‘East’ and ‘West’ in contemporary Turkey: threads of a new universalism

The tired old civilisational categories of ‘East’ and ‘West’, loosely identified with ‘Islam’ and ‘modernity’, are alive and well, nowhere more so than in contemporary Turkey. The Justice Development Party (AKP) currently in government employs them assiduously to political advantage but they have a long history, having defined the parameters of societal identity and political discourse throughout the history of the Turkish Republic. The paper takes the strength of the categories as its starting point but moves beyond them by asking if discourses, narratives and identities, individual and collective, exist in Turkey which question, overcome and ultimately undermine the categories of ‘East’ and ‘West’. The paper starts by investigating the evolution of ideas about East and West since the late Ottoman period and accepts that they are still dominant. However, since the 1980s in particular, they are being undermined in a de facto way by cultural developments in literature and music, new trends in historiography and novel ways of relating to the past. In some ways in contemporary Turkey, the paper concludes, culture trumps the inherently essentialist idea of ‘civilisation’ and Turkish society is ahead of its political and intellectual elites.     

Resilience in the Face of Adversity: African Immigrants' Mental Health Needs and the American Transition

The aims of this qualitative study were to explore key sources of emotional distress and coping strategies among West African immigrants. Thirty-eight adult West African immigrants participated in six semistructured, open-ended focus group sessions. Focus group data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. While participants reported high levels of psychological distress associated with racial/cultural discrimination, intimate partner violence, parenting, extended-family demands, and problematic immigration status, they demonstrated resilience and the ability to identify a range of coping strategies that draw on their cultural heritage. Only two of the participants reported having used psychological services; both outcomes were negative. The findings of this study are considered in terms of their clinical implications.     

Class,nation and religion: changing nature of Akali Dal politics in Punjab,India

The Akali Dal is the best organised political party in Punjab and has ruled over Punjab for a longer period than any other political party since the creation of the Punjabi-speaking state in 1966. It articulates aspirations of Punjabi regional nationalism along with trying to protect the interests of the Sikhs as a religious minority in India and abroad. As a part of shaping Punjab's economic future, it deals with the pressures of Indian and global capitalism. This paper is an attempt to track the multi-faceted pressures of class, religion and nationalism in the way Akali Dal negotiates its politics in Indian federalism.     

East Is East and South Is South: The Cases of Sarojini Naidu and Arundhati Roy

Boehmer begins by outlining suggestive parallels between the doubly orientalizing reception of an Indian woman poet, Sarojini Naidu, in 1890s London, and the publicity and critical enthusiasm surrounding the appearance of Arundhati Roy's first novel, The God of Small Things , in the 1990s. Building on these century-broad connections, she goes on to observe how, despite its liberatory agendas, certain constructions within postcolonial criticism appear to emerge virtually intact out of the colonial discourses of the past: in particular, the conflation of biology and biography in representations of the writing of the South, and constructions of a singular oriental femaleness, and an extravagant oriental style. The second part of the essay examines more closely these seemingly 'neo-orientalist' underpinnings of postcolonial literary criticism located in the West, and then considers resistances to these, both in terms of cultural contextualization and verbal recalcitrance.     

认同视角下的土耳其对外政策

国家行为由国家利益决定,国家利益源于国家认同。土耳其持有突厥、伊斯兰、西方和外来者等多重身份认同并推崇西方价值观,这些身份认同和观念对土耳其对外政策均发挥不同程度的影响,但西方文明成员和欧洲国家是土耳其的核心身份,整体上决定着土耳其以西方为导向的对外政策,尽管这些身份发生冲突时,国家利益偏好和对外政策导向会受到不同程度的冲击。     

海西“两岸经贸合作紧密区域”建设相关问题研究

目前，海西建设面临重要的发展机遇期，也是基础性投入的重点时期，更多需要仰赖外源性投入和政策性投入。因此，借重与海峡东岸台湾地区之间的“五缘”优势和先行先试的政策优势，通过建立、完善不同特色、不同层级的“两岸经贸合作载体功能区”，促进海西对台产业的深度对接，推进海西“两岸经贸合作紧密区域”建设，以尽快形成多个具有功能特色、梯度分工合作的地域增长极，推进海西建设快速启动和高效发展，至关重要。其策略取向在于充分发挥闽南地区的作用，科学统筹对台产业深度对接，大力完善、提升既有政策型对台经贸合作“载体功能区”的功能，设立新政策型“载体功能区”。     

Security culture,transnational challenges and the Economic Community of West African States

This special issue explores how one particular regional organisation, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), has defined certain transnational issues as security threats and how it has addressed them. In this introductory article, we begin by providing an overview and analysis of some of the most important transnational security challenges facing West Africa. Specifically, we discuss some of the problems raised by cross-border insurgencies, health challenges, organised criminal activities, terrorism and environmental degradation. We then examine the different levels at which actors have responded to these challenges. The section ‘Security culture: shaping the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) response?’ sets out our approach to thinking about the concept of security culture and asks whether it might be relevant to understanding how and why ECOWAS has focused on responding to certain transnational security challenges and not to others. The final section provides an overview of the other articles in this issue.     

Deconstructing the myth of the Tatar Yoke

Analysing and comparing the various conventional and revisionist narratives on what is known as the ‘Tatar Yoke’, this article aims to show that Western historiography has long been critical of the dominant negative view on the Tatar–Mongol rule over Russian principalities and that in Russia we find similar revisions in history – with some exceptions – only in post-Soviet times. This article aims to demonstrate how the revisionist views on the Tatar–Mongol rule contributed to the political and cultural transformation of contemporary Russia. In the part which analyses the revisionist discourse in Russia the emphasis lies on the new Tatar narrative. For Tatars the new interpretation of the Tatar–Mongol rule is of outstanding importance because it functions as a means to enhance Tatar national pride, and it contributes to Tatarstan's sovereignty project.     

试论西部民族地区生态移民跨省安置与生态无人区的划定问题

生态移民是以保护环境和提高人民生活质量为目的的有计划、有目的的政府行为。它是一个意义深远的系统工程。生态移民工程不应成为某一地区或某些地区孤立实行的工程,对一个国家来讲,生态移民工作应该是一个整体性的工作,必须从社会公平和民族平等原则出发,对整个国家的整体角度统筹规划。搞好我国生态环境保护工作中生态移民的跨省安置和划定大片的无人区的问题应成为一个很重要的方面,本文对此提出了一些自己的看法。     

“9·11”事件后俄罗斯对外战略的重大调整

去年"9·11"事件以来,俄罗斯外交战略的调整引起了全世界的高度关注,其外交动向呈现出鲜明的"大西洋主义"色彩。俄罗斯外交战略的调整既是俄罗斯传统战略文化的现实折射和外交经验的深刻总结,也是俄着眼于国际环境和自身实力而做出的务实选择。"立足欧洲、融入西方"已成为俄罗斯既定的外交战略,俄美关系、俄北关系、俄欧关系也将随之经历重大变化,它们彼此之间的利益互动和冲突决定了俄罗斯的"西进"之路将是曲折而漫长的。