Politics of Constituency Representation and Legislative Ambition under the Glare of Camera Lights

The introduction of legislative television as a transparency initiative has been welcomed in an increasing number of democracies. The impact of television cameras on parliamentary behavior, however, has received scant attention in systems where personal vote-earning attributes are thought to be of little importance (e.g., closed-list proportional representation). Additionally, studies examining this relationship relied exclusively on over-time variation in legislative behavior (i.e., before and after the introduction of television into parliament), which arguably has important deficiencies in demonstrating the true effect of legislative television. Capitalizing on a unique quasi-experimental setting, the present study aims to close these gaps in the literature by analyzing parliamentary activities in Turkey, where the legislative television was restricted to 3 days per week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) in 2011 after almost two decades of continuous 7-day operation. Results based on original data sets of parliamentary activities from the pre- and postreform periods (2009–11 and 2011–13) indicate that the varying presence of television cameras exacerbated the effect of electoral and reputation-building motivations on parliamentary behavior, encouraging electorally unsafe and junior MPs to shift their constituency focus to the televised proceedings. The results offer important implications for the study of legislative transparency and constituency representation in party-list proportional representation systems.     

Turkey, Water and the Middle East: Some Issues Lying Ahead

This article analyzes cross-border water disputes in Mesopotamiathat involve Turkey, Iraq and Syria. It focuses on the SoutheasternAnatolia Project (Turkish: Güneydou Anadolu Projesi (GAP))that is being undertaken by various administrations of the governmentof the Republic of Turkey in the last few decades and triesto shed light on some important legal issues surrounding it.On 3 October 2005, Turkey began negotiations with the EuropeanUnion (EU) for accession as a full member. Attention is alsogiven to the extent to which the matter may complicate Turkey'srelations with the EU during these negotiations. Water conflicts in the Middle East have recently become a popularsubject for international scholars.¹ Numerous writers, fromacademics to intelligence analysts, have contributed variousperspectives to the increasingly complex issues surroundingthe topic. Scholars who specialize in water problems in theMiddle East have devoted particular attention to the regionwatered by the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, and their tributaries—anarea commonly known as Mesopotamia. Many of these publicationsare promulgated by two distinct (and opposing) party views:that of the Turkish government on the one hand, and that ofthe Syrian and Iraqi governments on the other.² Consequently,much of the work underpinning the growing body of scholarshipin this area reflects the biases of each position. In analyzing the longstanding conflicts over water rights inMesopotamia, this paper endeavors to accomplish several things.First, to give readers a more complete understanding of thecurrent dispute, a detailed account of the opposing views ofTurkey and Syria/Iraq is provided. Second, the merits of eachposition are weighed in light of the current state of publicinternational law, with particular attention given to Turkey'sdesire to exercise extensive control over the watercourses atissue. Lastly, the potential effects of the changing politicalclimate in the region—namely Turkey's accession talkswith the EU, Iraq's recent regime change, and the uncertaintyof Syria's political future—are considered and discussed.     

Over-incarceration and disenfranchisement

This article presents a model wherein law enforcers propose sentences to maximize their likelihood of reelection, and shows that elections typically generate over-incarceration, i.e., longer than optimal sentences. It then studies the effects of disenfranchisement laws, which prohibit convicted felons from voting. The removal of ex-convicts from the pool of eligible voters reduces the pressure politicians may otherwise face to protect the interests of this group, and thereby causes the political process to push the sentences for criminal offenses upwards. Therefore, disenfranchisement further widens the gap between the optimal sentence and the equilibrium sentence, and thereby exacerbates the problem of over-incarceration. Moreover, this result is valid even when voter turnout is negatively correlated with people’s criminal tendencies, i.e., when criminals vote less frequently than non-criminals.     

Turkey’s global governance strategies at the UN compared to the BRICS (2008–2014): clarifying the motivation–contribution nexus

This study attempts to analyse Turkey’s contribution to the United Nations (UN) system in comparison with those of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) countries between 2008 and 2014 on three levels: personnel, financial, ideational. Employing an integrated methodology of a global governance contribution index (GGCI) and statistical analysis of complementary raw data, this study empirically reveals the degree to which Turkey was able to transfer its capabilities into an effective contribution to the UN system on the three levels. Drawing on the findings of its quantitative analysis, this paper further qualitatively assesses the reasons behind the gap between Turkey’s global governance motivations and its contribution to the UN system. In doing so, this study, first, deals with the main motivational drivers of its activism in global governance in the 2000s. After unpacking its integrated methodology, the second part of this study quantitatively compares Turkey’s contribution to the UN system to that of the BRICS. The third part of this study delves into the main trends and deficiencies in Turkey’s contribution to the UN system. Finally, this study concludes that Turkey, despite its high motivations for activism in global governance, has not performed well in transferring its capacities into contributions to the UN system, particularly on financial and personnel levels.     

The Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) as Criminal Syndicate: Funding Terrorism through Organized Crime,A Case Study

Scholars have long recognized that terrorist groups have engaged in transnational organized crime activities. But the question that comes up is, “When does a criminal enterprise become a terrorist group or vice versa?” Terrorist groups have used physical violence, participated in weapons and drug trafficking networks, immigrant smuggling, and money laundering. More recently a number of terrorist groups have established what Jonathan White has referred to as “illegal multinational criminal organizations.” This article will examine the convergence of terrorism and organized crime through the prism of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK).     

Maternal Filicide in Turkey

Filicide occurs in every socioeconomic stratum around the world. This study was conducted to evaluate motives, psychopathological aspects, and socio-demographic factors of 74 filicide cases of women in Turkey. Mean age of mothers, most of whom committed infanticide, was 26 years, and breakdown of criminal offenses are as follows: “to get rid of unwanted babies” (24.3%), “acute psychotic-type filicide” (21.6%), “fatal child abuse and neglect” (17.6%), “to get revenge” (12.2%), “protect the lonely child from the harm and badness after suicide” (10.8%), and “pity” (9.5%) motives. Results showed that maternal filicide cannot be reduced to only mental instability or environmental factors and indicates deficiencies in the capacity of the mothers' role in connecting with their child and with parenting skills. Finally, with regard to defendants' motives, similar factors that contribute to committing maternal filicide should be considered while making an assessment of the data and determining employee risk groups.     

Opposition party policy shifts in response to no‐confidence motions

No‐confidence motions (NCMs) are attempts by opposition parties to publicise the government's failings in a salient policy arena, and previous research has shown that they often negatively affect citizens' evaluations of governing parties' competence and damage their electoral prospects. Yet currently there is a lack of understanding of how opposition parties respond ideologically to these NCMs. It is argued in this article that opposition parties should distance themselves from the government challenged by NCMs to show that they are different from the incompetent government and to compete for the votes that the government is likely to lose. Using a sample of 19 advanced democracies from 1970–2007, empirical evidence is presented that NCMs encourage political parties to move their positions away from the government's position, especially in the presence of reinforcing negative signals about government performance. These results have important implications for our understanding of opposition party policy change, for the economic voting literature, and for the spatial and valence models of party competition.     

Mixing Grand Strategies: Trump and International Security

ABSTRACT

When a new President is elected in the United States, the first thing analysts do is define that President’s grand strategy; yet, naming Donald Trump’s grand strategy was a difficult task as his pre-election speeches often contradicted traditional US foreign policy norms. Trump’s ambiguous grand strategy combines two US foreign policy strategies: nationalism in the sense that his preference is for unilateral policies prioritising American interests, and a traditional foreign policy approach, as seen in the moves taken against China and Iran. Surprisingly, this grand strategy unintentionally contributes to cooperation in Eurasia, as actors like Russia, China, Turkey, India and the European Union continue to try to balance the threat from the United States instead of competing with each other, while smaller countries are reluctant to challenge the regional powers due to mistrust towards Trump.     

Automated region segmentation on cartridge case base

One of the significant problems encountered in criminology studies is the successful automated matching of fired cartridge cases, on the basis of the characteristic marks left on them by firearms. An intermediate step in the solution of this problem is the segmentation of certain regions that are defined on the cartridge case base. This paper describes a model-based method that performs segmentation of the cartridge case using surface height image of a center fire cartridge case base. The proposed method detects the location of the cartridge case base center and specific circular contours around it iteratively by projecting the problem to a one-dimensional feature space. In addition, the firing pin impression region is determined by utilizing an adaptive threshold that differentiates impression marks form primer region surface. Letters on the cartridge case base are also detected by using surface modeling and adaptive thresholding, in order to render the surface comparison operation robust against irrelevant surface features. Promising experimental results indicate the eligibility of the proposed method to be used for automated cartridge case base region segmentation process.