Modern Middle Eastern nationalism was constructed by force and education in the twentieth century.

Evidence

Today this has changed. The sense of Turkish, Persian, and Arab national identity is very strong, at least among those classes that have received a modern education or have been affected by modern ideas. Even the more specifically European sentiment of patriotism, love of country in the political sense, has made some headway. In Turkey the Kemalist government and its successors discouraged Pan-Turkish and Pan-Islamic tendencies, loyalty and politics by race or faith, and instead tried, with considerable success, to foster in the Turkish people a sense of communion with the country they inhabit. Egypt is a country well defined by both history and geography and has now been the center of a separate, modern state for a century and a half—long enough for a sense of separate territorial nationality to emerge. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1169