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"Erdoğan: a graphic biography: the rise of Turkey's modern autocrat" is a graphic novel written by Can Dündar and illustrated by Anwar. The book focuses on the rise of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, covering his upbringing, entry into politics, and his complicated relationship with Necmettin Erbakan. The biography portrays Erdoğan as a Machiavellian figure who uses democracy as a means to obtain power, with no true commitment to democratic principles. While the book presents strong arguments, some claims cannot be definitively proven. Overall, it is an impressive and important work that deserves a wide audience. [Extracted from the article]

In Chapter 2, Adalet examines the records of Daniel Lerner, another prominent theorist of modernization who conducted research in Turkey. In the study of Turkish-American relations in the twentieth century, much of the focus is on political narratives, diplomatic exchanges, crises, and regional disputes. Adalet also supplies many anecdotes to show the inner details of the relationship between Hilts and Vecdi Diker, who visited the United States and proposed the foundation of a separate Directorate of Highways ( I Karayollari Genel Müdürlügü i ) in Turkey. [Extracted from the article]

Starting from the premise that "nationalism is a deeply rhetorical practice" (28) and that "nationalism is an interaction I between i figures" (156), Matthew deTar's theoretically sophisticated book focuses on the figures of Atatürk, religion, the military, minorities, and Europe. The figure of Atatürk, Islam, military, Europe as well the Other, ideal and even the Ottoman Empire could all be noteworthy figures in a discursive analysis of Turkish nationalism. [Extracted from the article]

To what extent can hostility toward Greeks in Turkish politics be explained sociologically? This paper provides a fresh perspective by examining the value of group position theory in understanding negative perceptions of Greeks in Turkish politics between 1946 and 1960. It proposes that Turkish politicians' perceived threats to valued resources played a key role in their unfavorable portrayals of Greeks. To test the argument, the study scrutinizes all Turkish parliamentary speeches in this period that contain the word Greek (N = 652). Quantitative analysis demonstrates that speaking about border-related threats is a significant predictor of negative perceptions. Qualitative investigation details how politicians justified their negative comments. The paper concludes that the negative remarks about Greeks are a function of Turkish politicians' perceived threats to valued resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, closer Turkish-Russian relations have captured the attention of both academics and policymakers, but also seem rather paradoxical as the two countries find themselves on opposite sides of conflicts in Syria, Libya, and the Caucuses. This paper evaluates how effective neo-realist (structural) and ideational (constructivist) theories of international relations are in explaining the Turkish-Russian relationship. Ultimately, this paper finds more merit in accounts grounded in neo-realism that can capture aspects of both cooperation and conflict/competition in the relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. support for the Syrian-Kurdish forces aligned with the PKK; U.S. declining to extradite Fethullah Gülen; Turkey's purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system; and Turkey's aggressive interference with natural gas exploration in the Mediterranean are four issues that have roiled U.S.-Turkish relations. This paper examines neorealist and constructivist explanations for these issues and determines that they provide a less than complete understanding of this troubled relationship. The paper then turns to middle level alliance theory and domestic factors favored by neoclassical realism to fill in the explanatory gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkish Republic was founded as a new state, a homeland for Turks, and on a Turkish identity that had yet to be created which would serve as the basis of the political community. This paper analyzes the overall regime properties of the Turkish political system in that period, which has been mired in legitimacy and national identity crises. This paper identifies the varying substance and style of successive Turkish political regimes, examine the domestic and international factors influencing their changing characteristics. The frequent change in the nature of Turkey's political regime have been major sources of its political instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do voters accept clientelism? Previous research suggests that poorer voters are more likely to accept clientelistic benefits. However, identities may moderate the effect of poverty through identity-based economic comparisons across groups. The role identity plays in partisanship, and dense ethnic identity networks may make it easier for parties to enforce clientelism among specific groups. This paper presents evidence from a survey experiment in Turkey to argue that politicized Kurdish ethnic identity, combined with heightened perceptions of relative economic deprivation, explains why certain voter groups are more likely to accept clientelism. Additionally, experimental evidence shows that support for clientelism may depend on the quality of benefits rather than quantity. Focusing only on the amount of resources or the recipients' economic conditions may fail to explain why certain voters accept clientelism more in the Turkish context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the history of Turkey's efforts to establish a national automotive industry, which culminated in a state-driven project to build a Turkish automobile, the Devrim (Revolution), in 1961. The outcome of the project was three prototypes unveiled in Republic Day ceremonies, but quickly left in oblivion afterwards. This paper investigates the possible causes of the termination of the project, arguing that building a Turkish car had great symbolic significance for the identity of a nation in the quest for modernization and Westernization. The project was difficult to sustain considering the vexed political and ideological motivations invested in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is well-established that exogenous shocks can trigger policy changes, political elites have often been depicted as the initiators of this process. This paper adopts an elite sociology perspective, extending beyond the exclusive focus on political elites, to uncover the pathway through which critical junctures foster policy changes. It employs a case study of the economic crises in Turkey spanning from 1999 to 2001 as an illustrative example. During this period, a significant shift occurred, moving from traditional statist economic policies to widespread neoliberal reforms. Our analysis reveals that this policy shift was not solely influenced by external factors, but facilitated by an intricate process of elite circulation within the economic bureaucracy. This process, which began in the 1980s and gained momentum in the 2000s, coincided with an influx of bureaucratic elites aligned with neoliberal principles and played a crucial role in shaping the trajectory of policy changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the depiction of the Armenian Genocide in Turkish textbooks and examines correlations between changes in Turkish political dynamics and their impact on these educational resources. It analyzes concepts, methodologies, and linguistic constructs used to describe the '1915 incident,' tracking their evolution from 1980 to the present. The study also considers how events like the 1980 coup d'état, rising nationalism, and the Islamization of politics influenced textbook content, alongside changes during Turkey's bid for European Union membership. Despite a stated aim of historical accuracy in these textbooks, the research hypothesizes that their content is significantly shaped by the prevailing political climate. This work provides insights into the complex relationship between politics and historical representation in educational materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how notions of conservative populism animate Turkish foreign policy. It explicates the construction of the 'us' and 'them' in conservative populism and how it became the dominant or hegemonic discourse of the AKP regime. While demonstrating various aspects of the peculiar conservative populism, the paper will try to point out the specific governmental ethos that conservative populism generates in the case of the AKP. By emphasizing how conservative populism is intermingled with Turkish-Islamist ideology, the paper explores the background of the AKP's pro-active and assertive foreign policy as well as the devastating effects of the de-institutionalization of the bureaucratic state structure and decision-making mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to evaluate the state of Greek-Turkish relations in light of recent developments in the reconfiguration of Turkish foreign policy. Following twenty years of détente and relative calm in bilateral relations, the year 2020 witnessed two escalations in Greek-Turkish relations, one in March involving refugees and immigrants on the Greek-Turkish land border and another in August involving military vessels of the two countries. The refugee crisis and potential military conflict regarding energy exploration in the Eastern Mediterranean have raised tensions at a moment the political and institutional tools for the promotion of conflict resolution between Greece and Turkey linked to Turkey's EU membership perspective appear to be obsolete. This paper seeks an answer to the question of whether structural or ideational factors played the most prominent role in the recent escalation of the Greek-Turkish disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the augmented version of the Blanchard-Perotti's SVAR model, this article seeks to estimate the size of fiscal multipliers in Turkey for the period 2002:q3–2016:q2. Unlike many previous papers that use aggregate data in estimating the size of the fiscal multiplier, we use disaggregated data on taxes and government spending for the same purposes. Our empirical findings indicate that the size of the short-run fiscal multipliers for taxes much differs from that of government spending. Depending on the disaggregated tax and government spending instruments, it ranges from −0.83 to −0.27 for taxes, and from 0.02 to 0.98 for government spending, respectively. Overall, these findings corroborate the idea that a shock to taxes produces a non-Keynesian effect on GDP whereas government spending creates a (weak) Keynesian effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main argument of this paper is that Turkey had close relations with Middle Eastern states during the Atatürk period, which is contrary to the literature that claims the opposite because of Turkey's Western-oriented ideology. The article asks why Turkey as a Western-oriented state sought to have close relations with Middle Eastern states. To answer this question, the article uses discourse analysis focusing on Middle Eastern leaders' visits as represented in Turkish public discourse. Accordingly, it proposes two main answers. Firstly, the paper argues that the new state's relations with Middle Eastern countries played an important role in legitimation of its Westernization projects in the eyes of its citizens. Secondly, the Turkish state marginalized rival political discourses, mainly Islamism, by proving that even Muslim majority countries wanted to imitate modern Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political leaders appeal to home audiences as well as 'others' beyond the state's borders. Using leadership trait analysis, in the example of Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, this paper questions if and why a leader can exhibit different leadership traits and styles at home and away. The paper is concerned with how Erdoğan's leadership traits and style connect to Turkish foreign policy between March 2003 and May 2013. First, two profiles of Erdoğan are assessed from the interviews he gave to domestic and foreign press. The paper then reports Erdoğan's profiles by distinguishing between different Western, Eastern, European, American, and Middle Eastern audiences. Based on these profiles, this paper argues that Erdoğan has two different profiles at home and away. Furthermore, it finds that Erdoğan's profile from his foreign policy interviews with American news outlets stand out from his other profiles. Among other traits, Erdoğan's task focus changes noticeably among audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the externalization of migration governance and external protection of European borders stimulated the redesign of the Turkish migration regime. This externalization faced its major litmus test with the Syrian refugee crisis. This article proposes that Turkey's accession process to the European Union (EU) and its ongoing collaboration with the EU to control migratory movements altered Turkey's migration regime significantly. Accordingly, the article aims to tackle the following questions: whether the externalization of European migration governance played a significant role in the redesign of Turkish migration governance, and whether this externalization uncovered new collaboration strategies for Turkey and the EU. To do so, this paper analyses Turkish harmonization to the EU rules on migration governance, and the possible role played by the Syrian refugee crisis on facilitating further adaptation. The paper deduces how the Syrian crisis created new challenges for both Turkey and the EU in migration governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prominent themes in Turkey's political development are modernization and Westernization, notions that carry with them a particular teleology in terms of expected political outcomes. While Turkey has, over several decades, modernized in several respects, Westernization has arguably been much more limited, particularly in terms of embracing political liberalism. This paper scrutinizes its failure to take root in Turkey, noting how a congruence of factors at both the mass and elite levels tends to work against policies that would embrace individual rights and freedoms, pluralism, and a more limited role for the state. It focuses in particular on three periods in Turkish history when liberalism could have potentially been adopted, but ultimately failed to succeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the substantive representation of women through parliamentary speeches in Turkey with the goal of determining whether legislative behavior differs across gender. By using content analysis of parliamentary speeches given in the Turkish Grand National Assembly between 2002 and 2011, this paper evaluates who speaks more often and on which policy areas they focus. More specifically, it examines the relative participation of women as well as the subjects they choose to address. The analysis of Turkish case is important not only to further our understanding of Turkish politics but also to improve our understanding of women in parliaments with low gender parity. The results reveal that, although there is no significant difference between female and male legislators in terms of the total speeches they delivered, gender differences exist regarding the policy preferences of MPs, even after controlling for partisan, constituency and institutional factors. Female legislators are more likely than their male colleagues to prefer speaking about women's equality issues, children and family issues, and education. In contrast to previous findings, female legislators are as likely as male legislators to prioritize speaking on health care issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have identified the rise of the drug trade in the inner-city slums of Ankara's Altındağ district in the wake of post-urban transformation projects (UTPs). However, none of them has thus far discussed the surge of such organized criminal activity in relation to the wider urban policy regime of Turkey. This paper offers the concept of advanced marginality to understand the complex relations between neoliberal urban governmentality and its repercussions in local areas, which results in UTPs, the disintegration of communality, the emergence of slums, and the rise of illicit enterprises. The paper argues that the formation of organized drug trade in Altındağ following the development of UTPs is an outcome of the advanced marginality resulting from the changing urban governmentality and its deliberate neoliberal political preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Male circumcision maintains a strong connection with religious responsibilities and masculinity construction in Turkey, but some Muslim men oppose this ritual today. This paper argues that opposing approaches to male circumcision on religious grounds do not necessarily enable a critical view of masculinity in general. Muslim men's opposition against male circumcision shows four interdependent approaches about the juxtaposition of male circumcision, religion, and masculinity: (1) 'Defending anti-circumcision' as an example of practicing religion correctly, (2) 'practicing religion correctly' as a necessity for piety, (3) 'piety' as a requirement for masculinity, and (4) hence defending anti-circumcision as an obligation for 'masculinity.' The fourth point takes us back to the first one, and this creates a cycle which also shows how these men construct their own masculinity. The study shows that being circumcised and uncircumcised can both be positioned as a strategy that supports masculinity and internal hegemony in the same geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once an oppositional ideology in the 1990s that united Muslim intellectuals around a radical critique of the state based on the ideals of democracy, civil society and pluralism, how has Turkish Islamism transformed into a state-centric and conservative world-view? This paper aims to document this transformation by scrutinizing the writings of a group of intellectuals in the context of (I) the 28 February 1997, military memorandum and the subsequent events which culminated in the AKP's first electoral victory in 2002; and (II) the series of trials that started in 2008 known as the Ergenekon trials through which the AKP gained the upper hand in Turkish politics. In so doing, the paper problematizes the prevalent narratives on the relationship between Islam, on the one hand, and democracy and civil society, on the other, that miss how formulations and articulations of Islamism evolve in changing political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a contribution to the literature on Turkish foreign policy (TFP) change through quantitative analysis of Turkey's foreign policy chronology under the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) between January 2009 and October 2016. It utilizes an original dataset on foreign policy meetings which is then utilized to ascertain the alterations in their volume, direction and purpose. Through this analytical framework, the paper depicts the course of TFP orientations towards different countries and regions, as well as potential explanations of their dynamics. Among its many findings, the paper suggests that bilateral diplomatic activism in the late AKP period can be explained by motivating factors such as trade, geographical proximity and shared identity. Moreover, fluctuations in regional orientations of TFP can be associated with sudden and less calculated reactions to international or domestic political crisis situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'The age of sustainable development' has been characterized by an on-going debate over how to define development and which alternative energy resources to rely upon. It is high time to rethink the news media's role in this debate due to transformations in journalism, particularly the role of the media in harnessing the sustainable energy transition. Accordingly, this paper examines the role of the news media in environmental debates over Turkey's nuclear program within the country's polarized media system. Adopting a content analysis method, the paper illuminates how selected media outlets (three mainstream and one online alternative) have framed and disseminated debates over Turkey's nuclear program. The findings reveal that the media system matters in public debates on energy, but also that the alternative media have the potential to contribute to societal debates on issues – even within a polarized media setting – by voicing unspoken ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically analyzes the effects of tax shocks on private consumption expenditures in Turkey. For this purpose, private consumption expenditures are firstly decomposed into four major categories and then to which structural VAR (SVAR) model is employed using a data set for the period 2003:Q1-2013:Q3. The empirical findings of the paper show that both in the short and long run, private consumption expenditures are affected by value-added tax (VAT) and personal income tax. However, it is important to highlight that VAT plays a more important role in influencing private consumption expenditures than the other taxes under consideration. Overall, the findings reveal that the effects of tax shocks on private consumption expenditures vary depending on the types of taxes, components of the private expenditures, and length of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the steady growth of authoritarianism, image activism is persistent and vibrant in Turkey. This paper examines how activists/artists used the production and circulation of political images to combat the institutional exclusion of oppositional voices following the Gezi protests (2013) and the attempted coup (2016). Using visual rhetorical analysis of images and in-depth interviews with courtroom painters, the paper focuses on 'political' drawings produced in enclaves of courtrooms and the strategies of image activists in visually narrating the political prisoners and/or detainees for wider networks, forming intersectional communities and creating spatial and digital visibility. In the context of the image activism in the post-Occupy Turkey, the passage from the digital to post-digital is based on, first, the top-down restrictive regulations in public and semi-public spaces and increasing police presence in places where activists previously met, and second, rising surveillance of the digital platforms, including the troll armies of the AKP government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the Afghan-Turkish-European region migration system in light of migration system theory, which provides a comprehensive framework by asking the question of how a set of linkages including some macro-, meso- and micro-level variables relate to the larger context of migratory settings. Relating the roles of various structures, institutions and networks to the operation of the social, political and economic relationships, it seeks to analyze the dynamics of Afghan migration heading to Turkey and Europe in a historically contextualized way. The paper argues that one must focus on the root causes of flows, which are related to the presence of fragility of the Afghan state together with the continuation of flows via networks enabling the maintenance of migrants’ links to home, transit and destination countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of ideas and identities in the making of the AKP's foreign policy in Turkey. After briefly examining the institutional and international constraints on Turkish foreign policy before 2002, the discussion turns to the driving factors in three evolutionary stages of AKP's foreign policy. It becomes apparent that a neo-Ottoman worldview and accompanying identity constitute the interpretive framework of the AKP's political elite. The article traces how this worldview became dominant in Turkey's policy making after the government dismantled the country's Kemalist institutions and the AKP consolidated its political power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diffusion of international human rights norms through the enforcement of international human rights law by courts has been explored by both scholars of international relations and international law. Turkey, which has been a state party to most international human rights treaties despite being a major violator of human rights, is the case in this paper. It examines norm diffusion in the area of women's rights through court action in a patriarchal culture protected and represented by a deeply patriarchal state and judiciary. By looking at the legal processes, domestic and international, through which the issue of the right of Turkish women to keep their maiden names after marriage has gone, this paper argues that norm diffusion through court action can be triggered even in difficult cases such as changing gendered norms and describes the conditions and mechanisms that make these changes more likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, Turkish policymakers have perceived the possible emergence of a Kurdish autonomous region or an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq as an existential threat to Turkey. However, from 2008 onwards, under the Justice and Development Party government, Turkish foreign policy towards the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was gradually desecuritized. In light of Turkey's experience, this paper explores the role of context in desecuritizing foreign policy issues in general and Turkish foreign policy towards the KRG in particular. It argues that the changing civil–military relations in Turkey as well as the country's broader political and economic conjuncture allowed for the desecuritization of Turkey-KRG relations from 2008 onwards. The context also determined what kind of a desecuritization Turkey experienced towards the KRG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the coup attempt of 2016, bilateral ties between Ankara and Tehran have witnessed a significant boost. Using and refining Steven David's framework of omni-balancing, which argues that the conduct of foreign policy in Third World settings also takes stock of domestic threats to the regime, this paper explains this emerging rapprochement. The article argues that after 2016, the AKP's foreign policy became increasingly predicated on regime survival, which was also reflected in Ankara-Tehran ties. This rapprochement was strengthened by both countries' intersecting positions on the following issues (1) A mutual pro-Qatar stance in the recent Saudi Arabia-Qatar spat, (2) Mutual opposition to a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, and (3) Increasingly troubled relations with the US. Through a careful analysis of Turkish and Persian sources along with official discourses, this paper will expand on these key aspects of these significantly improved bilateral relations between both countries and will conclude with discussion of its durability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines party system polarization over 19 general elections in Turkey from1950 to 2018. Using data on party policies from the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP), we show that, contrary to the common view, party system polarization is not a persistent feature of Turkish politics. We also find that party system polarization on the left-right continuum reflects party differences primarily on social rather than economic or European integration issues. Finally, our results demonstrate that the military interventions in 1960 and 1980 reduced party system polarization in subsequent elections, even when controlling for other determinants of polarization. These findings have important implications for debates on party politics, military rule, and the prospects of democratic governance in developing democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After coming to power in 2002, the Justice and Development Party evoked the 'glory' of the Ottoman past, seeking to expand Turkey's cultural sphere of influence to the former territories of the Ottoman Empire – a phenomenon commonly referred to as neo-Ottomanism. While neo-Ottomanism is generally discussed as a component of foreign policy, the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency's (TIKA) intervention in the heritage dynamics of foreign countries was intimately linked with domestic policies. This paper discusses how neo-Ottomanist policies selectively created transnational heritage sites, and how these sites have dialectically become instruments of domestic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pro-government protests are on the rise in recent years, mostly in populist and/or authoritarian settings, including Turkey. Based on the literatures on populism and social movements, this paper looks at the first mass pro-government mobilization in Turkey, namely the Respect the National Will rallies organized in the summer of 2013. To understand how these rallies contributed to democratic backsliding in the country, the article uses critical discourse analysis. Four discursive mechanisms were identified in play in Turkey during these rallies: nomination, predication, argumentation and intensification. The article argues that the rallies were countermobilizations organized by the ruling party, and this mobilization and the discourse mechanisms used further contributed to democratic backsliding in the country by delegitimizing anti-government protests and protestors, shrinking the democratic space for opposition and opening the path for increased levels of pro-government mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey's accession to the European Union (EU) is one of the most controversial cases in its enlargement policy. Both external and domestic factors complicate its accession, bringing forth questions on geographical, cultural borders of Europe as well as the limits of EU's institutional capacity. While Turkey's accession seems to be farther away, it is, nonetheless, functionally integrated to the EU in multiple ways, ranging from trade, common foreign and security policy, justice and home affairs to energy cooperation. It is, therefore, critical to assess whether alternative modes of integration are possible for Turkish-EU relations, going beyond formal membership. To do so, the paper draws upon the in-depth interviews conducted with Turkish and EU officials in 2013, 2015 and 2016. The paper evaluates the degree of differentiated integration between Turkey and the EU, and assesses the trajectory of this functional integration in related policy areas and proposes multiple new avenues to further this cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses theories of intersectionality to study Nor Zartonk, an activist group of Istanbulite youths which is mostly comprised of Armenians. Based on ethnographic research, it first explores and analyzes the youths’ subjectivities, ideology, and activism, exposing their intersectional nature. Furthermore, through the study of this particular case the paper identifies some general potentials of intersectional positionality: first, that the politicization of one dimension of individuals’ intersectional subjectivities could pave the way for the politicization of others; second, that intersectional activists could ‘intersectionalize’ the events in which they participate, thus potentially pluralizing the socio-political implications of those; and third, that different dimensions of intersectional activism could support each other in practice and essence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The forthcoming Customs Union (CU) upgrade negotiations have the potential to stabilize and deepen the ties between the European Union (EU) and Turkey and bring them to a stronger form of external differentiated integration. This article examines the viability of an EU–Turkey Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA), similar to that between Ukraine and the EU, as an alternative to the CU. The paper contends that a DCFTA would benefit both the EU and Turkey while it would de facto shift the contractual relations from accession conditionality to market access conditionality with potential political repercussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most widely used and influential ways of creating foundational myths for authoritarian legitimation is to construct a necropolitical narrative around the significance of dying for the nation, homeland, state and the leader, i.e. martyrdom. Mbembe's concept 'necropolitics' (the right of the sovereign to determine who shall live and who shall die) has been expanded to include the pollical instrumentalization of martyrdom narratives. However, the literature has not analyzed the necropolitical martyr-icons. This paper aims to address this gap by looking at two historical episodes in Turkey, one in the 1930s dominated by secularists and post-2016 dominated by Islamists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the course of the last decade and a half the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has transformed its ideological orientation in accord with the changing outlook of its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan. It has discarded its erstwhile Marxist-Leninist ideology for the anarchist-inspired thought of the American political theorist Murray Bookchin. Yet, the PKK’s new theorist of choice may not be an entirely suitable one. Bookchin was a rabid anti-nationalist, and this paper argues that, even after having appropriated Bookchin, the PKK has been unable to chart a non-nationalist course. Scholars of the Kurdish question have so far let Bookchin’s seeming unsuitability go unnoticed. This is likely because Bookchin’s thought is not well known. This paper offers an overview of Bookchin’s thought, and in doing so, hopefully contributes to making Bookchin better understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the political structure of political violence in Turkey in the 1970s, focusing on the internal structures of the Nationalist Movement. The paper argues that the Movement was able to draw on its high degree of coordination and centralisation to organise violent actions. The first section analyses how the Nationalist Movement was structured. The second section analyses a determined effort by the Movement to promote the model of a disciplined militant. The third section analyses how the Movement mobilised these organisational and militant resources in the violence it employed to entrench its position up until the 1980 coup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to analyze how the Turkish Constitutional Court has resolved sexual orientation and gender identity cases and constructed the LGBT+ subject in constitutional terms in its initial forays into this controversy-laden issue. It suggests that, although the Court missed a landmark moment for the protection of sexual minorities, the recognition of sexual orientation as a ground of discrimination in the case law of the Court represents an important step as it appears to have opted for proceeding in a piecemeal fashion in recognizing LGBT+ rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alevi-Sunni relations in Turkey are the result of a relational process constructed from contributions of each side rather than each groups' perceptions of the other. Boundaries between Alevis and Sunnis in Turkey have been constructed relationally with the contributions of many complicated socio-political factors. This article aims to answer the question of what the symbolic boundaries between the two groups are, seeking to understand how Sunnis perceive Alevis. This aim will cast light on the nature of the two groups' relations, help us recognize forms of Alevism and Sunnism specific to Turkey, and advance existing literature on the issue. This paper's findings are based on ninety semi-structured and two focus group interviews with Sunnis living in Istanbul. Results show that the concept of 'two-dimensional symbolic boundary,' which runs along dimensions of not-knowing and not-accepting, is the answer to the question of how Sunnis perceive Alevis. The main components of these dimensions are perceptions, which seem to relate to the interpretations of group norms and values. This study, as a group-based analysis, reveals that perceived group norms – whether religious, cultural, social, or political – determine the perceptions of Sunnis towards Alevis and create dimensions of the boundary between the two groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decade after the global financial turmoil, a new wave of crises is haunting the global South. This pattern is different from previous crisis episodes. Powerful shifts in the international order provide new policy space for emerging powers to manage their economic problems in a heterodox fashion. Key Western-led institutions no longer enjoy a monopoly in dictating the terms of financial assistance for countries in economic difficulty, as non-Western powers increasingly challenge the orthodox Washington Consensus paradigm. The present paper attempts to locate Turkey's ongoing economic crisis in a comparative-historical context. Its central argument posits that the current crisis is the reflection of a fragile and unconsolidated presidential system and its associated mode of economic governance with state capitalist features. Turkey's heterodox crisis allows us to draw attention to the complex interplay of global power transitions in a post-liberal international order and domestic political constellations during an era of growing authoritarian populism, generating a new equilibrium with rather unique features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Arab Spring truly caught Turkey by surprise. In interpreting what was happening in the region, Turkey’s foreign policy-makers relied on a particular view, which helped steer Turkey’s foreign policy in the ensuing regional earthquake. This article seeks to dissect that view and deconstructs its main components mainly through the speeches of Ahmet Davutoğlu, who served as Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs during the heyday of the Arab Spring. The paper also illustrates how Davutoğlu’s interpretation heavily borrows from the Islamist interpretive frame of modern Turkish history. That frame, this article claims, originated in the late Ottoman period and has since evolved in contestation with alternative readings, both official and non-official. The article suggests that Davutoğlu’s view of the Arab Spring helps explain why Turkey welcomed the Arab Spring and advised Arab regimes to implement political reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 2016, 1128 predominantly Turkish intellectuals signed an Academics for Peace petition to draw attention to the conflict in southeastern Turkey. Their actions were met with outcry from the government, accusing the signatories of disloyalty to the state, even treason. This paper is an analysis of the responses of 60 of these scholars to a questionnaire sent to the entire Academics for Peace email list. Respondents, including 58 signatories, provided various perspectives on academic freedom in Turkey, as well as their own experiences of signing the petition. We contend that the responses faced by these intellectuals illustrate the homogenizing effects of power to silence criticism and ensure loyalty to the government and its ideas of Turkishness. It reflects a continuation of the suppression of academic freedom in Turkey, an issue that sees little sign of abatement or reform in the light of present challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Leadership is a major aspect of Turkish politics; leaders in Turkish politics are regarded as either almost sacred figures or the ultimate reason for all political, social and economic problems. Leaders are seen as decision makers who have a significant impact on almost all aspects of life. It can be contended that a historical continuance toward the leader-centered perspective is present in Turkish politics. This paper aims to present a descriptive framework outlining the elements that constitute the leader-centered perspective in Turkish politics. To accomplish this goal, the paper presents two major arguments. It is argued that the constitutive elements of the leader-centered perspective in Turkish politics are a sui generis synthesis of patrimonialism, patriarchy, populism and militarism. Furthermore, this fourfold historical structure strengthens forms of charismatic leadership and can provide insight into the central role of leadership in Turkish politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article briefly introduces the rationale and content of a Special Issue of Turkish Studies that reflects on Turkey's past, present, and future in light of the Republic's centenary in 2023. It suggests that while Turkey can celebrate many accomplishments over the last century, the country continues to face a number of pressing political, economic, and social challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why has the state-centered recognition of the public sphere prevailed in Turkey over the last decade? A frame analysis of the public sphere discourse for 2002–09 reveals that the contingency of the discourse on the Islamic headscarf issue discouraged an essential understanding of the authentic public sphere. The dominant frame espoused by secularists claimed that the state banned headscarves in the public sphere were to preserve the neutrality of the public sphere. By contrast, pro-Islamists initially adopted an alternative counter-frame based on the Habermasian perspective, portraying the public sphere as tolerant of various ideas. Yet, in the face of stiff opposition from secularists, the pro-Islamists came to use a negative counter-frame with increasing frequency, implying that the state-centered public sphere impinged on the freedom to wear a headscarf. As a result, both the secularists' and pro-Islamists' frames helped entrench the recognition of the state-centered public sphere in Turkish society (Earlier and longer versions of this paper have appeared as IDE Discussion Paper Series No.262 (November 2010) and in Japanese in Ajiakeizai, Vol 52, No. 4 (April 2011)). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Turkish faith-based NGOs have been involved in delivering humanitarian aid for two decades, the relations of these organizations with the state have not received adequate scholarly attention. The main purpose of this article is to address this gap by asking what roles NGOs play in Turkey's humanitarian aid policy and practice. Despite the relative isolation of Turkey's administrative structure as a result of a strong state tradition, this paper shows that NGOs attempt to play political roles in Turkish foreign policy. The study relies on an analytical framework derived from constructivism to examine the agenda-setting and information-providing activities of Turkish NGOs between 2004 and 2016. Based on findings from a series of semi-structured interviews with 25 respondents from nine different NGOs and three state institutions, this artilce expands the research agenda on Turkey's foreign aid and shows that NGOs function as knowledge-providers, powerful catalysts for humanitarian aid activities, and influential voices in bringing humanitarian issues to light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the end of the Cold War challenged the classical understanding of national security in Europe, Turkey continued to follow a national securitycentered and confrontational foreign policy during the 1990s due to its internal and external security problems. Although this created important differences in security understandings and policies between Turkey and the European Union (EU), Turkey continued to seek EU membership during the 1990s. The goal of this paper is to answer why Turkey was willing to join the EU in the 1990s despite its difficulty in balancing its relations with the EU with its security problems. The main conclusion of the paper is that Turkey's eagerness to join the EU during the 1990s can be explained by both the perception of EU membership as the most appropriate and desired policy for Turkey and Turkey's eagerness to ensure its political and security objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]