End of moderation: the radicalization of AKP in Turkey

Turkey’s Justice and Development Party, AKP, was for many years believed to be paramount in ushering in a new era of moderate Islamism. However, in recent years, AKP has troublingly reversed course. From violent repression of the Gezi protests of 2013 to the 2016 abortive coup and subsequent crackdown on opposition, the party has lost all semblance of moderate Islamism and radicalized. If AKP had truly moderated, how could the party have changed in such a short period of time? What explains the radicalization of AKP? First, we argue that the strategic benefits of moderation far outweighed its costs, rendering it analytically improbable to determine whether AKP’s actions were genuine or merely strategic. Second, we show that AKP has been in a process of radicalization characterized by the adoption of anti-system, anti-democratic, and violent tactics and rhetoric since 2011. The disappearance of domestic and international structural constraints created the requisite background conditions for the party’s radicalization. Radicalization was facilitated by what we call ‘Erdoganization’, an ongoing de-institutionalization process within which Tayyip Erdogan gained complete control over the party. Additionally, a series of four “external shocks” threatened the party’s primary goal of gaining hegemony and caused the party to radicalize.     

论股东有限责任制度

股东有限责任乃现代公司法律之基石.股东有限责任是股东仅以出资额为限对公司承担责任,并非股东无责任,也并非公司有限责任.公司法人人格否认并不必然导致股东有限责任之例外适用.我国公司法应坚持股东有限责任为原则,公司法人人格否认为例外.主要从股东有限责任制度的概念、历史渊源、功能及局限性、人格否认理论及其完善几个方面予以论述.     

引进公司法人格否认制度应注意的几个问题

公司法人格否认法理有其产生和发展的历史基础,但理论体系尚须完善。指出了公司法人格否认法理定义的缺陷,并论证了公司法人格否认法理的归责原则,试图完善该法理的法律处理问题,为我国引进公司人格否认法理作客观剖析。     

美国对华常规威慑战略的调整

美国战略界认为,中国过去二十多年的军事现代化极大地侵蚀了美国在全球军事上的绝对主导地位,并导致美国对华常规威慑的可信度受到挑战。随着中国常规威慑能力上升,美国战略界鼓吹调整对华常规威慑的理念和战略,提出了“一体化威慑”概念,重视对中国施加拒止性威慑,使中国相信不会在军事行动中实现目标,以达到威慑中国的意图。在大国战略竞争的背景下,美国试图从加强国防科技建设、提升拒止性威慑能力和巩固亚太盟友关系三个方面着手,强化对中国的威慑效用。中美常规威慑能力的此消彼长和常规威慑战略的攻守态势转换,深刻影响着两国战略竞争的形态,也对世界和地区的安全秩序产生了重大影响。中美常规威慑能力的变化,不仅推动美国统筹考虑核力量和常规力量,也推动着中国重新思考核力量和常规力量的关系,并迫使美国调整军控政策,对全球军控体系产生了长远影响。     

Implementing management tools in Turkish public hospitals: the impact of culture,politics and role status

The government of Turkey has attempted to substantially improve the management of its public hospitals. However, an analysis of the performance of the quality certified hospitals finds only minor improvements. This study seeks to explain these disappointing results by interviewing 46 hospital managers and employees about the successes and failures of the management reform effort. The interviews suggest that traditional Turkish organisational culture often hinders attempts to decrease hierarchy, but, more positively, it also encourages the use of frontline teams and group rewards. Moreover, Turkey's hybrid system of allowing public doctors to maintain private practices has provided doctors with both the resources and the incentives to fight management reform efforts. Finally, organisational decentralisation in Turkey has evoked fierce political opposition, ironically even from many pro‐modernising forces that fear it could increase the power of Islamic fundamentalists. Turkey's experience suggests a number of broader points about management reform in non‐western societies. It suggests that decentralisation can often impede, rather than strengthen the other aspects of management reform; that a hybrid market organisation is often harder to move toward market efficiencies than a purely governmental one; and that national cultures should help guide the order in which reform tools are implemented. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The myth of ‘independent judiciary’: the evolution of judiciary-executive relations in Turkish politics

The position of judiciary in politics is an important area of discussion for both legal and political experts. The issue has particularly been on Turkish political agenda for the past decade with the emergence of a strong single-party government under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi-JDP) rule. This article aims to analyse the evolution of relations between the judiciary and executive in Turkey from a historical perspective by examining the Republican era until the JDP rule. The struggle over the control of institutions becomes more visible during periods of strong government and the analysis shows that the idea of an independent, apolitical judiciary is a myth that was created by the institutional and legal design of the Republic in the Turkish case and is not peculiar to the JDP government.     

Conceptualising and testing the ‘emerging regional power’ of Turkey in the shifting ınternational order

Turkey has thus far been generally neglected in most IR studies on power categorisations, such as middle or middle-range power, regional power or rising/emerging power, despite its rising regional power status in the past decade. This paper attempts to understand Turkey’s regional power together with its rising power status using an integral approach. In doing so, it empirically tests whether or not Turkey fits Daniel Flemes’s ‘regional power’ category, which seems to be proposing a more complete and integral framework through the fulfilment of four basic preconditions: claim to leadership; possession of necessary power resources (material and ideational); employment of material, institutional and discursive foreign policy instruments; and acceptance of leadership by third parties. Based upon these analytical tools, the article will discuss Turkey’s performance in creating a regional impact in its neighbouring regions of the Middle East, the Balkans and the Black Sea and Caucasus.     

Unacademic academics: Holocaust deniers and trivializers in post-Communist Romania

The Romanian Academy (and much of the country's historical establishment) is packed with Holocaust deniers and trivializers, many of whom indulge in Holocaust obfuscation against the background of the post-Communist “competitive martyrdom” between the victims of the Holocaust and the Gulag. Quite a few of these deniers and trivializers are also former secret police informers. On closer examination, however, it turns out that explaining the reluctance to face the country's “dark past” as being the independent variable resultant of the post “Romanianization” of the Communist Party and its Securitate is a partial explanation at best. A substantially more convincing one might be provided by scrutinizing the phenomenon as the product of post-mnemonic cultural traumas.     

Risk and protective factors of delinquency that are sensitive to migration and culture

ABSTRACT

Present evidence regarding widely used risk assessment tools suggests that such tools may have inferior predictive validity for offenders with a migration background (MB), especially from Turkey and Arab countries. Based on a thorough literature review, we investigated additional risk and protective factors via a postdictive correlational study design. We assumed that delinquency is induced by discrimination, a conflict of values, norms of honour, a disapproval of sexual self-determination, and antisemitism. In contrast, we expected social support to diminish the risk of criminal behaviour. The sampling took place inside and outside prison, where adult men with an Arab or Turkish MB (n?=?140) filled out a questionnaire. Individual norms of honour (r?=?.27?.41), antisemitism (r?=?.31?.37), and a disapproval of sexual self-determination (r?=?.23?.26) were positively correlated with delinquency. The best predictor was the individual’s perception of friends’ norms of honour (r?=?.34?.56). However, only a few significant correlations were found for a perception of individual discrimination (r?=?.08?.14) and an internal conflict of values (r?=?.11?.15), whereas global discrimination (r?=?.20?.29) clearly emerged as a risk factor for delinquency. Social support by nondelinquent peers could be confirmed as having a protective influence against delinquency (r=?.25?.27). Theoretical and practical implications for risk assessment are discussed.