From the early years of the state, motherhood has constituted the defining element of Jewish women's social position. Thus, over the years, motherhood has been used as a potentially transformative political force, particularly regarding issues of national security. By defining themselves as mothers, women have entered the public sphere without challenging patriarchal structures, yet, by doing so, have simultaneously reinforced these structures and constrained female agency. Examining motherhood in Israeli public discourse in light of mothers who were role models, such as Rivka Guber and Miriam Peretz, and the effort to mobilize women as mothers in national protest movements, the article shows how gender boundaries have remained stable over time, and motherhood continues to anchor female public roles. It thus offers motherhood as a useful prism for examining preservation and change in public discourse in Israel.
The regionalization of the October 2023 conflict as a result of the Houthi attacks on commercial shipping at the entrance to the Red Sea created global ramifications, resulting in international intervention. While the crisis was also a reminder of the importance of maritime security to the GCC countries, they have neither adopted a collective response nor joined the international coalition. They have opted for unilateral responses to protect their interests. This was conspicuous, since securing Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) in the vicinity of the Arabian peninsula remains essential to the security and global economic engagement of the GCC states. This article argues that the lack of a collective response by the GCC states to the maritime security dilemmas in the Red Sea partially indicates divergent views on the crisis, and reflects the current security orientation of each. More to the point, at the root of their ad hoc and unilateral responses lies the long-standing inability to devise a common maritime security strategy. Thus, the paper studies five major factors that present major impediments to the adoption of a common maritime security policy at the GCC level.
This article examines & Uuml;ss-i Zafer , authored by Sahhaflar & Scedil;eyhiz & acirc;de Es'ad Efendi, as a constitutive narrative that reveals how the Ottoman political order re-positioned itself at conceptual and symbolic levels in the aftermath of the Auspicious Incident (Vaka-i Hayriye). The text frames the abolition of the Janissary Corps as a comprehensive process of re-founding that brings together religious, social and political dimensions within a single narrative plane, extending beyond the scope of a purely military intervention. Within this framework, the concepts of sedition (fitne), corruption (bozulma), and renewal (tecdid) occupy a central place as key semantic axes that render the establishment of the new order intelligible. The relationship constructed with Bektashism in & Uuml;ss-i Zafer indicates that the process of abolition targeted a broad field of mentality encompassing rituals, belief practices and collective memory, alongside institutional transformation. In this narrative context, Mahmud II is constructed as a central figure of authority situated at the intersection of historical continuity, sacred representation and political will. The image formed around the sultan makes visible an understanding of authority that re-establishes order and reshapes time itself. The establishment of the As & acirc;kir-i Mans & ucirc;re-i Muhammediyye is likewise interpreted as a stage at which victory acquires permanence at both institutional and symbolic levels. The article demonstrates that in & Uuml;ss-i Zafer , prayers, Quranic verses, hadiths and panegyrics are brought together with bureaucratic regulations within a unified narrative structure, through which a selective construction of memory is produced. This configuration of memory reframes the historical diversity of the Janissary Corps around a singular image of threat, while associating the new order with stability, harmony and legitimacy. In this respect, & Uuml;ss-i Zafer emerges as one of the narratives through which political authority in the early phase of Ottoman modernization grounded itself simultaneously on worldly and sacred foundations, while the Auspicious Incident acquires meaning as a constitutive historical moment in which order was re-established.
In May 1876, medrese students (t & acirc;lebe-i ul & ucirc;m), members of the guilds (esn & acirc;f), and workers at the Imperial Arsenal headed to the streets to protest corruption, the influence of Russia on Ottoman politics, and declining standards of living. These protests culminated in the overthrow of both the Grand Vizier and the Sultan. The students demanded the creation of a constitution and a legislative assembly to check the executive's power. At the time, observers described the protests, the overthrow of the government, and the demand for a constitution as revolutionary. Over the subsequent decades, popular dimensions of this movement have been eclipsed, and all of the major social groups who gathered in the streets - the students, the guilds, and the workers - have been forgotten. By the late twentieth century, most scholars of Ottoman history had settled on the notion that the advent of the Ottoman Constitution was a top-down bureaucratic coup rather than a popular-driven phenomenon. Employing untapped newspaper sources, coupled with Ottoman-language primary materials, our article endeavors to reconstruct the revolutionary aspects of the road to the Constitution and to reposition the medrese students as central figures in late Ottoman history.
