During the later years of the empire, the Ottomans were overtly portrayed by Europeans as callous and tyrannical autocrats who subjugated Christians in the Balkans. Such narratives portrayed the Ottomans as a brutish Islamic empire, whose only ambition was to persecute its Christian minority. Such a notion is not entirely accurate, as it fails to depict the actual relationship the empire had with its minorities.
10 years on from the Arab Spring, we must look back on what happened and why. The Arab Spring was a pro-democracy uprising that spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). By mid-2012 most of the actions against governments had faded, many achieved little and were met by severe violence and curbs on free speech – social media platforms like FaceBook were shut down by governments in an attempt to prevent the spread of revolutionary rhetoric.
