Turkey: more domestic turbulence ahead

President Erdogan is likely to regard Turkey's 1 November election as a vindication and implicit electoral endorsement of the authoritarian methods he has increasingly adopted in recent years. There is a high risk of an escalation in civil unrest, as young Kurds seek greater cultural and political rights.     

Torn in translation: An ethnographic study of regulatory decision‐making in Turkey

There is much literature on the diffusion and translation of regulatory agencies from the perspective of formal political models. Ethnographic research of regulation process is, however, much less common. This is even more evident with regards to the study of regulatory agencies established outside the “West.” This article analyzes the translation process of the Turkish tobacco regulatory agency, which was established in 2002, under commitments made to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Based on an ethnographic analysis of two controversial cases, the study shows that tobacco regulation was being shaped and pursued in an environment of ambivalence and uncertainty. The study concludes that the decision‐making process of the agency is context‐specific and constructed within the perpetual struggles and interactions among the actors involved in this process.     

NPT review: failure underlines challenges ahead

The recent deterioration in relations between Russia and the West was among a series of factors that had dampened hopes that the NPT RevCon could deliver meaningful progress on arms control. Nonetheless, nuclear-weapons states may now be convinced of the need to show greater awareness of the widespread impatience fuelling efforts to ban nuclear weapons.     

The challenge ahead: the state agenda for the coming years

The mid-1990s promise to be extremely challenging years as state leaders and institutions struggle to bring accountability and predictability back into their political systems. Faced with continuing budgets troubles, increasing demands for services and a shift of responsibility from the federal to the state level, the American states will be hard pressed to satisfy constituent needs or improve state services. However, the tough times may result in long-term improvement in state government, as administrators streamline agencies, legislators trim inefficient or redundant programs and state leaders generally seek new and cost effective solutions to social and economic problems.     

Pakistan: a more positive trajectory

The past 18 months have been an atypically salutary period for Pakistan. Democracy has deepened, civilian–military relations have been stable, the economy has grown and foreign relations have been conducted with relative maturity and civility. While Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif does face some political turbulence and the country's long-term challenges remain substantial, Pakistan's overall outlook is improving.     

Turkey: the attempted coup and its troubling aftermath

The military coup attempted in Turkey on 15 July 2016 fizzled out quickly. But President Tayyip Erdogan has accused a political rival, exiled Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, and his followers of engineering the coup without substantiation, and is using it as a pretext to purge the government, judiciary and military. This reaction could lead to sustained domestic instability that would strain Turkey's international relations, exacerbate its democratic deficit and damage its social fabric.     

Turkey and the Kurds

Turkey’s military is once again claiming new successes in its 13-year war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The armed forces increasingly recognise the need for social and economic measures to address the plight of the Kurdish population in south-east Turkey. Among Turkey’s political élite there is also some acceptance of the need for a political solution. But if the Army has become less obsessed with a purely military solution, it shows no willingness to make any concessions to the Kurds’ cultural and national aspirations. There thus appears little end in sight to an insurgency which is increasingly damaging Ankara’s relations with the West.     

Federal Reserve transparency: The more things change, the more they stay the same?

The calculus of electoral politics and the central bank’s bureaucratic objectives can explain the recent trend toward greater Federal Reserve transparency and can shed light on the likelihood that this trend will continue. If incumbent politicians see no electoral advantage in pressuring the Fed to become still more transparent, and if the Fed sees no benefit to greater transparancy, then further changes in current practice are unlikely. Private sector agents will continue to face a significant degree of uncertainty about the Fed’s policy objectives and about the information that policymakers consider in the monetary policy decision process.     

Gezi Park Protests in Turkey: A Party Politics View

One year on from the widespread protests in Turkey, the question of why small environmental protests against the building of a shopping mall on Gezi Park in the centre of Istanbul turned into the biggest example of mass civil movement in the republic's history remains unanswered. This article suggests that one can easily detect signs of instability and social unrest in the country long before these mass demonstrations took place. By analysing the evolution of the Turkish party system over the past decade, I argue that the political upheaval in the country is the result of a crisis of representation. This has two aspects: a high degree of polarisation has left certain segments of society unrepresented, while the AKP government has ceased to maintain the balance between responsiveness and responsibility.     

State Reform in Turkey: Reasons, Needs and Strategies

The state structure in Turkey including all its branches of government (executive, legislative and judicial) at both the national and local levels has been shown to be ineffective, even irrelevant, to the ingrained demographic, social, economic and political exigencies of the country. One of the main reasons behind this is the collapse of public finance. Conventional rhetoric limiting solutions to administrative reform fails to provide a sufficiently broad enough context within which public sector reform in Turkey can be discussed. Turkey's determination to become a full member of the EU also necessitates a comprehensive and radical overhaul of the Turkish public sector with respect to efficiency and productivity. Five main strategies are proposed to assist Turkey in overcoming its state governance predicament: initiating and carrying out a state-wide reform by employing modern principles of public management; understanding and solving the problem of internal and external debts; enhancing the conditions of governance; reintroduc-ing and strengthening the principle of meritocracy in public sector and cooperating more with the EU.