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The process of Europeanisation initiated in Turkey following the 1999 Helsinki summit witnessed a loosening of state control over the Patriarchate of Constantinople under the government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In parallel with the AKP's reforms geared towards EU membership, the Patriarchate's activities became more transnational in their character, especially with regards to its organisation and influence over religious affairs within the Christian world. This contribution traces change and continuity in Turkish policy towards the Patriarchate under the AKP government. Key differences between the AKP government's stance on the Patriarchate and those of its predecessors are noted, with specific reference to prospects of EU membership and the strategy that has been devised by the AKP to that end. Specifically, the contribution shows that Turkey's bid to join the EU initially presented important leverage over Turkey, allowing the Patriarchate to reassert its transnational character. However, diminished prospects of EU membership together with a gradual return of nationalist sentiment now present an important challenge for the Patriarchate in its efforts to maintain transnational character and influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 2003, a Turkish confectionery and cookie company launched a major television advertising campaign through the Young & Rubicam agency in Istanbul. The goal of the campaign was to compete aggressively with the market leaders, Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, by adopting some of the strategies used by those colas in dominating the world's soft-drink sales and reversing those strategies to suit the Turkish consumers. This study combines textual analysis of the primary television advertisements for Cola Turka along with interviews with two of the account managers for the campaign. The analysis is based on the concept of glocalization of the national, gender and sports themes of the campaign. In appealing to potential consumers of the soft drink, the advertisers exploit the local cultural stereotypes to convince the audience that those who adopt the product will achieve the American dream -- to become Turkish. American actors, including Chevy Chase, are used in that effort as they try to live out that dream by adopting Turkish customs, eating Turkish foods and following Turkish soccer stars. Advertising agency executives denied they created anti-American themes, though one of the commercials suggests that if US soldiers drank Cola Turka, they would abandon their goal to win the war in Iraq. The authors argue that the commoditization of nation-making practices has wide implications and real-world effects on public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of gender have an important place in studies of Turkey because the discourses of Islamism and secularism, and modernity and tradition, make the bodies and practices of Turkish women the site of debate. However, few studies have used a spatial analysis to examine the production of gender in daily life. This article is simultaneously a study of how gender is produced through space and of the creation of various kinds of spaces in an Istanbul mahalle (neighborhood). The mahalle is the space of intimate daily life in the Turkish urban context, and narratives of and ways of life in the mahalle articulate competing notions of what it means to be a woman in Turkey. This study of gender and mahalle space reveals the linkages between space and gender to be multiple and shifting and the boundaries between private and public spaces to be fluid. Furthermore, this reading of gender and urban space, when brought back to the Turkish context, also contributes to research which interrogates the idea of modernity at the core of national identity in Turkey, of which gender is a central and constitutive element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]