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Financialization and neoliberal globalization have increased the dependency of peripheral countries on core economies. This paper tracks the neoliberalization processes of Greece and Turkey, two neighbouring countries on the periphery of Europe. By using a comparative political economy method and borrowing from the variegated capitalism literature, it critically investigates how these two Mediterranean countries were affected by the 2008 global financial crisis, their variant responses, and the impacts of those responses within their historical specificities. The development trajectories of these two countries were similar until the 1980s, but diverged thereafter. Before the 2008 financial crisis erupted, both Greece and Turkey had neoliberal trajectories; the process they experienced through the crisis (how they were impacted by the crisis, as well as how they responded) varied; yet, capitalist restructuring deepened in both countries after the crisis. This was achieved through rising authoritarian populism in Turkey and the pressure of international institutions (both the International Monetary Fund [IMF] and the European Union [EU]) in Greece. Given that Greece is a member of the EU and Turkey is a longstanding candidate, the variances between Greece and Turkey's neoliberalization processes and the differing impacts the 2008 global financial crisis had on them make studying the contrasts between these countries important and timely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper assesses Black Sea politics through the lens of regionalism as the path to a security community, the effects of an outdated and dysfunctional pan-European security architecture, and the shared hegemonic potential of Russia and Turkey in the region. Drawing from diverse strands of literature, the paper critically discusses integrative schemes and their circumscribed successes amidst a volatile pan-European security order and the poor prospects for ‘bigemony’, or shared hegemony, in the Black Sea region. It concludes that none of the following regional governance options, regionalism, or embeddedness in an integrated pan-European security or Russo-Turkish hegemony, has materialized. The paper also underlines the importance of the linkages between the Black Sea area and unfolding Middle Eastern politics for the evolution and study of Black Sea politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey, situated in the periphery of Europe, is governed by anti-labour policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) Governments in the last 15 years. Embarking on a historical materialist perspective that draws concepts from Gramsci, this paper questions whether labour can come up with an alternative and form a united front vis-a-vis globalization and European Union membership. It then examines impediments behind the lack of a united front and a viable alternative. The analyses rely on empirical data generated through interviews conducted with trade unionists and representatives from civil society for struggles against patriarchy, environmental degradation, and human rights violations at two critical junctures in 2010 and 2017. This paper argues that labour and struggles within civil society contest neoliberal restructuring with two rival class strategies, namely Ha-vet (Turkish abbreviations for No to Capitalist Europe - Yes to Social Europe) and neomerchantilism, none of which stands as a viable alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the degree to which social services should be extended to migrant groups by the state has occupied migration and welfare scholars' agenda for a long time, how perceptions of deservingness on migrant groups' social welfare entitlements can show a constraining character and rigidify boundaries have not yet received the full attention it deserves. Based on a qualitative case study with Turkish citizens in Adana, this paper explores how differential policies on healthcare access can shape insiders' narratives on outsiders and grounds for social and symbolic boundaries; and how boundary work interacts with insiders' perceptions of welfare deservingness. The findings indicate that, facing unequal access to healthcare, host society members define institutionalised worthiness between Turkish citizens and Syrian refugees. The mobilisation of institutional worthiness with regards to differential healthcare access, therefore, not only forges host society members' perspectives towards Syrians, but also the degree of deservingness regarding who contributes more to the national well-being and who deserves more benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the South Caucasus has turned into a powder keg for Eurasia with rising nationalism and erupting ethnic conflicts. This study explores the complex factors shaping political and military alliance formation by focusing on the South Caucasus. The article argues that the strategic alliances of regional and external powers mainly target to balance threats. The study demonstrates that each country in the region seeks to counterbalance its rival's ambitions and to secure its existence by allying with strong regional or external powers. It argues, however, that there are also cases of strategic compartmentalization, particularly due to extensive energy ties, which cuts across traditional alliance patterns. In this context, the paper also analyses the implications of the Second Karabakh War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roma are one of the most marginalized and discriminated-against groups in Turkey. During the last decade, however, a new trend has emerged: the institutionalization of Roma civil society. Roma civil society has moved from having no registered organizations in 2004 to having 336 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as of 2020. This paper critically analyses the rapid expansion of Roma NGOs in Turkey and discusses the impact of this expansion on Roma communities. Based on a systematic analysis of 14 semi-structured interviews conducted with those who have experience within Roma NGOs, this article argues that the potential positive effects of the expansion of institutionalized Roma civil society have been hampered by limited resources, blurred state-civil society relations, as well as polarization in Turkish society. As a result, Roma civil society became politicized and polarized. While providing insights into an understudied segment of civil society in Turkey, this study also provides further evidence for criticisms about the current state of Turkish civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Needs for protecting cultural manifestations marked as ‘heritage’ are often claimed when they are at the risk of destruction or when they are being destructed. Considering destruction as opposed to protection, groups concerned with heritage, such as the state agencies, archaeologists, and the locals, tend to emphasise the value of heritage. Focusing on the case of the Roman mosaics discovered in Zeugma, southeast Turkey, this paper explores the ways in which the destruction of heritage is perceived and understood, and what aspect of destruction is emphasised to claim its significance for heritage. Analysing in what way destruction of the Zeugma mosaics is problematised, this paper also considers the political aspects of presenting the destruction of heritage, in particular, in campaigns for heritage preservation. Through this, the paper examines how stories of destruction work to produce and enhance the distinction between protection and destruction, and suggests how the fragmentary or ruined state of heritage objects can be alluring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an introductory world regional geography course with a role-playing exercise. The goal was to situate students in a form of popular geopolitics that engaged them viscerally with positionality and othering. Students were assigned different positionalities in a liminal active learning environment within a context of fear of zombies; some actually engaged in othering or were othered; many vocally critiqued their own or others' positionalities and arguments. Later in the semester, students were more engaged and likely to apply the concepts of positionality and othering in critically thinking about the real-world case of Turkey's European Union application. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Compared to other developing countries, Turkey has a very low female labour participation rate. Previous studies usually focus on the labour supply side of female employment. Unlike the previous literature, this paper investigates firm-level determinants of female employment in manufacturing firms using a unique micro data set constructed using different sources. After controlling for geographical variation, firm, and industry-specific factors, our results show that larger firms, exporter firms, firms with higher part-time worker ratio, and foreign-owned firms have higher female employment rate whereas younger firms, firms with higher labour productivity, and firms with long working hours have lower female employment rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the politics and practices of commemoration in the aftermath of Turkey's July 15, 2016 coup attempt. Developing a concept of "memorial publics," this paper examines two distinct but interrelated forms of commemoration: websites that have been set up to tell the story of the resistance to the coup attempt and a new monument that commemorates the victim-heroes of that night's fighting. I focus on two shared aspects that link the digital and the physical: The use of key terms to frame the coup attempt's heroes and villains, and the role of website and architectural design in focusing the audience's attention. I argue that these commemorative projects work together to create a memorial public in which President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's position is both naturalized and justified. This paper's analysis contributes to geographers' ongoing interest in the symbolic and material dimensions of cultural and political geographies. [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]

The Islamic women's civil society organizations (CSOs) in Turkey entered a new phase with the lifting of the headscarf ban, which had long been the focus of Islamic women's activism against authoritarian gender policies in the country. Based on research conducted in 2012 and 2018 on two Islamist women's CSOs that have been active here during the last two decades, AKDER (Women's Rights Organization against Discrimination) and BKP (Capital City Women's Platform Association), this paper aims to understand these groups and their positions regarding the civil society-state relationship under an altered climate vis-à-vis gender. While AKDER represented a shift from an oppositional to a close relationship with the state from 2012 to 2018 respectively, the BKP in 2018 represented a more conflictual and oppositional stance towards the state compared to 2012. This paper argues that the combined impact of the revocation of the ban and an increasingly authoritarian climate in Turkey has led to a shrinking of space for struggle by the women's movement in general and for the Islamist women in particular. When the headscarf issue disappeared, the solidarity that prevailed among Islamist women started to weaken and divergences emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper's main objective is to explain the concept of transactionalist foreign policy in detail and to demonstrate how it applies to a real-world case in Turkish foreign policy towards the EU under the AKP rule. We define transactionalism as a foreign policy approach that favours bilateral to multilateral relations, focuses on short-term wins rather than longer-term strategic foresight, adheres to a zero-sum worldview where all gains are relative and reciprocity is absent, rejects value-based policymaking, and does not follow a grand strategy. This paper also provides a new layer to the existing periodisation of AKP's EU policy through framing the EU as 'a foreign policy actor' in Turkey-EU relations. Scholars divide Turkey's EU policy under the AKP government into three broad periods: Europeanisation, selective Europeanisation and De-Europeanisation. We complement this literature by adding another layer of analysis that focuses on Turkey's foreign relations in its broader region, including the EU, and argue that Turkey's relations with the EU were characterised by the zero-problems doctrine during the selective Europeanisation period, and by civilisational competition with the EU during the de-Europeanisation period, and by transactionalism since 2016. [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]

Under the omnipresence of surveillance, control and fear of the state as ontological signifiers, not only agency but also subjective and collective memories of people become unspeakable, hidden and veiled. This paper aims to underline the difficulties of doing ethnographic research on the secular Turkish state formation and its diverse apparatuses with a particular focus on the single-party regime that started in 1923 and ended in 1950. This work claims that fear of the state, inaccessibility of the state archives, the inscription of protective laws such as lèse-majesté for founding figures of the state, and the senility of survivors result in muteness, the emergence of politics of forgetting and remembering that diminish the possibility of studying relations between the authoritarian secular state and its Muslim subjects. It is argued that the hegemony of emotions of fear of the state and insecurity have turned historical and ethnographic research on the subject matter into a difficult one. Based on a recently conducted large-scale oral history study in different parts of Turkey, this paper also analyzes the resistance, resilience, and silence of mass Muslim population towards diverse forms of state-sponsored authoritarian secular politics along with western and Turkish nationalist top-down regulations of the new regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has been able to sustain a rural insurgency in Turkey over several decades, it was unable to sustain the urban insurgency it began in July 2015. This paper looks at the period July 2015 and December 2016 to explore the reasons why, despite the PKK's experience conducting an insurgency and demonstrated popular support, they were unable to sustain an urban insurgency. It then uses this example to examine the broader conditions under which urban insurgencies may be sustainable. In particular, the hypotheses in this paper look at the complex human and physical landscape of urban environments and the impact of pre-existing social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey recently initiated a political change by replacing its parliamentary model with the presidential governmental system (PGS) to achieve, inter alia, a structural transformation from an efficiency-driven to an innovation-driven model of growth. To investigate the PGS's potential for mediating such a change, this paper uses four key concepts of institutionalist analysis: systemic governance, credible commitment, institutional fragmentation and institutional traps. In doing so, the paper concludes that the PGS's potential to unleash a structural transformation towards an innovation-driven and high growth depends on the prospect of its mediating an imperative commitment in political and economic governance. This prospect proves to be weak due to both the PGS's institutional pillars and the path-dependent dynamics of the country's trap in efficiency-driven growth that have become embedded under a parliamentary model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to move beyond the limited research emphasis on traditional South-North scholarship accessibility. We discuss and analyze how through South-South connections and scholarship opportunities African students rationalize accessibility to scholarships in Turkey. Building on qualitative data collected through interviews, focus groups and discussions with African students in Istanbul, Turkey, this paper finds that the activities as well as the meaning making of African students towards existing Turkish educational and scholarship opportunities, remain essential in understanding the dynamics of African students and accessibility to Turkish scholarships. In their quest for scarce scholarship opportunities, students employ the internet for exchanging information with fellow students; compare opportunities within and beyond Africa while, simultaneously, interacting with formal and informal networks that facilitate scholarship opportunities. Accessibility to Turkish scholarships therefore depends not only on Turkish state funds and its availability, but also on what the students and their networks and community relations are doing separately or together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing amount of research explores how the allocation of regional development monies follows electoral reasons. Yet, the existing literature on distributive politics provides different and contrasting expectations on which geographical areas will be targeted. The paper focuses on proportional representation (PR) systems. While in such settings governments have incentives to target core districts and punish foes, it is suggested that when incumbents attempt to build a state–party image they may broaden the territorial allocation of benefits and even target opposition out-groups. The paper exploits data on Turkey's public transport investment for the period 2003–14 and in-depth interviews to provide results in support of the hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper explores the role of calculated informality in the interplay of policies linked to Afghan migration and refuge in Turkey, particularly through the lens of their applicability to this population. Relying on a qualitative case study approach, this research utilizes legal documents, organizational reports, and academic research, supplemented by 44 semi-structured interviews with various key stakeholders in Turkey, including migrant and refugee advocates, donors, INGOs, and civil society organizations. This research finds that policies that are applicable cause informality by failing to be accessible, whether through temporal or spatial restrictions that limit access to economic opportunities, social and community integration, and state services, ultimately illegalizing this demographic. It therefore concludes that the policies and practices that apply to Afghans in Turkey form a strategy of calculated informality by the Turkish state, created through limitations of policy outreach, which maintain their presence due to their economic function as cheap labor yet manage their inflows through security practices including deportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on contemporary Turkey under the authoritarian neoliberal rule of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP), this paper examines the politically motivated precarization of the journalistic and academic labour force that otherwise might play an important role in establishing collective action through pursuing and reporting the truth. Politically motivated precarization here means the loss of the minimum socio-economic conditions for a living, deprivation of basic rights, and devaluation of lives for political reasons. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews with academics and journalists from Turkey, who currently live in the UK because of political pressures in their home country, support the fundamental argument of this study, namely that there is an overlapping relationship between authoritarian neoliberalism and politically motivated precarization. Based on the interviews, this article also discusses alternative ways of knowledge production and dissemination beyond traditional structures, and the role of transnational solidarity to overcome the authoritarian neoliberal crackdown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze whether the profound effects of COVID-19 on Turkey's tourism sector will be permanent or transitory. Such an investigation deserves attention during the ongoing pandemic due to the importance of Turkey in the international tourism industry. To better understand and analyze the dynamics of tourism, we examine a long period of time spanning from January 1977 to March 2021 using a fractional integration approach. The findings provide clear-cut evidence that the shocks to the tourism sector display very low degrees of persistence in the pre-pandemic period whereas degrees of persistence in the post-pandemic period are very high. We also identify the changes in the persistence of tourism month by month. Overall, the impacts of COVID-19 on Turkey's tourism will not be transitory. Therefore, the government should be actively involved in the recovery process of the tourism sector if Turkey wants to reach the number of tourist arrivals it once used to host. Also, the methodology employed in this study could be used as a benchmark to explore the impacts of the ongoing pandemic on other sectors (JEL: C22: I15: L83: Z32). [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]

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By investigating the implications of gendered property and labour relations in agriculture for socio-economic transformation, this article extends development theories and contributes to feminist analysis of unpaid family labour. Drawing on the case of Turkey, it demonstrates that gendered patterns of agriculture limit women's mobility, access to education, and paid employment in non-agricultural sectors. Using the qualitative and quantitative methods, the paper finds that patriarchal property and labour relations prevent the movement of labour from agriculture to non-agricultural sectors, constrain labour supply, and increase subsistence earnings thereby putting upward pressure on urban wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bridge collapses in Turkey have not been the subject of any comprehensive study so far. Investigations are often kept confidential for various reasons. As a result, most of the time only limited information can be found about these collapses with some exceptions such as the 1999 Arifiye Bridge collapse due to seismic event and the 2012 Çaycuma bridge collapse due to pier scour. Both resulted in fatalities, which drew public awareness from the first day. The focus of this paper is to identify the causes of bridge collapses and to assess the possible prevention measures based on lessons learned. In this scope, for the first time in Turkey various reported bridge collapses were gathered in a database mostly occurring between the years of 2000 and 2019. The study of over 80 bridges that experienced failures revealed that for road bridges hydraulic events and for pedestrian bridges vehicle collisions were the main causes. Bridge engineering in Turkey is briefly discussed to provide better understanding of the countries' conditions. A section is also included to mention some significant historical bridges whose design has helped them to withstand the conditions were still struggling to address in the 20th century. [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]

The tired old civilisational categories of ‘East’ and ‘West’, loosely identified with ‘Islam’ and ‘modernity’, are alive and well, nowhere more so than in contemporary Turkey. The Justice Development Party (AKP) currently in government employs them assiduously to political advantage but they have a long history, having defined the parameters of societal identity and political discourse throughout the history of the Turkish Republic. The paper takes the strength of the categories as its starting point but moves beyond them by asking if discourses, narratives and identities, individual and collective, exist in Turkey which question, overcome and ultimately undermine the categories of ‘East’ and ‘West’. The paper starts by investigating the evolution of ideas about East and West since the late Ottoman period and accepts that they are still dominant. However, since the 1980s in particular, they are being undermined in a de facto way by cultural developments in literature and music, new trends in historiography and novel ways of relating to the past. In some ways in contemporary Turkey, the paper concludes, culture trumps the inherently essentialist idea of ‘civilisation’ and Turkish society is ahead of its political and intellectual elites. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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 paper applies a functional approach to the analysis of an emerging technology within an innovation system (IS) in a developing country. By doing so, the paper identifies the advantages and drawbacks of the approach through a dynamic analysis and highlights the life cycle of an IS within which a new technology is emerging. This is done empirically by analysing the emergence of biosimilars within the infant Turkish biotechnology system mainly from the perspective of firms. Our analysis of the Turkish case illustrates how the tool of functional approach could be valuable in understanding the dynamics of a technology in a developing country context. Policy suggestions and implications of the study are presented as concluding remarks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Private and community-driven efforts can be an important resource to expand early childhood education and care (ECEC) services to poor children, under the right conditions and design. The regulations imposed on private ECEC provision, while having an impact on quality, may increase costs of provision and in return prices of services, reducing accessibility and affordability for poor households. This paper considers the impact of regulations on private ECEC in a highly regulated childcare market in a developing country. Using data from a recently fielded survey that sampled 141 private ECEC facilities in Istanbul, Turkey, the paper looks at the impact of fixed regulations on prices and poor children’s access to services, in particular the outdoor space requirement that was originally imposed on private providers in the 1960s and has over time become more difficult to fulfill in densely populated districts of the city. The paper estimates that controlling for other provider characteristics, in districts where such requirement is more binding, the price of childcare services increases by 376.2 TL per child per month and the percentage of children enrolled coming from poor backgrounds lowers by 15.1% points than in districts where such standard proves less challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the 'social conflict' theory to analyse the challenges to combatting violence against women in Turkey. It argues that these obstacles that are grounded in unequal social power relations are structured in the political landscape where decisions over who gets what are made. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)'s 'male biased' political decisions such as withdrawing Turkey from the Council of Europe's Convention on Preventing and Combatting Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) reflect the current conditions of the balance of societal interests in the political order. Turkish women's struggle for equality requires a shift in existing conditions of power in favour of pro-gender equality forces that would enable the representation of their preferences and interests in the political landscape, which is always tilted towards certain groups and their interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by the populists' salient urge to recalibrate and locate contingent developments within a larger temporal order and establish historical continuity, this paper dwells on the chronopolitics of national populism and calls for a systematic treatment of time in these movements. Focusing on the neglected narrative dimension, such an inquiry will afford an alternative reading from which to engage with and critique the magnitude of populism. This study argues that despite ample variance and claims of uniqueness, national populisms employ a shared temporal template that accounts for a particular national subjectivity through a set of timing and sequencing of events complemented by affective stimuli. It focuses on the case of Turkey. More pronounced since 2013 Gezi Protests, the rising tide of national populism under President Tayyip Erdoğan's rule encapsulates how these populisms conflate the past, present, and future into a single narrative about the people's survival and prosperity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The CoViD-19 pandemic has led to a resurgence of health diplomacy in international relations. Especially the great powers and middle powers have provided different kinds of assistance to countries in need and utilized health diplomacy as an opportunity to construct, reconstruct or consolidate their role in regional and global politics. Turkey was no exception with its assertive and ambitious health diplomacy, of which the Balkans were central. Crisis periods have proved critical junctures for Turkish decision-makers to assert their ambitions in the Balkans. This article examines Turkish diplomacy towards the Balkan countries during the CoViD-19 pandemic and examines how Turkish decision-makers reconstructed a 'regional power' identity. Informed by the constructivist theory, the paper critically investigates how Justice and Development Party tried to consolidate Turkey's identity as a regional power in the Balkans. It delves into the following questions: What are the main reasons for Turkey's coronavirus diplomacy towards the Balkans? How are Turkish decision-makers trying to reconstruct Turkey's role as a regional power during the pandemic? What does the Turkish case tell us about the coronavirus diplomacy of the middle powers in general?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the 2000s, extensive academic research has echoed one popular opinion, 'Turkey is back to the Balkans'. These studies have been scrutinizing the complicated role of Turkey in the Balkans, usually drawing upon the use of soft power by the former. This impact in the region remained intact during the 2010s, although the overall Turkish foreign policy in the 2010s has been highly securitized and de-Europeanized, losing its soft power character that had been its trademark starting from the early 2000s. In this regard, this paper aims to decipher different dimensions of Turkey's foreign policy in the Balkans through a more general exploration of the de-Europeanization of Turkish foreign policy in the 2010s. Through more than 80 semi-structured interviews, which were conducted between 2016–2020, with political actors, diplomats, religious leaders, scholars and journalists in Turkey and the Balkans, we address the question of whether the divergence of Turkish foreign policy from a soft power perspective and its concomitant de-Europeanization tendency had been crystallized in its policy towards the Balkans within the context of the 2010s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comparative analysis considers the Turkish-Greek rapprochement and the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement processes with a three-dimensional approach. Although the deep-rooted conflicts between neither Greece and Turkey nor Armenia and Turkey were resolved via these processes, the bilateral relationships between the countries have significantly differed. This paper argues that two key main reasons lie behind this difference: the nature of the initiatives taken during the two processes and the influence of external actors on the course of the bilateral relations between Turkey and Greece, on the one hand, and Turkey and Armenia on the other hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New evidence presented in this paper shows that existing accounts of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in developing countries underestimate both progress and inequality because they do not take into account the large proportion of 15–16-year olds who are ineligible for the PISA sampling frame, primarily due to dropout or delay. In such countries, who makes it into PISA (sample eligibility) heavily influences representivity and therefore the interpretation of PISA results. We use PISA in Turkey 2003–2012 as a case study to show how combining measures of access (from the Turkish Demographic and Health Surveys) and learning outcomes (from PISA) can account for changes in the underlying population. We find the percentage of 15–16-year olds reaching Level 2 in PISA is up to twice as large as that reflected in official PISA reports. These findings have strong implications for inter-country and inter-temporal comparisons using PISA, particularly for developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkish television series gained their presence in the global entertainment market being dubbed as Turkey's soft power asset. However, in more recent years, together with increasing government control over Turkey's media landscape and rising authoritarianism, historical television series depicting the Ottoman Empire have flourished primarily on Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) public broadcasting. This paper argues that historical television series on TRT reflect the political elite's populist-nationalism and are in line with the AKP's (Justice and Development Party) political discourse. Therefore, television series aired on TRT are operationalized by the AKP government to advance their political agenda and are thus employed as propaganda tools in disseminating a populist-nationalist discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on cognitive science, child psychology, education and economics literature, this paper investigates the significance of early childhood development and highlights the value of investment in early childhood education (ECE). The young child requires adequate psycho-stimulation for the optimal development of the brain, which subsequently helps her to accomplish at school and achieve in adulthood. It has been previously emphasized that for all young children who start life at an equal footing, governments should provide equal opportunities for ECE and care where families are not able to provide. In this paper, we contrast the current status of early childhood and pre-primary education in Turkey with that of Nordic countries, which have advanced far in this level of education. Despite the striking evidence on affirmative effects, early childhood and pre-primary education is not considered a priority in the education system in Turkey and has a lot of room for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper puts forward four main arguments regarding the persistence of significant rural support of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) in Turkey since late 2002. Firstly, since the previous coalition government implemented the harshest neoliberal measures in the agricultural sector, small farmers do not directly associate neoliberal assault with the AKP administration. Secondly, villagers have utilized both the ballot box and direct action in order to bargain with the AKP. Thirdly, although the AKP government did not fundamentally depart from neoliberalism, the return of agricultural subsidies, significant expansion of social assistance, and rapid infrastructure construction have secured a large rural following for the party. Finally, the AKP government has effectively used coercive methods to prevent the emergence of an emancipatory political alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Weber's articulate conceptualisation of the nexus between religion and economics, these phenomena have been examined through various academic viewpoints. While some take religion as a determining factor of economic performance, others argue that it is the economy that influences religiosity. This paper focuses on the manifestation of religion and economics in the political sphere regarding the case of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP). After discussing the literature on the relations between religion and economics, it scrutinises the AKP period, considering three specific pillars: (a) the early years of the AKP in which Western economic policies were implemented as a continuation of the Kemal Derviş period; (b) between 2008 and 2015, when the idea 'we can do as well' maintained the centre stage; and (c) 2015 and onwards, when the Islamist influence on economic policy became highly apparent, particularly regarding interest rates. This study argues that the AKP changed politically in terms of Islamic influence upon the economic sphere, however this remains at the discursive level for the time being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sketches out the historical emergence and progress of political Islam in modern Turkey by emphasizing its statist and clientelistic aspects emanating from the authoritarian basis of Turkish political modernization. The paper contends that there has always been an authoritarian and autocratic tendency in modern Turkish politics that depends on a peculiar and modernist articulation of both Islamism and secularism, which eventually stand on the same ground. This very ground is formed upon a sacred understanding of the state that can be defined as an all-encompassing and absolute perfection of political power, which manifests itself differently in content for secular nationalists and Islamists, and yet produces the same authoritarian tendency. Both the secular nationalism and Islamism appear to be state oriented movements in the sense that they both have emanated from the state, and envisage to control the state in an absolute sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks into the Greek-Turkish arms race a decade after an earlier contribution to the issue that relied heavily on artificial neural networks. The time period between the two papers contributes to the reliability of the results derived, not just by increasing the number of observations, but also mainly by incorporating the progress made in the realm of artificial intelligence. The focus on the case of both countries unlike the paper mentioned above that dealt with just the Greek side provides ample room for comparative purposes regarding the determinants of defense expenditure on both sides. The results derived in terms of input significance estimation support the findings of the earlier research as indicated above, pointing to the leading role of the demographic preponderance of Turkey over Greece. The paper also points to the fact that 10 years later, Turkey continues to set the arms race rules against its rival by determining the defense expenditure of Greece, whereas the role of the latter in affecting the military spending of Turkey is non-existent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether Turkish foreign policy has changed in recent years, specifically in line with the EU accession process, and tries to uncover the main dynamics behind these changes. The main proposition in the paper is that domestic changes in Turkey have led to a reshuffling of foreign policy objectives with a renewed emphasis on improving relations with the country's neighbours. The paper investigates whether such a policy change is complementary to the Turkish goal of inclusion in the EU, and further proposes that the changes in Turkish foreign policy since 2002 involve an increased activism partly in line with the EU accession process and as a result of the changes in domestic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to shed light on Turkey's conflict management role after the Cold War using a three-layered framework consisting of the layers of actorness, approaches and tools. In doing so, it seeks to profile Turkey's international conflict management since the Cold War years with a special focus on the nature of its participation in conflict management as an active or passive actor, the perspectives from which it approaches conflict management, and the conflict management instruments it utilises. First, the paper will provide a conceptual framework of international conflict management based on the above-mentioned triad of actorness, approaches and tools as derived from the existing literature. Second, it will apply the selected three-layered analytical framework to Turkey to decipher its strengths and limitations in managing international conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) on wages, using Turkish firm-level data from 2003 to 2010, a period which coincides with significant FDI inflows both in manufacturing and service sector firms in the region. We explore the possibility of increased foreign presence translating into shifts in either labor demand or supply curves thereby resulting in changing the total wage bill or wage per worker in the host country. To empirically test this relationship we employ a dynamic specification of the wage equation. After addressing endogeneity concerns, the results reveal that foreign presence measured in terms of intra- and inter-sectoral linkages is related to higher wage bills in the host economy, hence strengthening the argument for attracting greater foreign investment to enhance labor welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. Cystinuria is an inherited transport disorder due to defects in intestinal and renal transport of cystine and dibasic amino acids. Early diagnosis is required for some general and specific treatments because cystinuric patients have an increased risk of recurrent urinary stone formation. The prevalence of cystinuria varies widely in different countries. The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of cystinuria among schoolchildren in Eskisehir, a central Anatolian city in Turkey. Material and methods. The sodium cyanide-nitroprusside spot test was applied to the first morning urine samples from 8260 schoolchildren (4087 female, 4173 male, aged between 6 and 12 years). Urine and blood amino acids were determined with paper chromatography and special cystine-homocystine chromatography were performed if a child had a positive spot-test result. Urinary cystine levels of two children were measured quantitatively. Results. Spot-test results were positive in four students. Increased levels of cystine and dibasic amino acids in the urine were determined with paper chromatography and cystine spots were also detected with special cystine-homocystine chromatography for these four students. Urinary cystine levels were elevated in two children whose urine could be studied. The prevalence of cystinuria in this study was 1:2065. There was no history or symptoms related to urolithiasis in these students. Conclusion. The prevalence of cystinuria in this study is higher than many other countries. Patients in Turkey with urinary stones or with symptoms related to urolithiasis must also be investigated for cystinuria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses three underlying reasons for the unprecedented socio-spatial changes that have resulted in the emergence of rural ghettos in southern Turkey. First, neoliberal agricultural transformation has led to changes in crop composition, which have caused a need for cheap labour over longer periods of time. Second, the extreme poverty levels of Kurdish seasonal labourers compels them not to return to their homes and stay in tent settlements around farms. Third, the high level of poverty and vulnerability of Syrian refugees compels them to accept the lowest-paying jobs and the most rudimentary types of accommodation, such as tent settlements. I therefore argue that the co-existence of agrarian transformation and contemporary migration flows resulted in a socio-spatial change in Turkey's rural areas. [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]

Based on an original survey (n = 1,017), this paper examines citizens' participation patterns in the 'Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' ('TRNC'), a de facto state recognised only by Turkey. Since 1974 the 'TRNC' has been receiving a constant flow of immigrants from its patron state (Turkey). While Turkish immigrants make up a sizeable proportion of the electorate, they seem to be underrepresented in the political arena. Our findings show that, in determining the level of political participation, socio-economic factors are pre-eminent while having an immigrant background has only very limited effect and gender does not have any impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]