From paradigm shift to retooling: the foundation and maintenance of the AKP

ABSTRACT

This article examines the foundation of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi-AKP) after a paradigm shift and its maintenance through retooling, which involves strategic positionings and tactical manoeuvres within its new paradigm. The positionings and manoeuvres that the party took vis-à-vis states of exception have been imperative for its survival in government. The main argument of the article is that the AKP retooled itself in the face of crises rather than going through a paradigmatic change, that is to say, resorting back to the Islamism of the party elite’s origins, in Kuhnian terms. Through the fluidity of its discourse and the unrivalled charisma of its leader, the AKP has -multiple times- changed the center of gravity of its discourse and policies without having to disarticulate its founding political imaginary. Neither its recently increased nationalism nor authoritarianism was the result of an ideological orientation, just like the democratic reforms in its initial years. They were mostly by-products of survival efforts at power positioning, through retooling.     

Comparison of Turkish Injury Scale (TIS) with the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS)

According to the Turkish Penal Code, Section 456, an assailant is punished in a correlation to the severity of the victim's injury. In this study, the injury scale used in Turkey in the basis code 456 is compared with Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS). For this aim, a total of 984 cases out of the total amount reported at the Traumatology Section of the Turkish Council for Forensic Medicine were randomly selected and evaluated retrospectively. In all, 40.7% of injuries were caused by blunt trauma, whereas 59.3% were caused by a penetrating trauma. According to the Turkish Injury Scale (TIS), 40.3% of the cases were scored to be of a first degree of injury, 15.6% as second degree and 44.1% as third degree. When compared, the score points 3, 4 and 5 in the AIS were seen to be nearly equivalent to the TIS of third degree. From this point of view, in the modified AIS 91.1% of first degree of injury, 51.2% of second degree and 97.2% of third degree of injury are harmonious with TIS. Generally, 83.2% of the cases are harmonious with the AIS system. The purpose of this study is to determine what was the source of differences and to focus on particular traumatic lesions in order to determine a possible rearrangement of the Turkish Injury Scale.     

Air guns: toys or weapons?

Air guns and blank guns may appear relatively harmless at first glance, but they are, in fact, potentially destructive, even lethal, weapons. Approximately 2 to 2.5 million nonpowder firearms are sold annually, and again approximately 12.9 per 100,000 population are treated for such injuries in hospital emergency departments each year in the United States. Unfortunately, these guns are considered to be a toy for children. Therefore, incidents of air gun injuries are gradually increasing. Although such injuries may initially be considered trivial, it may signify severe internal tissue pathologies. These apparently trivial injuries may have catastrophic consequences if unnoticed. In this study, we report 4 cases with head injury due to a shot by these guns. The cases indicate that these people had used the guns belonging to their parents for the purpose of suicide. The cases also show that these machines are not innocent.     

Analysis of relationship between efficiency of justice services and salaries of judges with two-stage DEA method

In this study it??s aimed to determine the relationship between efficiency of justice service and salaries of judges in European countries with two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Data used in this study are taken from European Judicial System report published by The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice. In this study two stage DEA is used. In the first stage, the efficiency of justice service is measured by data envelopment analysis. In the second stage, the results obtained from DEA are regressed with variables affecting the courts by Tobit regression model. In the DEA analysis while number of judges and office staff are used as inputs, resolved cases are used as outputs. In the Tobit regression model while the results obtained from DEA are used as dependent variable, judge salaries, judges?? basic education and number of courts are used as explanatory variables. According to Tobit regression model, it??s found that there is a positive and significant relation between efficiency of justice service and salaries of judges in European countries. The increase in judge salaries is significant for the efficiency of courts, but it certainly is not only solution for the efficiency of justice services.     

Depolitization of Bureaucracy: The Case of Central and Eastern European Countries

Political parties worldwide seek to work with bureaucrats who are close to their programs, willing to cooperate, and concerted. On the other hand, there is a huge body of literature which argues that bureaucracy should be separate from politics and that it has to consist of public servants who are technically knowledgeable, expert, and also politically neutral. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe suffered from highly politicized public administrations under one-party regimes, and have struggled to separate their bureaucracies from politics since early 1990s. In view of the relation between politics and bureaucracy from the perspective of (de)politization, this paper looks into the changes that Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) have gone through after the institutionalization of multi-party regimes and tries to provide some generalizations.     

Burn disasters in shooting range areas

Shooting range injuries are generally caused by ballistic accidents, and so far no burn disaster has been reported. In this article we reported a disaster caused by a gunpowder explosion in an indoor shooting range area in Istanbul, Turkey. Fourteen injured people were evacuated from the scene. Our burn center accepted 7 of them. Of the 7 injured people, 2 who were accepted by our burn center, and 3 people who were admitted by another center died. It is clearly identified how this mechanism of injury differs from that of usual burn injuries, due to both the high temperature generated, and the combination of hot and toxic gases produced by the explosion. We described the features of burn injury, and possible reasons of burn disasters.     

Allele distribution data of nine short tandem repeat loci for Turkish population: D3S1358, vWA,FGA, D8S1179, D21S11, D18S51, D5S818, D13S317, D7S820

Allele and genotype frequencies for the nine loci D3S1358, vWA, FGA, D8S1179, D21S11, D18S51, D5S818, D13S317 and D7S820 were determined for 310 unrelated Turkish individuals.     

Proliferation of neopatrimonial domination in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Literature on Turkey’s post-2011 authoritarian turn – especially after the eruption of the 2013 nationwide Gezi Protests – adopts modern concepts such as ‘dictatorship’, ‘authoritarianism’, ‘totalitarianism’, ‘one-party government’, ‘party-state fusion’, and even ‘fascism’ mainly in order to pin down the nature of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, Turkish acronym) or depict the current character of Turkey’s regime. Through engaging the pre-modern concept of neopatrimonialism, which is derived from Max Weber’s concept of patrimonialism, this paper argues that Turkey’s encounter with authoritarianism is deeply associated with the proliferation of neopatrimonial domination, into which the legacy of patronage politics, fracture of security power, and the metastasis of crony capitalism have been conflated. This article argues that neopatrimonial features have always, to a degree, marked state-society relations in Turkey. Furthermore, this article suggests neopatrimonial characteristics started to dominate Turkey’s modern legal structure under the AKP, which led to a state crisis culminating in the 2016 attempted coup. However, despite the fact that neopatrimonialism cannot be argued as a pathological deviation from modern-legal domination, this paper concludes that tension exists between the crony capitalism-based economic model of neopatrimonalism and Turkey’s decades-long market-based capitalism.     

World Energy Prospects and Challenges

The world is facing twin energy-related threats: that of not having adequate and secure supplies of energy at affordable prices and that of environmental harm caused by its use. Soaring energy prices and recent geopolitical events have reminded us of the essential role affordable energy plays in economic growth and human development, and of the vulnerability of the global energy system to supply disruptions. Safeguarding energy supplies is once again at the top of the international policy agenda. Yet the current pattern of energy supply carries the threat of severe and irreversible environmental damage. Reconciling the goals of energy security and environmental protection requires strong and coordinated government action and public support.

The Member countries of the International Energy Agency (IEA) recognise the urgent need to curb the growth in fossil-energy demand, to increase geographic and fuel-supply diversity and to mitigate climate-destabilising emissions. G8 leaders, meeting with the leaders of several major developing countries and heads of international organisations—including the IEA—at Gleneagles in July 2005 and in St. Petersburg in July 2006 called on the IEA to “advise on alternative energy scenarios and strategies aimed at a clean, clever and competitive energy future.” The World Energy Outlook 20061 ¹ www.worldenergyoutlook.org View all notes responds to that request. It confirms that fossil-fuel demand and trade flows, and greenhouse-gas emissions would follow their current unsustainable paths through to 2030 in the absence of new government action—the underlying premise of the Outlook's Reference Scenario. It also demonstrates, in an Alternative Policy Scenario, that a package of policies and measures that countries around the world are considering would, if implemented, significantly reduce the rate of increase in demand and emissions.