Once again, this issue of the Review circulates as turbulent events continue to displace and fracture the history, culture, and everyday realities that define the MENA region and diasporic lives. As MESA members seek ways to interrogate and intervene in these chaotic moments through academic and pedagogical practice, our hope is that the RoMES mission to bridge divides between fields, publics, and geographies in Middle East studies will provide potential pathways forward. We also face ongoing public debate concerning the role of academics and of liberal arts education during a time when conscientious, critical scholarship and curricula are often labeled as partisan projects. It is thus incumbent on all of us to reassess the roles we play in the various fora that define our lives: classrooms, conferences, public media outlets, scholarly publications, editorial and institutional boards, think tanks, and beyond. In this issue we introduce three new sections of the Review intentionally created to capture some of these varied roles and thus to offer RoMES as a space for interrogation and reflection.

A thorough assessment of Turkey's 2017 constitutional referendum requires a review of (1) the process that led to the formulation of the changes; (2) the amendments’ impact on the judiciary; (3) the risks posed by the emerging regime after the implementation of the changes or, in other words, the political governance structure of Turkey after 2019; and (4) the opportunities and dangers facing Turkey's democracy within the current context. The analysis below indicates that the amendments adopted under a state of emergency might result in an irreversible power grab and risk democratic collapse but also offer an opportunity to reconstruct Turkey's political sphere to better address challenges to its democracy.

Twenty-first century Turkey has been shaped by two conflicting trends: all-encompassing reform in almost all aspects of law that were transformative if not altogether progressive, and an increasing erosion of the rule of law, which finally culminated in a nation-wide emergency regime and the April 2017 constitutional referendum. The pressing question for many is why the promising reform era was abandoned for crude repression? In this essay, we answer this question by challenging its very foundation and pointing instead to an alternative line of inquiry concerning Turkish politics and society, one that focuses precisely on the interplay between reform and repression. The constitutional referendum of April 2017 compels observers and scholars of Turkey to reevaluate the interplay between reform and repression. Rather than reading contemporary Turkey as a case of relapse from reform into repression, as many commentators do, we suggest approaching reform and repression as concomitant and complementary modes of government.

The 2017 referendum marked a transition from an already incongruous parliamentary system to rampant presidentialism and created more conflicts rather than defusing them. Given the extraordinary conditions under which the referendum was held, and the limited time allowed for discussion of its possible ramifications, any effort to analyze the eve and aftermath of the referendum provoked more questions than answers. Why was the referendum held in 2017, although the governing party had advocated for a new constitution and transition to a presidential system since it came to power in 2002? What was the attitude of the voters towards the presidential system? How did popular support change or did it in fact change during the referendum campaign? The analysis of these questions presented here relies on extant research to inventory what we really know and do not know about the most recent Turkish referendum and why these unanswered questions might have critical consequences.

Turkey has switched to a presidential system via a referendum held in April 2017 that will take full effect after the 2019 presidential elections. Turkish presidentialism increases the prominence of the executive at the expense of the legislative branch and concentrates power in the office of the president. Executive aggrandizement will deepen ideological polarization and electoral mobilization by significantly raising the stakes of the game for both the incumbent and the opposition. As such, we posit that the new presidential system will institutionalize the de facto personalism and majoritarian rule that the AKP has hitherto established in recent years. This trend is likely to trigger a transition from a competitive authoritarian to hegemonic electoral authoritarianism in case of Tayyip Erdoğan's election, thus placing Turkey on par with the strongest executive systems around the globe such as Russia and Venezuela.

Five days after the attempted coup d’état of 15 July 2016, a state of emergency was declared in Turkey. Under the emergency rule, constitutional rights and liberties are suspended and parliament and the courts are reduced to the regime's rubber stamp, while the country is ruled by one man through decrees. While many question how the legal and political developments in Turkey will unfold, and whether and how the democratic backslide and decline in rule of law can be reversed, Indira Gandhi's emergency (1975–77) offers a useful historical heuristic case. With striking similarities to the conditions in Turkey today, during the Indian emergency the judiciary, especially the Indian Supreme Court (ISC), was subjugated to the will of Prime Minister Gandhi through means of constitutional amendments and political appointments that compromised the integrity of justices. Yet, shortly after the end of emergency the ISC regained the trust and respect of the Indian people, thereby playing an instrumental role in the restoration of Indian democracy. Through a close analysis of the Indian emergency rule, the present article explores the conditions of democratic survival and whether and how the Turkish judiciary can reclaim its independence, spearhead a rights revolution, and help restore the democratic order.

Outside the disciplines of communication and cultural studies, scholarly interest in television programming, especially scripted entertainment, has been overshadowed by attention to digital media, reality TV, and smart phone connectivity. A 2017 University of Maryland conference offered a reconsideration of popular Middle East-produced television dramas and their surprising impacts on national and transnational politics and culture. As conference papers showed, social and historical themes resonated in unexpected ways inside and outside national borders, with state authorities responding, not just with the usual censoring, but with investment in social and historical dramas of their own.

The 1990s marked an important moment in Egyptian television, when the country turned its attention increasingly (although never monolithically) toward historical drama as a means of recreating and reinterpreting modern Egyptian history. Mahfouz Abd al-Rahman and Osama Anwar Okasha, in particular, scripted long multi-year series aired during Ramadan, the peak season for television viewing, that covered decades of the late ninteenth century and pre-Nasserist history, in many ways re-writing public history, and making historical drama—and history—fashionable. I focus here on the former and his first mega-hit Bawabat al-Halawani (Halawani Gate). Biographical dramas, initially of artists, but later politicians, kings, and religious leaders would follow. As the Egyptian industry atrophied in the following decade these dramatists passed the mantle on to the Syrians, later the Turks, who broke the Egyptian monopoly and brought their own stories to the fore. But a rebirth may be in view.

The hugely popular proto-Ottoman television serial Resurrection Ertuğrul (Diriliş Ertuğrul, 2014–) is the culmination of a series of attempts by Turkish government broadcaster TRT to produce a historical drama in line with the values of the governing AKP. Far from being confined to the television screen, Resurrection is called upon by the government for multiple extra-textual engagements with the public. This essay traces some of the ways in which the serial has been used instrumentally by the AKP, blurring traditional distinctions between entertainment and official (state sanctioned) history, and intervening in political discourse. It first introduces the notion of prescriptive activation to describe the extra-textual use of media texts by those in power for political ends. Next, it examines the trappings of death that surround Resurrection, suggesting that the serial partakes in a representational necropolitics that fetishizes death for the nation. Finally, it explores the stakes of such representation, turning to a case in which text-inspired and literal necropolitics converge.

This essay examines the television viewing habits of Iranians since 2010, when the first of a series of crippling international sanctions were imposed on Iran after diplomatic efforts to curb the country's nuclear program stalled. Like many others in the region, viewers in Iran have been swept up by the recent wave of Turkish serials, which a new generation of offshore private networks dubbed into Persian and beamed to households with illegal satellite television dishes. These glossy melodramas provided access to consumerist utopias increasingly beyond the reach of Iranians living under the shadow of sanctions. Despite the enormous popularity of Turkish television imports with Iranian audiences, the Islamic Republic's networks managed to broadcast some successful “counter-programming” during this era of economic and political isolation. The comedy Paytakht/Capital (2011–15), more specifically, eschewed the glamour and glitz of many Turkish serials for ordinary characters living rather ordinary lives in small town Iran. In doing so, the series highlighted not only the problems that the sanctions regime created or exacerbated in Iranian society but also the virtues of remaining on the margins of a neoliberal global economic order. The essay concludes by asking how Iranian audiences might enjoy both Capital and Turkish melodramas simultaneously.

Towards the end of the decade long Iran–Iraq war, Saddam Hussein launched a deadly attack against the Kurds, known as the Anfal Campaign, killing more than a hundred thousand. One of the largest acts of genocide occurred on 18 March 1988 in the Kurdish city of Halabja. On that day, sweet-smelling poison gas was poured over the city, killing at least five thousand. Since 2001 Kurdish moviemakers have memorialized the tragedy of the Halabja massacre by producing cinematic dramas and narrative documentaries. These films are part of a discourse of authenticity and a politics of culture that permeate the Kurdish independence movement. This essay proposes that Halabja films can be divided into three stages: the era of consolidation, 2000 to 2009; the golden era, 2009 to early 2014; and the fall which followed the fall of Mosul to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Each era reveals new attitudes towards politics, society, and the massacre.

This essay presents a reflection on a selection of collections of Islamic art in Europe and the Middle East, focusing on new installations that emerged in the last decade. While various approaches have been discussed in the context of new installations, chronological narratives still prevail. Perhaps, these are indeed the best way to introduce audiences unfamiliar with the material to its complex historical and cultural contexts. The overarching goal of many of these displays may be to create positive public engagement with Islamic art in a global context where Islam is often associated with war and destruction.

This short piece describes an experimental course at Florida State University in which undergraduates digitize issues of a turn-of-the-century Egyptian newspaper. Beginning students of Middle East studies can benefit from exposure to raw primary sources. Learning to read and process this newspaper using digital methods such as character recognition and text encoding, they generate a repository of text that can be of value to scholars in the field. Training students to do this work certainly offers them valuable, transferable technical skills. The combination of technical and conceptual work in a collaborative, laboratory setting is not easily accomplished, however. From an area studies perspective, it can be challenging to train students to discern what material is of significance, and how they might proceed to analyze it. Nevertheless, a great deal of knowledge in our field is produced incrementally, provisionally, and collectively. We can use institutional moves to re-imagine teaching to involve even inexpert students in this process of knowledge production.

In November 2017, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) sponsored the fourth annual Undergraduate Research Workshop in Washington, D.C. Organized by MESA's Committee for Undergraduate Middle East Studies, the workshop provides an opportunity for talented undergraduate students to present their scholarship in a professional context. Participants are selected through a competitive application process, and, since the program's inception have come from universities in Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, France, and across the United States.

Şerif Mardin, the preeminent Turkish social scientist of his generation who left a deep mark on the study of Ottoman and Turkish society, passed away on 6 September 2017 in Istanbul.

On 25 July 2017, Jordan lost one of its great educators and feminists: Rula Quawas. Rula was an outstanding educator for generations of young Jordanian and Arab feminists. She took on challenges that no one else dared to approach in a conservative patriarchal society, knowing fully well that she might have to pay a dear personal price for each of these battles.