Turkish population data on nine short tandem repeat loci: HumCSF1PO,HumTHO1, HumTPOX,HumFES/FPS,HumF13B,HumVWA, D3S1358, D7S820, D16S539

Allele and genotype frequencies for the nine loci, HumCSF1PO, HumTHO1, HumTPOX, HumFES/FPS, HumF13B, HumVWA, D3S1358, D7S820 and D16S539 were determined using Silver STR III System on 223-598 unrelated Turkish individuals from different regions of the country.     

Estimation of stature from body parts

Anthropometric technique commonly used by anthropologists and adopted by medical scientists has been employed to estimate body size for over a hundred years. With the increasing frequency of mass disasters, the identification of an isolated lower extremity and the stature of the person it belonged to has created problems for the investigation of the identity of some of the victims. In spite of a need for such a study, there is a lack of systematic studies to identify fragmented and dismembered human remains. The purpose of the paper is to analyze anthropometric relationships between dimensions of the lower extremity and body height. Analysis is based on a sample of middle class male (N=203) and female (N=108) adult Turks residing in Istanbul. The participants are mostly students and staff members of a medical school, and military personnel. Measurements taken are stature, trochanteric height, thigh length, lower leg length, leg length, and foot height, breadth, and length. Of the five variables entered into the regression analysis, all but foot breadth participate in the analysis with leg length as the first and followed by thigh and foot lengths, and finally foot height in males (R(2)). There were also individually calculated formulae for some of these measurements which provided smaller R(2)-values. Student's t-test to assess if there was any intraobserver error in measurements take by individual anthropometrist did not show such any statistically significant difference. In conclusion, the study suggested that estimation of a living height can be made possible using various dimensions of the lower extremity. One must consider differences between populations in order to apply functions as such to others.     

Book reviews

Central Asia and the Caucasus After the Soviet Union: domestic and international dynamics Mohiaddin Mesbahi (Ed.) Gainsville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1994, x, 353 pp, $49.95 cloth, $24.95 paper

Central Asia in Historical Perspective Beatrice F. Manz (Ed.) Boulder, Colorado and Oxford, UK: Westview Press, 1994, xii, 254 pp, $54.95/£40.95

The New Central Asia and its Neighbours Peter Ferdinand (Ed.) The Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, Pinter Publishers, 1994, 120 pp, £9.99, paper

Central Asia. 130 Years of Russian Dominance, a Historical Overview Edward Allworth (editor) Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, London: Academic & University Publishers Group, 1994, 647 pp, illus., £25.50/£65

Commonwealth or Empire? Russia, Central Asia, and the Transcaucasus William E. Odom and Robert Dujarric Indianapolis, Indiana: Hudson Institute, 1995, 290 pp, $12.95 paperback

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the former Soviet Union Archie Brown, Michael Kaser and Gerald Smith (editors) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 604 pp, illus, index, £40

Kyrghyzes and Their Ancestors: untraditional overview on the history and modernity T. Koychuev, V. Mokrynin and V. Ploskih Kyrghyzy i ih predki: Netraditsionnyi vzglaid na istoriu i sovremennost.Bishkek: Kyrghyzskaia Ensiklopedia, 1994, 128 pp, ISBN 5–89750–058–6

Independent Kyrghyzstan: Third Approach T. Koychuev & A. Brudnyi Nezavisimyi Kyrghyzstan: Tretii put. Bishkek: Ilim, 1993. 143 pp

Russians in the Former Soviet Republics Paul Kolstoe London: Hurst & Company, 1995, 272 pp, biblio, index, £37 hardback

The Revenge of the Past. Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union Ronald Grigor Suny Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press/Cambridge University Press, 1993, 200 pp, £10.95 paper

Black Sea Neal Ascherson London: Jonathan Cape, 1995, 306 pp, chronology, index, £17.99

Turkey in Post‐Soviet Central Asia Gareth Winrow London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995, 53 pp, £9.50

The Rise of the Indo‐Afghan Empire, c. 1710–1780 Jos J. L. Gommans Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994, 219 pp, appendices, index, biblio, $65.75

Revolutionary Horizons. Regional Policy in Post‐Khomeini Iran John Calabrese Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Macmillan Press, 1994, 221 pp, biblio, index, £40

The Cambridge History of China/Volume 6, Alien regimes and border states, 907–1368 Dennis Twitchett (Ed.) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994, xxix + 864 pp, £80

China Deconstructs. Politics, Trade and Regionalism David S. G. Goodman and Gerald Segal (Eds) London: Routledge, 364 pp, 1994, £40/£12.99 paperback     

Wolves in sheep clothing or victims of times? Discussing the immoderation of incumbent Islamic parties in Turkey,Egypt, Morocco,and Tunisia

This article discusses the “immoderation” of incumbent Islamic parties – defined by the pursuit of a moral agenda and by an unwillingness to compromise with the opposition – through a comparative study of four incumbent Islamic parties in the socio-politically different regimes of Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. Building on literature from religion and politics, social psychology, sociology of religion, and on the inclusion-moderation hypothesis, this study argues that (1) Islamic parties’ strong organizations resulted both in their success and in the absence of internal pluralism and that (2) their dominant status in the party system consolidated their majoritarian understanding of democracy. Through its discussion of “immoderation” this study aims to contribute to the interdisciplinary literature on religion and politics.     

Violence and nationalist mobilization: the onset of the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey

According to theories of nonviolent resistance, violence is counterproductive and undermines the ability of a movement to achieve mass support. At the same time, studies of ethnic insurgencies suggest that violence is the only available method of mobilization in political systems characterized by entrenched ethnic hierarchies. Engaging with these arguments, this article addresses a historical puzzle: What factors explain the timing and ability of the PKK's (Partiye Karkerên Kurdistan) rise as the hegemonic Kurdish nationalist organization in Turkey between the late 1970s and 1990? The article argues that studies that identify Kurdish nationalism as a reaction to repressive policies of the Turkish state without paying attention to prevailing social conditions and oppositional strategies fail to provide a satisfactory response. It argues that the rise of the PKK was primarily a function of its ability to gain support among the peasantry in deeply unequal rural areas through its strategic employment of violence. It also identifies four causal mechanisms of PKK recruitment based on rich archival and field research: credibility, revenge, social mobility, and gender emancipation.     

Regional Design,Local Autonomy,and Ethnic Struggle: Romania’s Syncopated Regionalisation

Despite many institutional features being changed during the post-communist transition, the regional administration in Romania witnessed a very limited change in post-communist times. Although it was a total political failure, the recent reshaping of the regional administration triggered a vivid public and scholarly interest on the matter. The purpose of the article is to shed new light on political constraints operating when it comes to reshaping regional design in Romania. Whereas official arguments pointed towards the necessity to address EU conditionality, the reshape was more likely underpinned by the government’s attempt to gain electoral advantages in the local elections scheduled for 2012. The decisive opposition made to the project by the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (Uniunea Democrat? a Maghiarilor din Romania) reveals the importance that ethnic factors have played in this context.     

Turkey’s ambivalent self: ontological insecurity in ‘Kemalism’ versus ‘Erdoğanism’

Abstract

This article aims to understand the ‘non-Western self’ and the different ways its ontological insecurity can manifest, through the example of Turkey, by contrasting Kemalism’s modernizing vision with Erdo?an’s current populism. We argue that the constructions of political narratives in Turkey (and by implication in other similar settings) derive from two interrelated aspects of the spatio-temporal hierarchies of (colonial) modernity: structural insecurity and temporal insecurity. Modern Turkey’s ontological insecurity was constructed spatially, on the one hand, as liminality and structural in-betweenness, and temporally, on the other, as lagging behind the modernization of the West. After discussing how Kemalism offered to deal with such insecurities in the twentieth century, we analyse the Justice and Development Party (AKP) period of the twenty-first century as an alternative attempted answer to these problems and explain why efforts to dismantle the Kemalist framework collapsed into its populist mirror image. The example of the Turkish case underlines the importance of focusing on the different ways in which the structural and temporal insecurities of ‘the non-Western self’ take shape at a given point and manner of entry into the modern international order.