The Caliphate and the Modern Middle East

Few seem to have noticed, but this year, 2024, is the centennial of a pivotal event that deeply impacted the course of the modern Middle East, if not the world: the abolition of the Caliphate, or the "successorship" to the Prophet Muhammad, which led the worldwide Muslim community politically since the birth of Islam in the early seventh century. The Caliphate had its ups and downs, and was at times more symbolic than effective, but it had meaningfully survived into the twentieth century under the banner of its last seat, the Ottoman Empire. But the latter collapsed in the aftermath of World War I, allowing one of its generals, the staunchly secular Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), to abolish the Ottoman monarchy in 1922 and proclaim the Republic of Turkey a year later.