This chapter reviews anthropological genetic inquiries into the population dynamics in the Caucasus. Genetic and genomic methods are introduced along with the problems of identifying specific regions of origins for genetic populations. Also discussed are the general genetic characteristics of the Caucasus and neigboring areas of the Near East and steppe; gene-language-geography studies; genetic affinities between Maikop kurgan burials and contemporary South Caucasus peoples; the phylogeography of maternal and paternal lineages in the Caucasus and western Asia; revelations about Caucasus prehistory derived from ancient genomics; the putative connection between the spread of farming, Indo-European languages, and Y-chromosome lineages; the timing of the split between Caucasus and European hunter-gatherer groups; and questions as to the role of Caucasus hunter-gatherers in the peopling of continental Europe.

This chapter reviews how the logic of biosecuritisation animates the AKP’s new securitisation technologies. It indexes the government’s attempts to reach deep into the population’s domestic life, families, and bodies to target women, LGBTQ+, and disabled people for biosecuritisation. The first section unpacks the theoretical dimension of biosecuritisation. In the next section, the focus is on biosecuritisation as a logic of authoritarian securitisation. The third section unpacks the gendered insecuritisation of women and the exertion of biopolitical control over their bodies and reproductive lives. The next section then turns to biosecuritisation of the already marginalised LGBTQ+ community, and their criminalisation as ‘deviant’. The last section describes the potentially catastrophic consequences of the biosecuritisation of disabled people. I argue that the biosecuritisation of the purges works to further insecuritise and exclude the already marginalised sub-groups of women, members of LGBTQ+ community, and people with disabilities by trapping them in the vicious circle of biosecuritisation.

This chapter investigates the logic of regulation that animates the AKP’s new securitisation technologies. The chapter begins by examining the new laws on security vetting and archival background checks. Reviewing the conduct of the OHAL Commission tasked to decide on applications by purged citizens for reversal of their refusal or civic death status, the chapter reveals how ambiguities in the new law allow for the extensive use of informal rule of law based on extra-legal practices. By focusing on several denunciation cases, the chapter’s theoretical and empirical strands come together in an analysis of the impact this new securitisation logic of regulation has both on those targeted and on society as a whole. I argue that the new regulatory technologies of citizen-informants and the perfusion of distrust throughout society an ‘atmosfear of terror’, inducing the population as a whole to self-regulate, perform, and participate in their own securitisation.

This chapter discusses the Epipaleolithic–Neolithic transition in the North Caucasus; charts the appearance of Neolithic sites and geographic-cultural divisions during the Middle Neolithic of the Caucasus; and evaluates the Shulaveri-Shomu Culture and Sioni Culture.

This chapter engages with social sciences theories about ‘institutions’. It illuminates not only the resilience but also the intensification of overland caravan trade thanks to an efficient organised system involving traders, Bedouin and Ottoman officials. The chapter tries to rely as much as possible on the viewpoint of caravan traders. It offers insights on historiographical debates about the changing roles of state institutions in the Late Ottoman Empire, the State’s legitimisation and its echoes among urban and nonurban caravan practitioners, and the economic and political competition by political entities that are built on the monopolisation of trading routes. The aim is to introduce a new panorama of the political economy of the Middle East that does not focus on the coastal and urban societies but on the hinterlands and steppes and considers theses spaces as elements of a region, that is, the intermediary space connecting the local and the world, on the one hand and connecting cultural affiliation with economic exchange on the other.

History rests upon testimonies, just as Islamic Law does. Ibn Khaldûn disagrees. For him, history is an intellectual and universal science, like logic. Reason is entitled to dismiss the testimonies.