Talk:Middle East

Need more info on the climate.

hey guys, I was reaind this article for info for my paper and there is absolutely no useable info on the climate of the region, can someone get some info with sources, especially on soil.

Timezones

There is: Time Zones UTC +8:00 (Tibet) to UTC +3:30 (Iran) But I know that Turkey, Egipt, Jordan. Lebanon (Syria?) are in UTC +2

Edit request from Nassif.seif, 19 February 2011

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spelling of transcription of Arabic "Middle East"

The article lists "Asharq Al-Awsṭ" as the transcription of Arabic الشرق الأوسط, "the Middle East."

The second word should be rendered something like "'awsaṭ."

I sometimes hear Arabic students incorrectly say "awsṭ," and I think this is why.

A more appropriate transcription would be "aš-šharq al-'awsaṭ." The (') should hook toward the left.

Israel is currently not a country

Israel is a terrorist Group that supported with A Stupid Group named Zionism (Satanism or kabalaesm).

Greater Middle East grammar

{{|"Greater Middle East" is an additional Eurocentric concept, introduced in the West in the 1990s, and referring to the mostly-Islamic regions of North Africa, Western Asia and Central Asia; the use of "Greater Middle East" however was marginal and it has recently fell into disuse.}}

The quotation above contains errors in structure, punctuation, and tense. Here is a suggested re-writing:

"Greater Middle East" is a Eurocentric concept introduced in the 1990s to refer to the mostly-Islamic regions of North Africa, Western Asia, and Central Asia. The use of "Greater Middle East" proved marginal, however, and has fallen into disuse."

Mflcs (talk) 19:39, 11 September 2013 (UTC) --Mflcs (talk) 19:39, 11 September 2013 (UTC) Mflcs (talk) 19:41, 11 September 2013 (UTC) Mflcs (talk) 19:44, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Ridiculous That This Still Hasn't Been Changed

I can't believe Turkey is still listed under here. Look at the amount of people complaining here and this still hasn't been changed. Turkey only has one province in the Middle East area, yet it has been put under this category. What, just because you have borders with the Middle East, you become part of it? Using that logic, why isn't Azerbaijan or Armenia on this list? Unbelievable. "Many sources include Anatolia, and even Eastern Thrace, in the Middle East"? "As far as I can tell it's usually considered part of the Middle East"? Are you serious? I haven't heard such ignorance in my life. Even the Turkic countries and the Caucasus belong in other regions. I really can't believe how ridiculous this is getting. At least if Wikipedia was consistent. I looked at some pages and Turkey is listed as Europe, others Asia and now Middle East. I'll say this one last time and everyone should give up on this ignorance and accept fact: Turkey is Asian. It is a civilised, strong country which is nothing like the West describes it, nor is it anything like it was a decade ago. In every way, whether it be historically, culturally or geographically, it has, and always will be Asian, not Middle Eastern. I know the Middle East is not a continent or anything, but having it under that category is insulting to it's people. If it is considered partially European, but not enough to be in the EU, the same should apply for the Middle East, if not even stronger due to it having less land in the Middle East than Europe. Turkey dissing the West doesn't make it lean towards the Arabs or Islam, it makes it lean towards Asia. As if Russia, China and Japan love the West so much. Read some books, research a bit people, it could prove useful to this generation in which I've lost hope. I pray my pleas will not be disregarded, forgotten and left unanswered. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bobman1069 (talk • contribs) 05:51, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Other definitions of the Middle East

Someone recently deleted the "Greater Middle East section and replaced it with "Other definitions of the Middle East" and then wrote:

"Greater Middle East is an additional Eurocentric concept, introduced in the West in the 1990s, and referring to the mostly-Islamic regions of North Africa, Western Asia and Central Asia; the use of "Greater Middle East" however was marginal and it has recently fell into disuse."

This is incorrect; the term is still widely used in academic and political discussions. A simple search on "google", "youtube" and the like will confirm this. (Example of current affairs news from a few days ago: http://www.juancole.com/2013/09/clout-middle-east.html)

It is not a Eurocentric concept (The term is used my most world powers) and it was introduced by the Brookings Institute in 2004, not the 1990's. It is very pertinent considering what is currently happening in the "Greater Middle East" region. Can someone please correct this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.175.27.29 (talk) 08:51, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Edit Request

May I suggest that the second sentence of the article be changed? Two alternatives are: "The term is used as a synonym for Near East, in contrast to Far East" or "The term is used as a synonym for Near East, in relation to Far East." The word "opposition" is incorrect as the terms Near East and Far East are not opposite from each other, but describe their geographic relationship. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.212.132.239 (talk) 14:43, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Northern Cyprus is not a Country

Northern Cyprus is not a country and is clearly mentioned in the article of Wikipedia for Norther Cyprus. It is just the occupied part of the Rebublic of Cyprus — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.7.146.81 (talk) 18:37, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 April 2014

Dear Mr./Mrs. Please add Israel as a state within the middle east. Flag, name etc. Please add also Hebrew as one of the languages spoken.

Thank you, Sincerely, 109.65.63.185 (talk) 21:06, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Done it seems someone replaced Israel with State of Palestine. will undo Cannolis (talk) 14:15, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Is Egypt really in the Middle East?

Egypt is in Africa, and many other African countries follow said definiton. Yet Egypt is included for no known reason. Egypt has its own culture and hertitage like many other African countries. It makes no sense to clump it with the EuroCentric definiton of The Middle East and should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.248.235.106 (talk) 23:39, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

It makes no sense to call the concept "Eurocentric". The word "table" is Eurocentric, I suppose, because it is derived from Latin. The horror. The term "east" is derived from a Germanic root. That's about the extent of its Eurocentricity. If you translate English "Middle East" to Chinese 中東 (literally "Middle East"), hey presto, it ceases to be Eurocentric and becomes Sinocentric!

You could say the usage of "east"-"west" is terra-centric, as it orients itself along the landmass of Eurasia rather than the waters of the Pacific Ocean. So, it is discriminatory towards the perspective of land animals! Unacceptable, have people not heard that the vast majority of organisms are maritime?! And all the land animals originated in the sea, so they are basically all equal and should be considered mere maritime emigrants.

On a more serious note, Egypt is a trans-continental country. It used to be counted as part of Asia, but that was in ancient geography. It has been considered as mostly part of Africa for some time, but that's merely part of the arbitrary definition imposed on landmasses by (gasp) European geographers. Note that "Africa" used to be a name for Tunisia. There was no term for the landmass now known as Africa before the Portuguese bothered to circumnavigate it in the 15th century, for the simple reason that you cannot name a concept before you have the concept. Egypt's eastern portion, the Sinai peninsula, is still considered part of Asia today. --dab (𒁳) 09:44, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

The originally Colonial Office terms 'Near East', 'Middle East', and 'Far East' come from their positions in relationship to the Greenwich meridian, which is used for navigation, and because for the most part of the last two centuries it was the British who first did most of the modern mapping and charting of the areas using Greenwich as their reference point, these terms came into widespread use. This wide usage was entirely accidental, as at the time, the British were the only people who had accurate maps and charts of most of the world, so everyone else had to use British maps and charts if they wanted to get anywhere safely. That or survey the areas themselves and draw their own, which is very expensive and time consuming if you want accuracy. Accuracy is very important for ship owners as inaccurate charts or maps can lead to loss of a ship. Ships are also very expensive and time consuming to replace.

BTW, Greenwich is also used as the reference point for the International time zones. Time is also very important if you want to navigate anywhere safely, due to Longitude.

DYK, that for most of the Pacific War in WW II the Allies relied on copies of charts and maps of the area that were based on those originally made by Captain James Cook. That's how often some parts of the world get surveyed. And that the first accurate maps of large parts of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia were made as late as 1942-43 by the LRDG.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.24.215.139 (talk) 12:21, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 June 2014

Please remove one instance of 'Mandeans', they occur twice in the list.

The Middle East is today home to numerous long established ethnic groups, including; Arabs, Turks, Persians, Balochs, Pashtuns, Lurs, Mandeans, Tats, Jews, Kurds, Somalis, Assyrians, Egyptian Copts, Armenians, Azeris, Maltese, Circassians, Greeks, Turcomans, Shabaks, Yazidis, Mandeans, Georgians, Roma, Gagauz, Mhallami and Samaritans. Srforest (talk) 13:43, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Question: One is actually a link to Mandean which redirects to Mandaeism. The other is actually a link to Mandeans which redirects to Mandaeans. My question is, which one should be kept? — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 15:01, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Move?

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved.(non-admin closure) cyberdog958^Talk 08:26, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

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Middle East → Middle-East – Right The Wrongs has made several recent edits fixing "punctuation errors" or "typos", where they inserted a hyphen in Middle East. I'm not sure which is correct, so I'm bringing this to the attention of our punctuation experts. – Wbm1058 (talk) 12:20, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. English language reliable sources use Middle East without the hyphen. [1], [2], [3], etc. Zarcadia (talk) 12:42, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose - obviously. On this example other edits need to be checked. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:26, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose; reliable sources discussing the Middle East generally don't add a hyphen (or an em-dash or an en-dash or a quotation dash). bobrayner (talk) 20:31, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose per all the RS that use the current correct naming convention. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 07:22, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose: While sources can be found that hyphenate this, they're grammatically wrong. Middle-Eastern is properly hyphenated because it's a compound adjective, and Mid-East is also, as a noun with a prefix, but Middle East is neither.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:16, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
• ROFL then oppose. This is, umm, English. Red Slash 02:18, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Well perahps you should bring this to the attention of the Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research: http://www.idosi.org/mejsr/mejsr.htm

I note that there they're using it as an adjective... Red Slash 21:53, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Widespread grammatical incorrectness does not justify continued error. Oh, and it's "um", not "umm". This is, um, English. ROFL Right The Wrongs (talk) 05:44, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose: By the way, Right The Wrongs, it is "umm". AcidSnow (talk) 05:53, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
• Obviously not this isn't the 19th century, the term is now commonly used without the hyphen, including in British English. And um, not umm? Wut? —innotata 13:58, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Languages

French seems irrelevant. It is not an official language in any Middle Eastern country, and probably prevails less than English. So either add English or omit French. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.114.3.241 (talk) 09:52, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

French is widely used in Syria and Lebanon. It is also the former sole official languages of both nations. AcidSnow (talk) 18:36, 17 September 2014 (UTC)