That’s probably true. I was counting on horny teenagers, which is never a good idea.
Evict EVERYBODY.
Level the “Holy Shrines”.
Convert it to a Nature Preserve.
Trespassers will be shot on sight, by Drones.
As QuickSilver indicated, the real problem for peace is that there over half a dozen sides:
Israel
Shiites
Sunnis
Kurds
Turks
Rich ruling oil sheiks
Trying to come up with a means that would make everyone happy would utterly confound a Solomon.
Are you counting Iran as part of the ME? They were doing pretty well up until the clerics overthrew the shah.
Historically, kicking people out of territory they consider theirs has not been a path to peace.
Or you could say they were doing just fine until the coup of the democratically-elected PM by the USA and UK that re-installed the Shah in the first place.
Causing, no. Sustaining, definitely.
I didn’t say it would. But it would definitely help.
You don’t think a lot of that is fed from above (by both the rich elites and the theocracies)?
Places in the ME that didn’t used to be hotbeds of violence at times in the past are now. That tells me that violence is not an inherent feature.
I disagree. It would strongly depend on how those democracies are set up.
I feel that a lot of the times when Middle Eastern regimes have promoted hostility they’ve done it to win popular support. So I feel the hostility is being fed from below at least as much as it’s being fed from the top.
The places in the Middle East that have been peaceful in the past have usually achieved this by clamping down on their people.
Tribalism, religious fundamentalism, stoking of extremism are the set of inherent features. Everything else follows.
Fundamentalism and stoking of extremism are not inherent features of the region. They are, more than anything, a legacy of the Cold War.
Tribalism, sure, there’s always been that. But if it could work for (most of) Western Europe in the modern age, despite its historic violent tribalism, it can work for the ME.
What does this even mean? Turkey was the most Westernized Arab democracy in the area. How is it doing now and why do you think things have gone sideways? It’s not the “how”, it’s the “who” is in power and by what means they are willing to maintain their power. Look no further than the US in which a populist authoritarian and the Christian right almost got away with it. I’m not entirely certain they won’t the next time they try.
It’s a shortsighted view to simply point to the Cold War and say that’s the legacy of fundamentalism when history tells us otherwise. Anyway, as far as the west was concerned, ME was just some exotic land with quixotic people and customs. A trade route. But let’s ignore the crusades and religious wars of the past. Ignore the dying Ottoman empire. Ignore the Barbary Wars. It’s not until oil became a highly sought commodity that anybody really stuck their nose into the ME.
The reason peace works for Western Europe, and much of Eastern Europe too, is because they finally realized they can’t kill their way out of their differences. The realization has come at a very high price. Perhaps the ME won’t be satisfied until they learn that lesson for themselves. And they just might when the rest of the world no longer depends on regional stability for a reliable oil supply.
If by “Westernized” you mean “under the thumb of its military and then a tinpot dictator” then sure…
I wouldn’t be so quick to crow about a few years of lull. Tribal violence hasn’t yet disappeared from Western Europe, and some things (Brexit, say) could still bring the worst bits back.
Be that as it may, it’s as close as the Arab ME has come to a western style democracy. And you know that. So I don’t know what you’re objecting to or what you mean by “depends on how it’s set up”.
Sure. It could all fall apart. But it would have to overcome a pretty long period of peaceful history, NATO, EU, G-something, host of other obstacles to war, not the least of which are a vivid shared memory of the horrors of previous world wars fought on their soil.
None of which addresses the actual topic we’re discussing, which is not a problem with peace in Europe but the ME.
As usual, The Onion has an answer 
The Turkish system was hardly set up like a Western democracy, the military had far too much power (which became sort of the back door for the Islamicists). That’s the kind of things I mean - checks on the military, checks on the religious fundamentalists, checks on the wealthy. New ME democracies would need all of those.
If you’re using “since the 90s” as your standard for “pretty long”, I don’t think we actually have a lot of common ground to continue to have a meaningful discussion here.
Like the way the memory of the visceral horrors of WWI prevented any further horrific violence in Western Europe? That kind of thing?
I agree. Someone should write them a strongly worded letter outlining these details. I think they would appreciate the insight.
I blame “idealism”, or lack there of.
Oh, I’m sorry, did you mistakenly think GD was a side committee of NATO empowered to effect action, or something?
Whereas idiosyncratic language usage seems to be the actual culprit.
No. I mistakenly thought we could ground conversations in reality.
The reason the ME suffers from a lack of a stable democracy is because the religious fundamentalists and political extremists aren’t interested. They’re not interested because it would deprive them of the power they have and continue to want to maintain over the population which they control through… wait for it… exploitation of tribal and religious fundamentalism.
Pointing out the fact that they are ‘not setting up democracy right’ is not insightful in any way. They are setting it up exactly how they want it.
Naah, it’s because the moneyed elites don’t stay in power that way. The Sauds didn’t have to embrace the Wahhabists, the Emirs don’t have to fund every wannabe-Arafat that comes along - they do it because it keeps the masses looking the other way. “Follow the money” is always good advice. Putting this on the populace is just victim-blaming.
The people in charge are not setting up democracies at all, never mind right. There’s only one functioning democracy in the region - and it isn’t Turkey.