Communal violence and ethnic polarization before and after the 2015 elections in Turkey: attacks against the HDP and the Kurdish population

Given its duration and intensity, the decades-old civil war in Turkey between the Turkish state and the PKK has resulted in relatively low levels of lethal inter-communal conflict between Kurdish and Turkish populations. However, around the June 2015 elections an unprecedented wave of systematic anti-Kurdish violence swept across western Turkey. The paper will assess these events in relation to literature on communal riots and electoral violence. It will consider the impact of state led anti-Kurdish discourse and the growth of the HDP, as potential factors that aggravated the dormant tensions and laid the groundwork for widespread inter-communal violence.     

Religious Innovation and Competition in Contemporary African Christianity

ABSTRACT

This introductory essay lays out the main themes of a special issue of Journal of Contemporary African Studies which brings together six empirically grounded papers by African social scientists of different disciplinary backgrounds. These works touch on various aspects of the social impact of religious innovation and competition in present day African Christianity. They represent the first fruits on the social science side of an interdisciplinary initiative that made 23 research grants for theologians and social scientists to study Christianity and social change in contemporary Africa. These articles focus on a variety of dynamics in contemporary African religion (mostly Christianity), including gender, health and healing, social media, entrepreneurship, and inter-religious borrowing and accommodation. The editors conclude that the research and learning reflected in this volume will enhance understanding of religion’s vital entanglement in contemporary African society. The articles reveal problematic ethical and psychological dynamics in some of these new movements, particularly among some of the neo-Pentecostal groups. Yet the authors are determined to go beyond perspectives that are overly fixated with African problems and victimisation. They are keen to explore opportunities for understanding African agency and African wellsprings of hope. The editors conclude that scholars of religion and religiosity in Africa need to invest new conceptual and methodological energy in researching what it means to be actively religious in Africa today.     

Spillover Effects of FDI via Exports on Innovation Performance of China's High-Technology Industries

Since economic reforms began in 1979, China has sought to overcome the technology gap by absorbing foreign advanced technology through FDI. This paper investigates the impact of FDI via exports on the innovation performance of domestic firms in China's high-tech product industries for the period 1995–2006. By using the panel data analysis, we confirm the hypotheses that: (1) exports of domestic firms have positive spillover effects on innovation performance of local firms either through learning or through competition; (2) R&D activities of foreign-invested enterprises in the host country in an industry are positively associated with innovation performance of domestic firms in that industry; and (3) import of technology, which is important to the establishment of assimilative capability, has positive effects on domestic innovation performance. This provides evidence suggesting that China's domestic firms benefit from spillovers associated with FDI and from export activity of both domestic firms and foreign-invested enterprises.     

Bringing Protection Home: Healing the Schism Between International Obligations and National Safeguards Created by Extraterritorial Processing

Extraterritorial processing schemes are designed to preventand deter access to statutory and judicial safeguards in thecountry responsible for the interception and transfer of asylumseekers to a third country. In line with this objective, theyincorporate interdiction, transfer and processing practicesand standards that are deliberately isolated from the nationallegal and institutional protections within either the interceptingstate or the third country where processing occurs. Australia'srecent disbandment of its extraterritorial processing centresin third countries highlights the fact that extraterritorialprocessing schemes have proven unworkable as a matter of internationallaw, as they negate the national safeguards fundamental to thesatisfaction of a state's protection obligations.