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Now showing 1 - 10 of 90
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    ArticlePublication
    From competitive to multidirectional memory: a literary tool for comparison
    (Taylor & Francis, 2018) Günay-Erkol, Çimen; Sert, Deniz Şenol; International Relations; Humanities and Social Sciences; ERKOL, Çimen Günay; SERT, Deniz
    Recent research shows that Turkish society is very polarized and that different identities and ideological perspectives are in constant struggle with each other. In a multicultural society such as Turkey’s, the question of how to think about the relationship between different social groups’ histories of victimization becomes crucial. Following Michael Rothberg’s conceptualization of multi-directional memory – beyond competitive memory, this article presents an archive for comparative work through a data set of novels on the military coups in Turkey. The major argument here is that while these novels are promoting the idea of competitive memory as a zero-sum game, if it is looked at more closely, there are traces of multi-directionality, of ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing. Doing so, it is argued, would help to reframe justice in the society, where different victimizations are not competing with each other, but start to talk to each other. This article is an attempt to create a literary tool of comparison on different stories of victimization as a first step towards transitional justice in a polarized society.
  • ArticlePublicationOpen Access
    Alienated imagination through a mega development project in Turkey: the case of the Osman Gazi Bridge
    (Cambridge University Press, 2022-05) Sert, Deniz Şenol; Kuruüzüm, U.; International Relations; SERT, Deniz
    Since the rise of the ruling Justice and Development Party in the early 2000s, Turkey has invested in several mega transport and infrastructure projects for the purposes of economic transformation, growth, and development. This article explores the impact of a recently completed mega-project - the Osman Gazi Bridge - on material change and popular imagination about the future. It claims that, while the Bridge created a colossal material change that can be observed by everyone, it also animated an imagined post-industrial transition and inclusive development in the industrial town of Dilovasl. Although the dream of a better future serves as a medium for the industrial town's underprivileged inhabitants to connect and socialize, along with the current marginalizing conditions, it also has the potential to fuel future resistance, if imagination is unable to be transformed into reality.
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    ArticlePublication
    Framing Syrians in Turkey: State control and no crisis discourse
    (Wiley, 2021-02) Sert, Deniz Şenol; Danis, D.; International Relations; SERT, Deniz
    The mass arrival of Syrian refugees and their continuing presence have triggered many new debates regarding migration in Turkey, which - as a result of its open-door policy - now hosts the highest number of refugees in the world. Yet, when we investigate the ways political institutions and actors have framed migration, we observe, unlike in European discourses, the complete absence of the word "crisis". In public statements by politicians, "control" emerges instead as a recurrent (albeit implicit) theme. Here, management of the refugee issue becomes a sign of state power, exercised through various mechanisms. Through analysis of state discourse on Syrians in the Turkish media, we find that crisis framing has been deliberately avoided, which we contend is a sign of an implicit "silencing" via media control. This choice of discourse reflects a clear policy to manage public reactions to the mass arrival of refugees.
  • ArticlePublicationOpen Access
    Collective discussion: Movement and carceral spatiality in the pandemic
    (Oxford University Press, 2023-07-04) Shindo, R.; Altan-Olcay, Ö.; Paker, Evren Balta; Van Houtum, H.; Van Uden, A.; Rajaram, P. K.; Coward, M.; Pellander, S.; Huysmans, J.; International Relations; BALTA, Evren
    Various measures of mobility restrictions were introduced since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This collective discussion examines them in relation to six different carceral techniques that govern movement: citizenship, nativism, colonialism, infrastructure, gender, and borders. We investigate how these spatializing techniques of carcerality have been modified and strengthened in the pandemic and their implications for how we conceptualize migration. Our conversation revolves around the relationality between movement and confinement to argue that they are not in opposition but work in tandem: Their meanings become interchangeable, and their relationship is reconfigured. In this collective discussion, we are interested in how to analyze movement/migration in ways that do not define the pandemic through temporal boundaries to mark its beginning and ending.
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    ReviewPublication
    Regime change in contemporary turkey: politics, rights, mimesis
    (Cambridge University Press, 2017) Sözen, Yunus; Polat, N.; International Relations; SÖZEN, Muhsin Yunus
    N/A
  • ArticlePublicationOpen Access
    The strategic use of narratives and governance of the COVID-19 pandemic in major autocratisers in Europe
    (Taylor & Francis, 2024) Soyaltin-Colella, D.; Sert, Deniz Şenol; International Relations; SERT, Deniz
    By the end of 2022, scholars had published heavily on authoritarian consolidation at the time of COVID-19 and explored how governments adopted measures weakening democratic checks and balances yet strengthened their regimes during the COVID crisis. Yet, we do not know much about how political leaders narrated the pandemic in their domestic and foreign policy choices in a way that reinforces their power. By focusing on the major autocratisers in Europe (Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and Serbia) whose democracy scores have fallen the most over the last 10 years, we reveal a set of influential narratives identified in the discourses of state leaders and government representatives which were constructed around the governance of the COVID-19 pandemic. These narratives were utilized by political leaders to legitimize their repressive policies geared towards controlling the society, and to contest the European Union (EU) in particular and the liberal democratic order in general.
  • ArticlePublicationOpen Access
    Breaking the stalemate in the study of the relationship of mutual military buildups, arms races, and militarized disputes: The Greece-Turkey/Ottoman Empire cases
    (Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research İhsan Doğramacı Peace Foundation, 2023-04) Nioutsikos, I.; Travlos, Konstantinos; Daskalopoulou, M.; International Relations; TRAVLOS, Konstantinos
    The most recent surveys on the study of the connection between mutual military buildups, arms races, and military interstate disputes (MID) warn of research projects, especially in the case of the Greece-Turkey dyad, that have reached a stalemate. This is due to the difficulty of capturing motivations, which constitute the main variable that turns mutual military buildups into arms races. Using the Greece-Ottoman Empire and Greece-Turkey dyads as proof-of-concept cases, we advance a novel approach for analyzing the interrelation between mutual military buildups, arms races, and MIDs that can overcome that stalemate. We suggest a two-stage approach that focuses on the dyad as a unit of analysis. In the first stage, which we preset here, we use rivalry to divide dyad history into periods of differing subsistence military spending. We then locate periods of mutual military buildups in the different rivalry periods of a dyad history. We argue that this process provides a more nuanced and detailed grasp on the presence of mutual military buildups in a dyad. It also provides the foundation for the future second stage of analysis, where qualitative research can focus on the specific periods of mutual military buildups to unearth indicators of motivation.
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    Book PartPublication
    Externalising externalisation and bad governance of migration in the EU: Turkey learning from Europe
    (Springer, 2022-09-05) Sert, Deniz Şenol; Alparslan, Şevval; International Relations; SERT, Deniz; Alparslan, Şevval
    While the European Union (EU) might not do likewise, Fortress Europe is definitely enlarging. Reports (see, for example, Akkerman 2018) underline the momentous growth in Europe's border externalisation policies using various new instruments such as the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), the Migration Partnership Framework, and the Refugee Facility for Turkey, where the EU and individual member states are offering millions of euros for different projects to prevent migration of people (including those who are in need of international protection) to Europe. There is an increasing body of literature on the EU's externalisation policies in relation to Turkey, focusing on the effects of the March 2016 Turkey-EU statement, resulting FRIT, etc. Here, Turkey will be positioned from a different perspective. While serving as a platform for such projects, Turkey is also a firm apprentice of its own externalisation. Thus, this paper will concentrate on Turkey's efforts to externalise, its learning process from Europe, and will argue that externalisation is an example of the promotion of bad governance by the EU at the expense of democratic values.
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    ArticlePublication
    When elites polarize over polarization: Framing the polarization debate in Turkey
    (Cambridge University Press, 2018-11) Aydin-Duzgit, S.; Paker, Evren Balta; International Relations; BALTA, Evren
    This article aims to explore the views of the Turkish elite on the state of polarization in Turkey. By identifying four political frames-namely, harmony, continuity/decline, conspiracy, and conflict-that selected Turkish political and civil society elites use in discussing the phenomenon of polarization in the country through their contributions to a workshop and in-depth qualitative interviews, the article finds that there is a considerable degree of polarization among the Turkish elite regarding their views on the presence of polarization in Turkey. Moreover, this overlaps with the divide between the government and the opposition in the country. An analysis of the justificatory arguments employed in constituting the aforementioned frames shows that, while those elites who deny the existence of polarization seek its absence in essentialist characteristics of society, in reductionist comparisons with history, or in internal/external enemies, those who acknowledge polarization's presence look for its roots in political and institutional factors and processes. The article highlights how, given the denial of polarization by the pro-government elite and the substantial gap between the two camps' justificatory narratives, the currently reported high rates of polarization in Turkey can, at best, be expected to remain as is in the near future, barring a radical change in political constellations.
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    ReviewPublication
    Aerial aftermaths: Wartime from above
    (Taylor & Francis, 2020-05-26) Ghosh, Samarjit; International Relations; GHOSH, Samarjıt
    N/A