No mood for change: neoliberalism and Turkish fiction

ABSTRACT

This study examines various literary archetypes of social and political agency in popular Turkish fiction since the implementation of neoliberal economic policies (NLPs) in the 1980s. The extent to which NLPs have shaped notions of social and political agency is considered in the light of post-liberalization economic trends, and urban challenges facing Turkey today. It has been said that in Turkish literature, social and political actors must inevitably find self-transcendence either in self-imposed marginalization, or in quietist contemplation. However, we find in at least one case a new literary hero who points towards a more defiantly existential affirmation of freedom. What we suggest is that in A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk, the central character in the novel, Mevlut Karata?, is something of a departure. Mevlut must weather all the difficulties of the individual buffeted by NLPs, yet he endures unbowed if not undamaged. What emerges is a hero of today’s Turkey who has more affinities with Heidegger’s authentic Dasein than more traditional literary figures, who often are either impotent leftists or bourgeois aesthetes.     

A fateful weekend in 1921: at the crux of negotiations for an Anglo-Irish Treaty and an independent Irish parliament

This article highlights the stressful logistics of final negotiations for the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, a treaty that both ended the Irish war of independence (1919–21) and authorized the creation of the Irish Free State (1922). The treaty also confirmed a new international border which is still problematic today (not least in respect to the United Kingdom's decision to exit the European Union). Caught between dissidents in Dublin and experienced British ministerial negotiators in London, the ostensible plenipotentiaries of an Irish revolutionary government were obliged to rush back by rail and boat on a fraught mission to Ireland and then return immediately to London for final negotiations. The article lays bare the circumstances of that fateful weekend of 2-4 December 1921, two days after which the Irish team in London signed a controversial document that was to be contested in a civil war between different groups of Irish nationalists in 1922. The author argues that logistical pressures cannot be divorced from political tensions bearing down on negotiators.     

Looking beyond the economy: Pussy Riot and the Kremlin's voting coalition

The arrest of the protest punk band Pussy Riot (PR) in March 2012 and the subsequent prosecution of three band members pose a significant puzzle for political science. Although PR's performances presented a coherent alternative to the Putin regime's image of Russian reality, it was unlikely that the discordant music and crude lyrics of their art protest would inspire Russian society to take to the streets. Yet, the regime mounted a very visible prosecution against the three young women. We argue that the trial marked a shift in the Kremlin's strategy to shape state–society relations. In the face of declining economic conditions and social unrest, the PR trial encapsulated the Kremlin's renewed focus on three related mechanisms to insure social support: coercion, alliance building, and symbolic politics. The PR trial afforded the Kremlin an important opportunity to simultaneously redefine its loyal constituency, secure the Church–state relationship, and stigmatize the opposition.     

Relative deprivation,protests and voting in Kenya

While protests and voting are forms of political participation, their theoretical and empirical literature has largely developed independently and remains unintegrated, despite a possible common causal mechanism. This paper explores the possibility that perceptions of relative deprivation could be a common causal mechanism. It identifies three forms of relative deprivation – intra-personal, inter-personal, and fraternalistic. Using the Afrobarometer survey data for Kenya, the paper tests the influence of each of the three forms of relative deprivation on the likelihood of voting or participating in protests. The results show that intra-personal relative deprivation influences the likelihood of protesting and voting, by raising the former while reducing the latter. However, inter-personal and fraternalistic relative deprivations are not significant predictors of the likelihood of either protesting or voting.     

Local Elections and the Turkish Voter: Looking for the Determinants of Party Choice

On 30 March 2014 Turkish voters elected their local (city) councillors. Their party preferences seem to indicate considerable correspondence with the national vote choices. So, do voters' choices in local elections differ from voters' party preferences at the national legislative elections? Based on previous research findings on Turkish voting behaviour, a list of hypotheses was compiled and tested, using binary logistic regression analyses and survey data collected immediately prior to the 2009 and 2014 local elections. The main findings are that the party lists are supported at the ballot boxes on the basis of the voters' party identification, ideological positions, and economic (dis)satisfaction, whether in national or local elections.     

Economic conditions and voting in Japanese house elections

Based on a Downsian perspective of voting behavior, this study assesses the extent to which short-term regional economic conditions influenced the electoral district vote for Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party in the 1983 and 1986 elections to the House of Representatives. Unlike traditional scholarly interpretations, which stress the unique and nonindividualistic determinants of Japanese voting, our regression estimates indicate that economic voting in Japan resembles that identified in studies of other political systems, where unemployment has been shown to be an important predictor of the vote, which income is not. The findings fit with more recent evidence that Japanese political behavior is genuinely susceptible to comparative analysis, and point to the need for a revised understanding of Japanese electoral behavior.     

Reassessing Turkish National Memory: An Analysis of the Representation of Turkish National Memory by the AKP

In this article continuity and discontinuity of interpretations and manipulations of national memory during the successive governments of the Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi (Justice and Development Party – AKP) in Turkey are investigated. The strong continuities between the Islamist parties of the 1990s and the AKP, with regard to the way they consider and manipulate Ottoman history as a means of political legitimation, are demonstrated. In addition, the continuity between the AKP's style of governance and that of preceding governments is shown. The conclusion of the article is that, in addition to continuities with its Islamist predecessors, the AKP is to a large extent still embedded within the boundaries of the nationalist framework set out by Kemalism with regard to the party's stance on Turkish citizenship, national identity, traumas in national history and leader-centred politics.     

Soldiers and civilians: the dilemma of Turkish democracy

This historical analysis of Mahatma Gandhi's views on the Jewish–Arab conflict in Palestine at the time of the British Mandate distinguishes four phases. The initial involvement is Gandhi's intervention in support of the Caliph's temporal rule in Palestine. The second deals with a secret offer of mediation addressed to the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem. The third is his highly controversial letter to ‘The Jews‘. In the last phase, Gandhi chose to remain silent, but is alleged to have stated that the Jews had a good case and a prior claim, a statement that seems at variance with previous attitudes. The question is raised as to how far Gandhi's views were consistent. They are explained by the evolving political context in India, as well as in Palestine, the two being intertwined in an ever tightening knot. Gandhi's commitments are revisited and clarified in the light of new research.     

The practice and implications of legislative proxy voting in Ukraine

Governing parties often face the challenge of coordinating the behavior of legislators to pass bills and achieve their policy goals. Solutions to this collective action problem vary, but generally involve a combination of inducements and punishments to encourage legislators to toe the party line. “Ghost voting,” a form of proxy voting in which legislators record roll-call votes in place of their absent co-partisans has been noted over time in many representative institutions. This article addresses the process of proxy voting in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, empirically demonstrating that proxy voting has been widespread and essential to the success of crucial legislation. At the same time, proxy voting creates impediments to measures of legislative unity and undermines accountability.