Publications with Fulltext

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14288/6

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Open Access
A new path emerges
(Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Press, 2003) Department of International Relations; Öniş, Ziya; Keyman, Emin Fuat; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 7715; 45389
Open Access
Agonistic recognition as a remedy for identity backlash: insights from Israel and Turkey
(Taylor _ Francis, 2021) Strombom, Lisa; Department of International Relations; Rumelili, Bahar; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 51356
While an extensive part of the conflict transformation literature stresses the importance of transforming the identities of conflict parties through recognition, it fails to recognise the propensity of such transformations to generate ontological insecurity and dissonance, and consequently a possible backlash towards antagonistic identities. Drawing on agonistic thought, we develop a conception of agonistic recognition, premised on non-finalism, pluralist multilogue and disaggregated recognition. We suggest that these elements of agonistic recognition may guard against the development of ontological insecurity and dissonance in recognition processes. We comparatively analyse the connections and tensions between recognition, ontological insecurity/dissonance and identity backlash experienced during the transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the context of the Oslo Peace Process in the 1990s and Turkey's 'rapprochement' with Greece in the context of its EU accession process in the 2000s. We also assess the presence of the elements of agonistic recognition in these two conflict transformation processes. Our contribution constitutes an important step towards the specification of agonistic peace in terms of its underlying recognition processes and in developing the empirical study of agonistic elements in actual conflict transformation processes.
Open Access
Beyond the Westphalian rainbow: a dissident theory of supranational systems
(Taylor _ Francis, 2018) Department of International Relations; Ruacan, İpek Zeynep; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics
Beyond the Westphalian rainbow: a dissident theory of supranational systems. Territory, Politics, Governance. This article focuses on the work of Adam Watson from the English School of International Relations for two purposes. The first is to highlight the potential it contains for transcending the prejudices imposed upon international relations theory by the anarchy assumption and by the reification of independent statehood. The second and the more specific purpose is to understand the formation of legitimate supranational systems once these prejudices are removed. Watson approaches supranationalism as an extant condition in international society rather than as a deviation from a normal condition of anarchy or independent statehood, and proposes a culturalist and a moralistic framework in which supranational systems can be legitimized. As a case study to determine which framework is more valid, I analysed the convention on the future of Europe and concluded that the moralistic serves better for understanding how the European Union is legitimized. Once juxtaposed with Neo-Weberian historical sociology's insights into the state, Watson's moralistic framework can offer a foundational theory for reconsidering legitimate supranational systems and open up new research agendas in international relations theory.
Open Access
Book review: Loyalists: war and peace in Northern Ireland by Peter Taylor
(The University of Chicago Press, 2000) Department of International Relations; Mousseau, Demet Yalçın; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics
Open Access
Border closures and the externalization of immigration controls in the Mediterranean: a comparative analysis of Morocco and Turkey
(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2019) Department of International Relations; İçduygu, Ahmet; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 238439; 207882
This article traces the recent history of border closures in Turkey and Morocco and their impact on human mobility at the two ends of the Mediterranean. Border closures in the Mediterranean have produced new spaces where borders are often fenced, immigration securitized, and border crossings and those facilitating border crossings criminalized. Here, bordering practices are conceptualized as physical bordering practices, border controls, and legal measures. Turkey and Morocco constitute comparable cases for an analysis of border closures insofar as they utilize similar mechanisms of closure, despite having quite different outcomes in terms of numbers. The article's findings are based on fieldwork conducted at both locations between 2012 and 2014, as well as on analysis of Frontex Risk Assessment Reports from 2010 to 2016. The first part of the article reflects on the concepts of border closure and securitization, together with their implications, and draws for its argument on critical security studies and critical border studies. The second part of the article is an overview of controls over mobility exercised in the Mediterranean from the 1990s onward. Then, in the third and fourth parts, we turn to the particular cases-respectively, Turkey and Morocco-in order to discuss their processes of border closure and the various implications thereof. Through analysis of the two country cases, we show that border closures are neither linear nor irreversible.
Open Access
Bridging international political economy and public policy and administration research on central banking
(Taylor _ Francis, 2021) Yağcı, Mustafa; Department of International Relations; Bakır, Caner; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 108141
Central banking as an avenue of research has been of interest to scholars from International Political Economy (IPE) and Public Policy and Administration (PPA) disciplines. Nevertheless, there is very little dialogue between these two perspectives to bridge macro, meso, micro-level analyses and examine the reciprocal relationship between the global and domestic political economy context and monetary policy conduct. This article investigates the Turkish experience to bridge IPE and PPA scholarship on central banking in emerging economies. In doing so, we adopt an analytic eclectic approach combining multiple structural, institutional, and agential causal explanations with particular reference to the Structure, Institution, and Agency (SIA) theoretical framework. This is because analytic eclecticism complements, speaks to, and selectively incorporates theoretical approaches such as the New Independence Approach (NIA) of IPE and institutional and ideational PPA approaches. Drawing on the empirical context of the historical evolution of the Turkish political economy, we explore domestic and international interactions among micro, meso, and macro levels that shape central banking behavior. Our analysis also reveals how global dynamics are translated into domestic policy choices and how particular ideas influence the policymaking process. The analysis underscores the constraining and enabling influence of international dynamics, politics of ideas on emerging economy central banking, and the essential role individual and organizational agency play in the policymaking process.
Open Access
Bringing the economy back in: Hannah Arendt, Karl Marx, and the politics of capitalism
(University of Chicago Press, 2016) Department of International Relations; İnce, Onur Ulaş; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 35075
This article engages with the question of how to construct modern economic relations as an object of political theorizing by placing Hannah Arendt's and Karl Marx's writings in critical conversation. I contend that the political aspect of capitalism comes into sharpest relief less in relations of economic exploitation than in moments of expropriation that produce and reproduce the conditions of capitalist accumulation. To develop a theoretical handle on expropriation and thereby on the politics of capitalism, I syncretically draw on Marxian and Arendtian concepts by first examining expropriation through the Marxian analytic of "primitive accumulation of capital" and second delineating the political agency behind primitive accumulation through the Arendtian notion of "power." I substantiate these connections around colonial histories of primitive accumulation wherein expropriation emerges as a terrain of political contestation. From this perspective I conclude that such putatively "economic" questions as dispossession, exploitation, and accumulation appear as irreducibly political questions.
Open Access
Care in times of the pandemic: Rethinking work meanings of work in the university
(Wiley, 2022) Bergeron, S.; Department of International Relations; Olcay, Özlem Altan; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics
In this paper, we challenge the meanings of work that marginalize academic activities associated with care and contribute to inequitable gender divisions of academic labor. We argue that the pandemic crisis and the revision of the meaning of ""essential work"" that accompanied it has served as a catalyst for such concerns to get a hearing. But while there has been significant attention paid to domestic care demands and their impact on academic labor, there is less focus on the caretaking work we do in the university even though the gender unequal distribution of teaching, mentoring and service work has also intensified in the pandemic. We argue that this is in part due to the institutional discourses and practices that continue to devalue many components of everyday academic labor. In order to challenge these limits, we extend ideas from Feminist political economy (FPE) to university settings in order to reframe academic labor and revalue care as an essential part of it. We offer two suggestions, connected to FPE methodologies, for gathering and reconceptualizing data on academic work to push the project forward. We conclude with the argument that this project of revaluing caring labor is essential for achieving goals of equity, faculty well-being, and the sustainability of universities.
Open Access
Class and passports: transnational strategies of distinction in Turkey
(Sage, 2016) Balta, Evren; Department of International Relations; Olcay, Özlem Altan; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics
This article analyses the process whereby members of new classes in Turkey mobilize their resources so that their children receive US citizenship at birth. Following the actors' self-perceptions and motivations, we argue that US citizenship acquisition is a new capital accumulation strategy, aimed to forestall against risks in intergenerational transmission of class privileges. With this article, we aim to contribute to cultural class studies in the following ways: we suggest that the unpredictable nature of classification struggles becomes more evident in contexts where transition to neoliberalism is accompanied by dramatic political shifts. We situate the desire for US citizenship within class anxieties in Turkey, informed by historical meanings attached to the binary of the West' versus the East'. Finally, we break down the boundaries between different country-cases by drawing on citizenship as capital, rather than as a backdrop that actors share. We explain the new ways in which class distinction strategies are transnationalized in the contemporary period.
Open Access
Contextualising the context in policy entrepreneurship and institutional change
(Taylor _ Francis, 2017) Jarvis, Darryl S. L.; Department of International Relations; Bakır, Caner; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 108141
While there is a considerable literature concerning policy entrepreneurship and institutional isomorphism, significantly less literature has emerged addressing the impact of context on policy and institutional entrepreneurship and of the interactions between various contexts and agency. In this article, we demonstrate that the actions of entrepreneurs in the public sector are most likely to generate policy and institutional changes when they are reinforced by complementarities arising from context-dependent, dynamic interactions among interdependent structures, institutions and agency-level enabling conditions.
Open Access
Discourse analysis: strengths and shortcomings
(Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research, 2019) Aydın-Düzgit, Senem; Department of International Relations; Rumelili, Bahar; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 51356
Discourse analysis is a much-favoured textual analysis method among constructivist and critically minded International Relations scholars interested in the impact of identity, meaning, and discourse on world politics. The aim of this article is to guide students of Turkish IR in their choice and use of this method. Written by two Turkish IR scholars who have employed discourse analysis in their past and present research, this article also includes a personal reflection on its strengths and shortcomings. The first section of the article presents an overview of the conceptual and epistemological underpinnings of discourse analysis, while charting the evolution of discourse analysis in IR since the late 1980s in three phases. The second section offers insight into the personal history of the researchers in employing discourse analysis in their previous and ongoing research, while the third section provides a how-to manual by performing discourse analysis of an actual text. The concluding section focuses on the challenges faced in the conduct of discourse analysis and the potential ways to overcome them, also drawing from the researchers'own experiences in the field.
Open Access
Does natural gas fuel civil war? rethinking energy security, international relations, and fossil-fuel conflict
(Elsevier, 2020) Department of International Relations; N/A; Akça, Belgin San; Yılmaz, Şuhnaz Özbağcı; Mehmetoğlu, Seda Duygu Sever; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; 107754; 46805; N/A
This article advances theoretical and empirical knowledge at the nexus of energy politics and conflict intervention by analyzing the complex dynamics connecting energy resources, civil war, and outside state support of rebel groups. It focuses on the role of global energy supply competition in states’ decision to support armed groups that are involved in conflicts in other states. Further, this study enhances the extant research that focuses primarily on the resource wealth of conflict-ridden states by analyzing the effect of the interveners' resource wealth on their sponsorship of foreign non-state armed groups. This study identifies two causal paths linking energy resources, specifically natural gas, to state support of rebels by building on outside state supporters’ motives for: (1) competition over supply to global markets; and (2) secure access to resources and supply routes. The empirical section includes a large-N analysis on original data covering 454 rebel groups and their state supporters and a detailed case study of the Russian intervention in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
Open Access
Editorial
(Wiley, 2020) Rath, Jan; Sert, Deniz; Department of International Relations; İçduygu, Ahmet; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 207882; 238439
Open Access
Editorial, May 2020
(Wiley, 2020) Rath, Jan; Sert, Deniz; Department of International Relations; İçduygu, Ahmet; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 207882; 238439
Open Access
Effectiveness of incumbent's strategic communication during economic crisis under electoral authoritarianism: evidence from Turkey
(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2021) Department of International Relations; Aytaç, Selim Erdem; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 224278
To minimize damage to their popularity during economic downturns, rulers in electoral autocracies can draw on their propaganda advantage to keep the economy off the political agenda or shift the blame to other actors. How successful are these strategies in swaying citizens' views? While electoral autocrats frequently resort to these strategies, there is surprisingly little evidence about their effectiveness. To address this gap, I took advantage of the recent economic crisis in Turkey and deployed a population-based survey experiment that mimicked incumbent's use of these strategies. I find that incumbent's efforts of shifting the blame fail to elicit intended effects among large parts of the electorate. In contrast, changing the political agenda away from the economy to an issue area that is more favorable for the incumbent is more effective for shoring up popular support. These findings contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms that help sustain electoral authoritarianism.
Open Access
Energy and climate security priorities and challenges in the changing global energy order
(FEUTURE: The Future of EU-Turkey Relations, 2017) Martínez-García, Enrique; Soytaş, Mehmet Ali; Department of International Relations; Yılmaz, Şuhnaz Özbağcı; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 46805
Global energy markets are facing an era of extensive change through a radical process of transformation known as the “energy transition”, which ranges from the unprecedented growth of renewables and the success of the Paris Agreement to the still unpredictable future of gas and oil prices. Europe and Turkey are heavily influenced by these phenomena, and so are their relations. A more climate-friendly position by Turkey would increase chances for cooperation with the EU – still the de facto global climate leader. A greater role for gas would boost the EU and Turkey’s need for diversification, and thus possibly for cooperation. Turkey’s significant focus on coal could, however, move the country instead closer to the anti-climate stance opened up by President Donald Trump’s exit from the Paris Agreement, thus leading to a conflict scenario with the EU. The energy transition could provide a robust framework for the EU’s and Turkey’s future energy and climate relations, and one that might possibly be open to a new role for platforms such as the G20. However, its final impact will be a result of the evolution of its individual components, and the choices that the EU and Turkey will make in regard to these.
Open Access
Energy and climate strategies, interests, and priorities of EU and Turkey
(FEUTURE: The Future of EU-Turkey Relations, 2017) Colantoni, Lorenzo; Korkmaz, Dicle; Sartori, Nicolò; Schroeder, Mirja; Sever-Mehmetoğlu, Duygu; Department of International Relations; Yılmaz, Şuhnaz Özbağcı; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 46805
Energy is one of the sectors in which EU–Turkey cooperation could be most fruitful, possibly leading overall convergence through the common achievement of mutual interests in key areas – in particular, natural gas imports and diversification. Yet, this collaboration is undermined by the uncertainty over Turkey’s position vis-à-vis these policies and its undefined commitment to others, such as renewables and nuclear power; by doubts over the ability of the EU to balance security of supply, sustainability and competitiveness; and by the unclear growth trends of both regions. This situation is partially balanced by Turkey’s and the EU’s participation in several – sometimes successful – platforms for energy cooperation on the bilateral and multilateral levels (i.e. ENTSO-E, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity and MedTSO, the Association of the Mediterranean Transmission System Operators), which are aimed at the integration of the two polities’ energy markets. Nonetheless, the overall energy framework still needs a strong policy boost to set it on a common path towards convergence.
Open Access
Entrepreneurial subjectivities and gendered complexities: neo-liberal citizenship in Turkey
(Routledge, 2014) Department of International Relations; Olcay, Özlem Altan; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics
This contribution explores the promotion of women’s entrepreneurial activities in Turkey. Using participant observation and semi-structured interviews conducted during 2011–12 in two civil-society organizations that run programs fostering women’s entrepreneurship, this study shows how neoliberal ideologies interact with ideas of labor, responsibility, and gender. Emphasizing individual rationalities and entrepreneurial attitudes, these civil-society programs contribute to the construction of model subjects of neoliberal citizenship, who are expected to be self-governing and self-sufficient. Yet problems embedded in the neoliberal paradigm and these particular organizations’ commitment to women’s rights produce contradictions in implementation. The goal of entrepreneurial women is predicated on the assumption that women contribute more to their families’ well-being than men. The programs’ attempts to construct potential entrepreneurs out of women for this purpose reveal problems with discourses of individual self-sufficiency and responsibility.
Open Access
Ethnicity and religiosity-based prejudice in Turkey: evidence from a survey experiment
(Sage, 2017) Department of International Relations; Aytaç, Selim Erdem; Çarkoğlu, Ali; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 224278; 125588
Threat perceptions and prejudice underlie a large number of intergroup conflicts. In this article we explore prejudicial attitudes in Turkey regarding ethnic Kurdish and devout Muslim religious identities as opposed to Turkish and less observant, secular identities. Utilizing a population-based survey experiment, we use vignettes about a hypothetical family as a neighbour, with randomized ethnicity and religiosity-related cues. We find evidence for prejudice against Kurdish ethnicity, especially among older, lowly-educated and economically dissatisfied individuals. The level of prejudice against Kurds does not seem to be related to the relative size of the Kurdish population in the local population. We do not observe prejudice against devout Muslim or less observant, secular identities. Our findings indicate that prejudice against Kurds in Turkey does not have a sui generis nature. The lack of prejudice across the religiosity dimension suggests that major socio-political cleavages do not necessarily affect intergroup attitudes.
Open Access
Evolutionary multiobjective feature selection for sentiment analysis
(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2021) Pelin Angın; Deniz, Ayça; Department of International Relations; Angın, Merih; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 308500
Sentiment analysis is one of the prominent research areas in data mining and knowledge discovery, which has proven to be an effective technique for monitoring public opinion. The big data era with a high volume of data generated by a variety of sources has provided enhanced opportunities for utilizing sentiment analysis in various domains. In order to take best advantage of the high volume of data for accurate sentiment analysis, it is essential to clean the data before the analysis, as irrelevant or redundant data will hinder extracting valuable information. In this paper, we propose a hybrid feature selection algorithm to improve the performance of sentiment analysis tasks. Our proposed sentiment analysis approach builds a binary classification model based on two feature selection techniques: an entropy-based metric and an evolutionary algorithm. We have performed comprehensive experiments in two different domains using a benchmark dataset, Stanford Sentiment Treebank, and a real-world dataset we have created based on World Health Organization (WHO) public speeches regarding COVID-19. The proposed feature selection model is shown to achieve significant performance improvements in both datasets, increasing classification accuracy for all utilized machine learning and text representation technique combinations. Moreover, it achieves over 70% reduction in feature size, which provides efficiency in computation time and space.