16/05/2014 - Conference - 100th Anniversary of World War One and Today's Middle East
On 16 May 2014 the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies and Department of International Relations and European Studies organized an international conference reflecting this year’s centenary of the Great War and the impact on the conflict on the Middle East.
Metropolitan University Prague invited leading experts on the topic from four countries: Eyal Ginio (Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel), Altay Atli (Bo?aziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey), Robert-Tarek Fischer (Austrian Federal Chancellery, Vienna, Austria) and Udo Worschech (Magdeburg, Germany) who were joined by their Czech-based colleagues Mitchell Belfer (Metropolitan University Prague), Gabriela Özel Volfová (Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Science), and Lubor Kunc (Postal History Society of the Czech Republic).
Few dozen students, scholars, journalists and other guests in the auditorium could participate in the day of lectures and discussions ranging from military aspects of the WWI in the Orient to the rise of Arab and Jewish nationalism in Palestine in the 1910s to the participation of Austrian-Hungarian soldiers in the Middle Eastern battles. However all the historical topics were framed by the fact – and conference’s key-note speech – that WWI results crucially shape even today’s Middle East.