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power of Islamist political currents and the attendant social changes thatmark leading Arab states; and, finally, the heightening prospect that theArab-Israeli conflict will remain a potentially explosive issue for years tocome. These are not discrete, but rather interrelated, phenomena whichtogether form a welter of challenges that will demand the attention ofTurkish policymakers.The Arab WorldThe Arab World has justifıably gained recognition as one of themost problematical areas on the planet. History dictated that the Arabswould, in general, become fully responsible (at least technically) for theirown affairs only in the wake of World War II. The legacy of a past thathas impinged forcefully on the recent history of the Arabs is a factor thatcannot be discounted. Most Arab states function within boundaries establishedby external imperial actors, and do so within a corresponding traditionof authoritarianism that provides little inspiration for "popular" initiativesin civic affairs. indeed, the dominance of the state is so ingrainedin Arab societies that a self-conscious concept of "civil society" hasemerged in the past decades only slowly, painfully and in multiple andconfused forms. While much ink and breath has been expended in recentyears touting the development—or condemning the lack of development--of "civil society" in Arab states, many discussions along these lines reveala glaring diffıculty in their basic premise. To address the question of"civil society" without qualification is to presume that an unambiguouslyrecognized national society exits. It is precisely here that conditions inmuch of the Arab World raise inevitable questions.Whether one refers to Jordan, Syria, Iraq, the Gulf states, or evenEgypt as well as most of North Africa, the identification of state nomenclaturewith "society" is problematical. Significant numbers of Jordanians,Syrians, Iraqis, Egyptians and citizens of other Arab states do notsimply equate their passport with their social identity. Religious, tribal,regional and class affiliations often play a far greater role than mere citizenshipin defıning societal identity. The bottom line, of course, comes torest on the cliche that the Arab World is stili very much involved in theprocess of state-building—but one must recall that cliches exit becausethey are so obviously true.The importance of this is that much of the internal instability of Arabstates, most of the pattern of inter-Arab frictions and hostilities, much ofthe catalogue of Arab-non-Arab tensions and, finally, the prevalence ofauthoritarian regimes (and correspondingly low levels of political institutionalization)that mark the Arab World can be linked to problems arisingfrom the tenuous societal base upon which state-building has perforcehad to proceed. Arab regimes have had little recourse but to seek to sustaintheir legitimacy through any means possible, and the easiest of these592