has been perceived to be moving Turkey away from its secular, republican roots, and toward a more authoritarian and religiously oriented policy.

Continuing this theme, Burak Erdenir, in “Europeanization of Value Orientations in Turkey: Continuity or...