Monopolising the Centre: The AKP and the Uncertain Path of Turkish Democracy

The loss of reform momentum and rising authoritarianism during the most recent phase of AKP government indicate that Turkish democracy is in crisis. Although the Gezi protests emerged as a movement from below reacting to the rising authoritarianism of the AKP government, it did not turn into an organised and sustainable movement. Similarly, external anchors or reputational effects are failing to reverse the backsliding of Turkish democracy. The notion of ‘bounded communities’ is a key concept in accounting for the continued dominance of Erdo?an and the AKP in the face of significant pressure for change. Erdo?an’s victory in the August 2014 presidential elections generates both benign and pessimistic scenarios for the future of Turkish democracy.     

STR data for the AmpFlSTR SGM Plus from the eastern and western sections of Mediterranean region of Turkey

Allele frequencies of the 10 STR loci (D16S539, D2S1338, D3S1358, vWA, D18S51, D21S11, D8S1179, D19S433, FGA and TH01) included in the AmpFlSTR SGM Plus kit were determined in 107 unrelated individuals from the eastern section and 108 unrelated individuals from western section of Mediterranean region of Turkey. The expected performance of these loci for personal identification and paternity testing in these populations were estimated.     

Of Rebels and Disobedients: Reflections on Arendt,Race, Lawbreaking

Hannah Arendt valued the unprecedented, the unexpected, and the new, yet in essays crafted at the end of the rebellious 1960s, struggled to square this valuation with a palpable desire for law and order. She lamented that criminality had overtaken American life, accused the police of not arresting enough criminals, and charged ‘the Negro community’ with standing behind what she named black violence. At once, she praised ‘the white rebels’ of the student movement in the United States for their courageous acts of disobedience. This essay explores how differential Arendt’s treatment of lawbreaking action was in an effort to understand how ‘certain sections of the population’ in the United States could appear to stand for criminality rather than civil disobedience to her mind. It examines how Arendt’s reflections on the ostensibly non-racial subjects of civil disobedience and lawbreaking were underwritten by racial, when not racist, ways of thinking. The essay also raises a larger question: to the extent that the concept of civil disobedience involves limits, how are those limits drawn to the exclusion of certain kinds of actors and their particular claims in the public realm? Pondering this question through Arendt, it concludes that in her theorization of civil disobedience, Arendt was profoundly limited by the fabulous tale that the United States is an exceptional land of freedom and democracy in the world.

     

Locating extra-legal activities of the modern state in legal-political theory: Weber,Habermas, Kelsen,Schmitt and Turk

This article is concerned with deviations from legal functioning of the modern state, which is supposedly grounded on legal structure, but may conduct extra-legal activities. In this article, special focus is directed to certain extra-legal activities of the following modern states: the Susurluk Affair in Turkey, the Iran-Contra Affairs of the USA, GAL in Spain, the Gibraltar Killings committed by UK soldiers, and enforced disappearances in Argentina. These cases are interpreted from the points of view of Max Weber’s and Jürgen Habermas’s theories of the rule of law, Hans Kelsen’s legal positivism, Carl Schmitt’s theories of the political and sovereignty, and Austin Turk’s theory of political criminality. Our purpose, then, is to evaluate these theories vis-à-vis the cases of extra-legal activities of the state.

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Selective colorimetric determination of TNT partitioned between an alkaline solution and a strongly basic Dowex 1-X8 anion exchanger

The Meisenheimer anions formed from TNT in KOH solutions in alcohol or acetone were used in screening tests for TNT among possible nitro-explosives. The same reaction was used for the spectrophotometric assay of TNT in soil by CRREL (Cold Regions Research & Engineering Laboratory of the U.S. Army) method, also known as Jenkins' method, but the color stability was too dependent on the solution composition and the water tolerance was low, necessitating complete drying of soil samples (which may cause partial analyte decomposition) prior to analysis. This study reports the development of a colorimetric method based on the solid phase extraction (SPE) of the Meisenheimer anion formed from TNT and aqueous NaOH into a strongly basic anion exchange resin Dowex 1-X8 (OH(-) form). The orange-red color that developed both in the solid resin and solution phases was persistent for at least 1h. The resin was let to swell in alcohol, washed first with 1M aqueous NaOH, and then with H(2)O before use. To 5 mL of 4-400 ppm TNT solutions in 1:1 (v/v) acetone-water, 0.5 mL of 5% NaOH was added, diluted to 50 mL with 1:1 acetone-water, and the resulting solutions (containing the orange-red Meisenheimer anion of TNT) were agitated at room temperature with 0.9 g resin for < or =50 min. TNT exhibited a reasonably constant distribution coefficient between the resin and aqueous phases. The absorbance of the filtered solutions was measured against a reagent blank at 500nm. The TNT-loaded resins were regenerated with 1M HCl containing sodium sulfite. The calibration line of filtrate absorbance versus analytical concentration was linear over two orders of magnitude between 0.4 and 40 ppm TNT in final solution. Unlike Jenkins' method, the method was tolerant to 100-fold (by mass) of common soil anions like sulfate, nitrate, and chloride. The basic advantages of the developed colorimetric method over the similar CRREL/Jenkins' method may be summarized as color stability, water and common ion tolerance, lowering of the LOD, and widening of the linear range. As opposed to Jenkins' method, the charge-transfer bands characteristic to colorimetric detection were not obscured by the presence of water. The method is suitable for on-site applications, because the color developed in heterogenous solution was stabilized, and the method can be easily practiced with a portable colorimeter to large numbers of samples.     

Collective Action,Civil Society,and Public Policy in Turkey

Abstract

Understanding policy change mechanisms has been a key question for scholars of public policy and collective action. However, policy scholarship mostly ignores civil society-based explanations of policy processes. In order to address this gap, this study combines the Advocacy Coalition Framework with networked collective action perspectives and analyzes a successful case of mobilization of women’s rights organizations in Turkey to reverse a bill on child marriage. Study findings suggest that advocacy coalitions are not static entities. When different issues in a policy subsystem are invoked, the structure of inter-coalition networks can change substantially and these variations in inter-coalition interactions may have consequences for influencing policy change. Moreover, this paper argues that extensive street protests and online campaigns by civil society organizations have the capacity to boost the bargaining power of minority coalitions, especially in contexts that lack multiple formal venues for making policy claims.     

Lessons from Experiences of Syrian Civil Society in Refugee Education of Turkey

Abstract

Turkey arranges for the protection of about 1.7 million Syrian refugee children on its territory. This article addresses initiatives and policies towards Syrian children in Turkey, considering characteristics and paradigm shift of refugee education in which hosting large refugee populations. It focuses on experiences of refugee community organizations (RCOs) working on the matter of education. Drawing on an exploratory case study with purposively selected Syrian RCOs in Istanbul, it particularly investigates to explore activities of “Temporary Education Centers” emerging in the emergency-based perspective in early times of Syrian refugee migration and radically disappearing in the integration-based interventions of the State. We will discuss handicaps of making schools refugee places linking with the socio-political conditions of post-displacement and possibilities of cultural orientation of the refugee agency.     

Rights and obligations in civil society organizations: learning active citizenship in Turkey

This is a comparative analysis of whether and how participation in different types of civil society organizations (CSOs) enable an environment for the learning of active citizenship practices. Active citizenship is conceptualized and defined around three dimensions: civic action, social cohesion and self-actualization. The potential to transform citizenship practices is critical to the Turkish context where, rooted in its strong state tradition, citizenship has been conceptualized and practiced in a passive manner. CSOs in Turkey have burgeoned over the past two decades and provide an important space to pursue a wide range of interests and provide services. This study is an in depth analysis of participant experiences in six CSOs in Istanbul. The study distinguishes between CSOs based on indicators that are expected to create variation in how the participant is engaged. CSOs are classified as either rights or obligations based, membership or volunteer based, and finally based on their types of activities. This article presents results on the effect of participation in rights vs. obligations-based CSOs on the development of active citizenship practices.     

Long Term Influences of Age–Education Transition on the Brazilian Labour Market

The objective of this study is to estimate the long term mean earnings of the male Brazilian population, taking into account the ageing process of the population and the increase in educational attainment. Using census data, household sample surveys, as well as population and education projections, estimates indicate that an ageing population and an increase in education will have a 2 percent impact on the annual growth of an average income in Brazil by 2050. The challenge for the future is to improve the proportion of the Brazilian population with completed college degrees.