From Mosaic to Ebru: Conviviality in Multi-ethnic,Multi-faith Burgazadası, Istanbul

This paper provides an understanding of changing diversity in Burgazadas? within the post-Ottoman, homogenising context of Turkey. It critiques conceptualisations of ‘culture as difference’ within the multiculturalism discourse in Europe and of coexistence as the reduction of differences and identities to pre-existing categories of the Ottoman millet system. Instead, it presents post-Ottoman conviviality as a lived practice and grassroots representation of recognised and unrecognised diversities by contextualising the production of differences and changing discourses of pluralism. The article demonstrates that individuals belonging to different groups can come to share similar values based on longstanding attachment to place and everyday practices, thereby representing themselves, in this case, as ‘Burgazl?’.     

Enacting multi-layered citizenship: Turkey’s Armenians’ struggle for justice and equality

Throughout the history of the Turkish Republic, Turkey’s Armenians have been subjected to a trade-off between the limited minority rights granted by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty and equal national citizenship. Traditionally a closed, depoliticized community, the citizenship practices of the Armenian minority have become increasingly differentiated in recent years. Building on a notion of citizenship as multi-layered and constituted through collective practice, this article investigates the implications of the political acts of Turkey’s Armenian minority on sub-national and national citizenship in Turkey. We show that Turkey’s Armenians are coupling rights demands, identification, normative references, and mobilization at the sub-national, national, and transnational levels in innovative ways, and are thereby negotiating different layers of citizenship in Turkey in a way that strengthens equal national citizenship.     

In Search of a Non-Eurocentric Understanding of Modernization: Turkey as a Case of ‘Multiple Modernities’

This article uses the Turkish case of modernity to critically examine different understandings of modernization put forward by competing schools of thought, namely the ‘classical modernization theory’, the ‘neo-modernization theory’ and the ‘multiple modernities paradigm’. In the context of modernization studies, Turkey has long held a special place as numerous scholars have studied this country in an attempt to validate the ‘convergence thesis’ – namely the idea that once a non-western society launches a secularization and/or an industrialization programme, its political regime and socio-economic life would eventually resemble its western counterparts. Firstly, the three theories are comparatively analysed by discussing how they perceive the concept of modernity and its interaction with religion, economic development and democratization. Then, the theories are reviewed in light of the Turkish experience. It is argued that the Turkish modernity can be best comprehended through the lens of the multiple modernities paradigm that challenges the Eurocentric assumption of classical modernization and neo-modernization theories based on the convergence thesis.     

Limits to temporary protection: non-camp Syrian refugees in İzmir,Turkey

This article investigates the situation of non-camp Syrian refugees living in ?zmir with a focus on socio-economic prospects and challenges concerning their survival and integration on the one hand and social acceptance by the host Turkish society on the other. The data were generated by semi-structured interviews conducted between February and April 2014 with non-camp Syrian refugees and Turkish citizens living in ?zmir. The empirical research intends to contribute to the literature through insights on the socio-economic conditions of non-camp Syrians, their level of integration to Turkish society, difficulties and challenges encountered and the perception of Turkish citizens about the rising Syrian population in Turkey. It argues that Turkey’s open-border and ‘temporary protection’ policies are approaching their limits with the increasing number of new arrivals and the concomitant difficulties faced in integrating into Turkish society. The paper suggests that there is an urgent need to create a ‘rights-based approach’ with a long-term integration policy and presents policy recommendations which aim to extend and secure the rights of Syrians through socio-economic adjustments without jeopardizing their social acceptance from and peaceful co-existence with Turkish citizens.     

Europeanisation or De-Europeanisation? Media Freedom in Turkey (1999–2015)

Abstract

The European Union (EU) has successfully been exercising its transformative power through both its enlargement and its neighbourhood policies for decades. Nonetheless, transformation towards a more European model of governance through Europeanisation is not a linear process, but a differentiated one. Adverse consequences for Europeanisation (i.e. de-Europeanisation) have often been neglected. The case of media freedom in Turkey, with a deteriorating trend across time, exemplifies such an outcome. This article explores media freedom in Turkey in the last decade. It argues that media reforms have been reversed over time in a de-Europeanising trend, with the EU losing its position as a reference point for reforms.     

The Leverage of the Gatekeeper: Power and Interdependence in the Migration Nexus between the EU and Turkey

In March 2016, the European Union and Turkey reached an agreement seeking to end the refugee flows from Turkey to Greece. This agreement is the outcome of a bargaining process in which Turkey gained considerable leverage from its position as a ‘gatekeeper’ situated between Syria and an increasingly ‘immigration-averse’ and securitised EU. More importantly, this bargaining process might have broader implications for the EU and its relations with its periphery, since Turkey has progressively reversed the asymmetries of power by demonstrating the indispensability of its continued commitment to act as gatekeeper vis-à-vis an increasingly fragmented and anxious EU.     

Comparing public attitudes on EU membership in candidate countries: the cases of Croatia,Macedonia and Turkey from 2004 to 2011

Past enlargements of the European Union (EU) have demonstrated that public attitudes on European integration can influence the course of accession processes. Beyond the literature on public EU support in member states and former candidates, the dynamics that shape public attitudes on EU membership within recent candidate countries have not been systematically examined. Analysing nine Eurobarometer (EB) surveys from 2004 to 2011, we argue that evaluations of EU membership in Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey are shaped by utilitarian considerations, belief in various political institutions as well as the fear of losing national identity. The economic crisis of 2008 has changed public opinion towards EU membership in all three countries, but Turkey appears to have been affected the most compared to Croatia and Macedonia.     

Perspectives on Ethno-National Conflict Among Kurdish Families With Members in the PKK

This article reports the findings of an ethnographic study of families with members involved in the armed struggle for Kurdish nationalism led by the Kurdistan Workers' Party. Based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews and observations with a theoretical sample of six families in the area of Yüksekova, detailed discussions were held with twelve members of families with children, partners, or siblings involved in the conflict. Ethno-national exceptionalism plays a significant role in determining the motivations of political violence among groups, but with the additional background of the perceptions and realities of systematic racialization, de-territorialization, disenfranchisement, and cultural exclusion that affect certain Kurdish groups. The findings in this article offer critical sociological and anthropological accounts of the localized drivers of ethno-nationalism, and the motivations for and the experiences of conflict among families with members involved in the armed conflict and the “Kurdish question” in Turkey.     

Political entrepreneurs,clientelism, and civil society: supply-side politics in Turkey

How do citizens in developing democracies launch political careers? Despite the large literature on electoral politics in developing countries, we know surprisingly little about how individuals become political candidates. This article examines an important mechanism of political recruitment in developing democracies: party-civil society organization (CSO) linkages. Existing theories treat CSOs as arenas of civic participation rather than as political agents in their own right, which leads scholars to overlook their impact on electoral competition. This article argues that the distinct resource portfolios of CSOs influence their relative impact on candidate selection, and consequently, local politics. CSOs that represent the material interests of their constituents, such as resource-rich business groups and vote-rich identity groups, have significant influence over candidate selection. Issue-oriented CSOs tend to have less impact. Party-CSO relations often facilitate clientelist linkages between parties and voters, weakening democratic governance. Evidence is provided with an in-depth case study of CSO-political party relations in the industrial periphery of Istanbul, Turkey.     

Turkey’s struggle with the PKK and civilian control over the Turkish Armed Forces

Although most scholars of Turkey’s civil-military relations argue that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) insurgency has led to a decrease in civilian control over the Turkish military from the 1980s onwards, this has not always been the case. This article argues that the presence or the degree of the PKK threat is not sufficient to explain the civil-military balance of power in Turkey throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. Instead, the article shows that in the face of the PKK threat, three major factors have influenced the behaviours of both civilian and military policy-makers in Turkey and shaped the level of civilian control. These factors are first, the Turkish political leaders’ control over their political parties and these parties’ control of a majority of seats in the parliament; second, how negatively or positively the military perceives the political leadership; and third, European Union pressures for democratisation.