Public Commitment in Crisis Bargaining

The "audience cost" literature argues that highly-resolved leaders can use public threats to credibly signal their resolve in incomplete-information crisis bargaining, thereby overcoming informational asymmetries that lead to war. If democracies are better able to generate audience costs, then audience costs help explain the democratic peace. We use a game-theoretic model to show how public commitments can be used coercively as a source of bargaining leverage, even in a complete-information setting in which they have no signaling role. When both sides use public commitments for bargaining leverage, war becomes an equilibrium outcome. The results provide a rationale for secret negotiations as well as hypotheses about when leaders will claim that the disputed good is indivisible, recognized as a rationalist explanation for war. Claims of indivisibility may just be bargaining tactics to get the other side to make big concessions, and compromise is still possible in equilibrium.     

Home Thoughts from Abroad: Diasporas and Peace-Building in Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka

This article looks at the dynamics of Diaspora groups as a possible catalyst for peace-building within violent segmented societies. With the help of two case studies, Irish-America's role in Northern Ireland and Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora's role in Sri Lanka, it locates the variable impacts of Diaspora involvement in violent conflicts within their homelands. Despite their unique histories and individual complexity, both of these cases illustrate that Diasporas have a significant role to play in peace-building, are diverse rather than homogenous communities, and that they represent an important and often underutilized resource to bring negotiated settlement to violent conflicts.     

STR data for the AmpFlSTR SGM Plus from the eastern and western sections of Mediterranean region of Turkey

Allele frequencies of the 10 STR loci (D16S539, D2S1338, D3S1358, vWA, D18S51, D21S11, D8S1179, D19S433, FGA and TH01) included in the AmpFlSTR SGM Plus kit were determined in 107 unrelated individuals from the eastern section and 108 unrelated individuals from western section of Mediterranean region of Turkey. The expected performance of these loci for personal identification and paternity testing in these populations were estimated.     

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.     

Reagents for the chemical development of latent fingerprints: scope and limitations of benzo[f]ninhydrin in comparison to ninhydrin

Benzo[f]ninhydrin was compared to ninhydrin for fingerprint development on paper. Overall, the performance of ninhydrin on exhibits was slightly better than that of benzo[f]ninhydrin. The significant advantages of the benzo[f]ninhydrin over ninhydrin were the much stronger fluorescence it gave after treatment with zinc salts and a slightly quicker reaction under ambient conditions. This fluorescence is, however, similar to that obtained with other reagents, such as DFO or ninhydrin analogs. These advantages apparently are not sufficient to justify regular usage of benzo[f]ninhydrin, especially when one considers its low solubility and high cost.     

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.     

Civic Participation and Citizenship in Turkey: A Comparative Study of Five Cities

This study explores whether and how participation in civil society organisations (CSOs) has transformed citizenship attitudes in different cities in Turkey, and how civic participation and citizenship attitudes are affected by local politico-cultural dynamics. The analysis is based on interviews conducted with representatives of 36 CSOs in five Turkish cities: Konya, Edirne, Diyarbakir, Trabzon, and Izmir. Our comparative analysis of the five cities reveals that civic life is more active in cities marked by high levels of religiosity (Konya) and politicised by conflict (Diyarbakir). On the other hand, politicisation of civic life through party dominance and clientelism, as in Edirne and Trabzon, undermines trust and discourages participation.     

Independence referendums and nationalist rhetoric: the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Using the case study of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) and the 2017 independence referendum, this article examines the nexus between independence referendums, nationalism and political power. It argues that the referendum in the KRI was held due to internal political competition and growing rebellion from the population against the poor economic performance and political situation rather than because the time was right for independence referendum. Focusing on the poor political and financial dynamics, as well as the lack of regional and international support for Kurdish independence, the article argues that independence was not a realistic goal and was rather used as a distraction amid internal turmoil. The example of the referendum in the KRI poses questions about the democratic credibility of such referenda, as the population were voting for an unachievable result and the referendum itself became a tool of internal political competition.