

In some ways, however, the Eurocentric nature of the term seems apposite given the colonial legacy in the region and the framework within which “Middle Eastern politics” are generally discussed.

When extended so far the acronym MENA (Middle East and North Africa) is increasingly common, although alternative terms such as WANA (West Asia and North Africa) are occasionally preferred as a means of circumventing the problematic tendency of defining a region by virtue of its relation to a supposed global “centre” in Europe. The “Middle East” is a relatively recently devised and inconsistently defined term used to refer to a region centring on the Arabian Peninsula and, depending on the context, including countries as far west as Morocco and as far east as Pakistan.
