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There is a growing focus in political science on right-wing populist parties. But few comparative studies address their discourses and politics relating to family values, especially when involved with policy-making. Moreover, many comparative works about populism focus on a single region – often Western and Eastern Europe. This paper adopts a definition of populism with two different dimensions: the vertical (inclusive), which regards elites, and the horizontal (exclusive), which addresses 'foreigners'. The use of family values in political discourse and policy pertains to the two axes of populism. On the one hand are elites who are accused of being uncommitted to traditional values and morally corrupt. On the other hand are demographic concerns regarding declining birth rates among native populations and immigrants with large families. The stress on family values can also originate from a value orientation – or merely a tactical move – engendered by political competition. This paper specifically examines the politics of family values in the context of policies concerning gender equality, family planning and LGBT rights in three countries: Israel, Italy and Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines developments within the Jewish community in Turkey during and after the Israeli operation in Gaza in 2014 and describes the political relations between Israel and Turkey and its impact on local Turkish Jews. It depicts Operation Protective Edge as one of the peaks of antisemitism in Turkey and considers the question of whether antisemitism in Turkey is related to Turkish-Israeli relations. This study contributes to the scholarship on the perception of Jews in Turkey in light of Turkish-Israeli relations. The paper begins by introducing minority discourse, and then describes the historical background of Turkish-Israeli relations, the perception of Jews, and the effects of the Protective Edge on the Jewish community in particular and on Israeli-Turkish relations in general during that period. Subsequently, the main findings are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational policy borrowing has become rather common in our globalised world. However, the literature lacks contextual criteria that may be employed by researchers and policy makers to assess the correspondence of a particular policy to the local context of a borrowing system. Based on a secondary analysis of documents and research reports, this paper describes the process of policy borrowing in the Israeli and Turkish educational systems. Discrepancies were found between the basic qualities of the borrowed policies and the contextual features and processes that characterise each educational system. The lack of congruency appears to be even deeper in centralised structures where the act of policy setting is done by top-level policy makers who are isolated from local school circumstances. Threshold criteria referring to fundamental considerations during decision making are offered and their theoretical and practical implications for centralised structures are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study explores the micro-individual, meso-institutional and relational and macro-structural level influences on career choices of MBA students from three countries, questioning the apparent dominance of 'free choice' in the context of persistent forms of structural constraints in career markets. The paper takes a critical perspective on career 'choice', acknowledging the contested nature of 'choice' and identifying career as a socially and historically situated phenomenon. The central hypothesis of the study is that 'it is more likely for the MBA students to report micro-agentic or meso-instutional and relational rather than macro-structural conditions as key influences on their career choices'. The study draws on the findings of a cross-national survey on careers involving Britain, Israel and Turkey. Findings show that MBA students consider the impact of structural conditions as less significant on their career choices than their own human capital and capacity to make free choices. The study provides an understanding of the main cross-national similarities and differences in reporting of influences on career 'choice', and brings to bare interesting theoretical and methodological insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on hitherto untapped documents from the Israeli and Turkish state archives, this article discusses Turkish–Israeli relations during the 1960s. It shows that since the relationship was more important for Israel, Ankara called most of the shots while Israel used its relative advantages, especially in the economic and trade fields, to keep the relations going. Hence, despite intensifying political and economic ties with the Arab world since the mid-1960s, Ankara resisted persistent pressures to downscale, if not end altogether, its relations with Israel, though these took the odd beating in line with the vicissitudes in Turkey's domestic and international affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the vicissitudes in regional affairs in the Eastern Mediterranean and their impact on the geopolitics of energy and geo-cultural realities. Framing the 'logic of competition' (energy market realities/geo-economics) and securitisation of energy politics by focusing on different scenarios, it explores the significance of international supply chains; the consequences of the emergence of Israel as a regional gas supplier superpower; Turkey's uncertain position as an energy barrier or bridge; and the role played by multinational companies (MNCs), the so-called 'new great gamers'. The scope of the game has expanded and spilled over from the Black Sea region to the Eastern Mediterranean. In this context, Israel's geopolitical approach is significant in the pursuit of wider economic and security interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the differences in system support between the ethnic majority and ethnic minority populations in Turkey and Israel, taking into account three specific dimensions of system support: national identity, evaluation of democracy, and institutional trust. A comparison of the gaps in these dimensions is conducted using surveys. The findings show that, in both countries, the majority tends to show higher levels of system support than the minority. Among the Turkish Kurdish minority, lower levels of system support can be found across all the dimensions examined, while among the Palestinian citizens of Israel minority, the gaps are bigger in the cultural aspect of national identity but much smaller in the evaluation of democracy and institutional trust. These findings are discussed in light of both the differences between the two regimes and their dissimilar strategies for addressing ethno-national divisions and the theoretical implications of examining the multidimensionality of system support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, populists have taken charge in Turkey, India and Israel, all previously heralded as exceptional democracies in difficult regions. This moment offers a unique opportunity to explore populism in power outside Europe and the Americas, in three states shaped by deep social, ethnic and religious divisions. This article locates Turkey, India and Israel within a global wave of electorally successful populist movements. It explores how populism can jeopardize democratic choice in deeply divided societies and whether Erdoğan's capture of democracy in Turkey offers a blueprint for the political strategies employed by Modi and Netanyahu. In unravelling parallels between the three administrations, our analysis uncovers a common populist playbook of neoliberal economic policies, the leveraging of ethnoreligious tensions as well as attempts to denigrate independent news media, by portraying it as the "enemy of the people". Although their position on the spectrum between democracy and authoritarianism differs, our analysis reveals striking continuities in the erosion of democracy in Turkey, India and Israel as a result of these policies, thus highlighting the vulnerability of political systems, particularly those of deeply divided societies, to democratic decay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The entire edifice of the strategic Turkish-Israeli alliance of the 1990s collapsed during the last ten years, with relations between the former partners characterised by antagonism and total lack of trust that make a genuine reconciliation rather inconceivable despite the existence of weighty common military and economic interests. This article examines the origins of the bilateral relations, the main causes of its decline, and the prospects for a future thaw. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the relationship between trade and politics, particularly the effect of improved or deteriorated political ties upon economic relations with particular reference to the bilateral trade and diplomatic relations between Turkey and Israel. The study attempts to identify under what conditions bilateral trade is affected by any significant change in political relations. It finds that economic relations were relatively bolstered at times of enhanced political relations whereas visible deterioration or decline was observed in the volume and state of trade relations at some critical points when diplomatic relations worsened. However, this does not refer to a constant and steady decline and is limited to some severe diplomatic crises experienced in bilateral relations. Some major premises of Realist and Liberal theories are employed to analyse the findings in this study. These findings are at least partially against the main arguments in the literature of the Liberal approach that trade determines politics. However, the course of trade relations between Israel and Turkey appears to be consistent with the tenets of the Realist theory which pays greater attention to security than it does to trade relations and argues that trade may not be relevant to improved bilateral political relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discussions of the role of religious parties in democracies can be highly misleading when they take the parties' ideologies at face value and assign them to the binary categories of moderate vs radical. Only by a careful review of how religious parties use religious and secular symbols in defining their political stances can we evaluate their roles vis-à-vis liberal democracy. The competing political ideologies of the Mafdal and Shas Parties in Israel and the National Action Party, the Prosperity Party and the Justice and Development Party in Turkey are foci of this analysis. Two controversial concepts, ‘redemption’ in Israel and ‘secularism’ in Turkey, are used to question how these parties appropriate religious symbols in their policies towards secular public and institutions. The arguments draw on a set of interviews with the religious party leaderships and a content analysis of party ideologues' views. The findings suggest that parties that adopt the strategy of sacralization (that is, assigning religious meanings to secular ideas thereby treating them as sacred) appear more moderate yet they are more likely to support authoritarian policies. However, the so-called radical religious parties tend to be more inclusive and are more likely to secularize their respective religious tradition internally by redefining secular terms. Despite their novel political agendas both groups fail to exhibit principled commitment to liberal values and fail to provide inclusive and coherent alternatives to their secularist counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]