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The article discusses the book "Talking Back to the West: How Turkey Uses Counter-Hegemony to Reshape the Global Communication Order" by Bilge Yesil. The book examines how Turkey has changed its communication strategy with the West in response to Western hegemony, identity politics, ideological impositions, and security threats. It analyzes the English-language communication efforts of state-run organizations, media actors, and civil society aligned with President Erdogan's government. The book provides evidence of Erdogan's autocratic structure and communication strategy, although it is considered theoretically weak. The author also discusses the book's limitations, including its oversimplification of complex issues and its failure to provide context for comparisons with other countries. [Extracted from the article]

A significant part of the academic discussions on Turkey's foreign policy includes Turkey's soft power capacity. The Justice and Development Party has used soft power more extensively than any other previous government in the history of the Turkish Republic. Turkish soft power consists of both direct state soft power, through its diplomatic expansions, and massive non-state outreach endeavours via Turkish cultural, economic, and welfare non-state actors, as well as Turkish media and TV popularity around the world. Although Asia comes third in Turkey's diplomatic circle, after the Balkans and Africa, it has come into policy focus as Turkey expands its trade, as well as political and cultural exchanges with the Asian continent. This paper investigates Turkey's soft power initiatives in Asia in the form of diplomatic missions, educational foundations, entertainment, and commercial investments. This paper argues that Turkey's soft power initiatives and public diplomatic capacity through state-managed resources are more limited and insufficient compared to its non-state resources, due to the latter's civic nature and organic engagements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to answer a number of questions asked in the literature on radicalization and extremism: What motivates foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) from Turkey to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)? In what kind of environment does violent extremism become the choice for Turkish nationals to join ISIS in Syria and Iraq? How can Turkish nationals who join ISIS be profiled in terms of their socio-economic and cultural traits and how do these traits compare people from other nations who join and fight in terrorist organizations? Though their numbers remained minimal compared to the overall population, how can we explain the case of Turkish FTFs, when a peaceful and tolerant ‘Anatolian/Sufi Islam’ has reigned in the country and Muslims are well integrated in the social, economic, and political life of the country under the 13-year long rule of Islamic-oriented Justice and Development Party (AK Party)? What do these answers to these questions mean for Turkish Islam and possible de-radicalization programs? These questions will be addressed by semi-structured interviews conducted both with Turkish FTFs who have joined ISIS and with family members of some of those who have returned from fighting with ISIS. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reviews issues that graduate students face in their everyday academic endeavors and outlines several possible strategies to cope with those issues. The author addresses two primary issues: the financial concerns that pervade every aspect of graduate life to the point that living a decent life seems impossible, and the responsibilities-such as sending out publications, teaching classes, reading papers, and grading exams-that graduate students are expected to carry out during their studentship. With regard to these issues, this article focuses on two important prerequisites for success-commitment to hard work and financial security-along with several other cornerstones to guide grad students in their academic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study aims to visualize the social problem of sexual offences in Turkey. We utilized GIS to investigate the spatio-temporal distributions of reported sexual offence incidents, including allegations of rape that are published online by Milliyet (1997-2008), a leading national newspaper in Turkey. Density mappings of sexual offences and rape-related reports indicate that these criminal acts mostly originate from, and agglomerate in, the metropolitan and more developed areas of the country. Geographically, the cases are concentrated in Turkey's western and southern coastal cities. Another finding is that 63 percent of sexual-offence victims are 19 years old and younger; within this age group, 60 percent of the victims reside in metropolitan areas, and many of them are students. Almost 80 percent of the total incidents occurred between people who had already known each other or shared enclosed space together, such as persons involved in instructor-student and/or employer-employee relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]