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Now showing 1 - 10 of 34
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 22
    Citation - Scopus: 26
    An Empirical Analysis of Household Education Expenditures in Turkey
    (Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd, 2016) Acar, Elif Oznur; Gunalp, Burak; Cilasun, Seyit Mumin
    Using Turkish Household Budget Surveys from 2003, 2007 and 2012, this paper investigates the determinants of household education expenditures within an Engel curve framework. In particular, we estimate Tobit regressions of real educational expenditures by income groups using a number of household characteristics (i.e. rural residence, employment status, age, educational attainment of the household head, household size, share of female students and primary school students in the household, and total number of students in the household) to examine if and to what extent the determinants of educational expenditures differ by income groups; income elasticities of educational spending evolves over time; and children from middle-class and poor families can benefit enough from educational opportunities. The estimated expenditure elasticities have lower values for the top- and the bottom income quartiles while they have larger values for the middle-income quartiles. The results also show that for all income groups the expenditure elasticity of education increases over time, indicating that Turkish households allocates greater share of their budgets to education expenditures. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
  • Article
    Neopatrimonial Rule Through Formal Institutions: The Case of Turkey
    (Cambridge University Press, 2025) Bektas, Eda
    This study examines how formal institutions in hybrid regimes, particularly presidentialism, party organization and electoral rules, actively foster and sustain clientelistic networks, leading to particularistic outcomes. While existing literature highlights the weakening of formal institutions and pervasive clientelism as drivers of democratic breakdown, this study uses the concept of neopatrimonialism to analyse how formal institutions themselves consolidate patron-client relationships to maintain power and stability. Focusing on Turkey, the analysis demonstrates that the institutional incentive structure consolidates the president's role as the central ‘patron’, controlling resources and offices, and encourages clientelistic networks to coalesce around the presidency. The discretionary allocation of resources through patron-client relationships sustains neopatrimonial authority as long as clients' loyalty is rewarded. However, this governance increases clients' dependence on the patron, binding them at the expense of representation and responsiveness. The analysis offers insights into how such institutional configurations contribute to authoritarianism and particularistic governance in hybrid regimes. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
  • Article
    Citation - Scopus: 4
    Legitimation, Co-Optation, and Survival: Why Is Turkey Silent on China’s Persecution of Uyghurs?
    (Routledge, 2023) Eliküçük Yıldırım,N.
    China built internment camps officially referred to as training centres within the scope of a policy for countering extremism and terrorism in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in 2017. While the repression imposed by China on Uyghurs in these camps has attracted the response of the international community, there has been neither a public protest nor a meaningful government response to China in Turkey, despite it having been the voice of Uyghurs on international platforms before 2017. This study aims to identify the reasons for Turkey's silence on the persecution of Uyghurs by utilizing the legitimation and co-optation strategies of the authoritarian stability framework. The Turkish government’s legitimation strategies of “rallying around the flag” via anti-Americanism and the economic expectations of China to boost its performance-based legitimacy are evaluated as reasons for the government’s silence on the Uyghur cause. Moreover, it is also discussed how formal and informal co-optation strategies of the government with nationalist and Eurasianist parties are playing a role as a bolstering mechanism of its silence policy on Uyghurs. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 4
    Citation - Scopus: 5
    Forecasting Turkish Local Elections
    (Elsevier, 2012) Toros, Emre
    The literature on political forecasting is large, although the main focus of this literature is limited to a number of countries. Nevertheless, and despite the major differences between political systems, scientific forecasting work has proved to be broadly possible, with noteworthy extensions to new countries. This article extends the literature further by developing a new forecasting model for local elections in Turkey. The basic motivation of this article is to test the usefulness of political forecasting in the contexts of alternative democratic settings. Turkey, in that sense, seems to be an interesting case for a number of reasons. First, the Turkish Republic has been a multi-party democracy since the mid-1940s. Although it has been interrupted by three military coups, the party and election system in Turkey has brought real alternations in the government starting from very early years of the multi-party system. So, it is plausible to argue that Turkish voters have the tradition of evaluating the performances of political parties, as in any other Western-type democracy. That is to say, the dynamics of evaluations of political parties in Turkey follow a similar pattern to other contemporary democracies, being driven by economic and political forces. The main contribution of this analysis is the introduction of an explicit model, which can forecast the impact of economic and political variables across local elections in Turkey by using reliable, public, and macro-level data. In particular, this study offers a new forecasting model which tries to forecast the Justice and Development Party's (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) vote share in 81 cities. (C) 2012 International Institute of Forecasters. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 44
    Citation - Scopus: 58
    Europeanisation or De-Europeanisation? Media Freedom in Turkey (1999-2015)
    (Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2016) Yilmaz, Gozde
    The European Union (EU) has successfully been exercising its transformative power through both its enlargement and its neighbourhood policies for decades. Nonetheless, transformation towards a more European model of governance through Europeanisation is not a linear process, but a differentiated one. Adverse consequences for Europeanisation (i.e. de-Europeanisation) have often been neglected. The case of media freedom in Turkey, with a deteriorating trend across time, exemplifies such an outcome. This article explores media freedom in Turkey in the last decade. It argues that media reforms have been reversed over time in a de-Europeanising trend, with the EU losing its position as a reference point for reforms.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 38
    Citation - Scopus: 43
    An Unfinished Grassroots Populism: the Gezi Park Protests in Turkey and Their Aftermath
    (Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2015) Ozen, Hayriye
    Focusing on the Gezi protests, this study addresses two questions: How did a particular struggle against the demolition of a park spontaneously turn into nationwide mass protests? And why was this mobilisation unable to transform itself into a popular counter-hegemonic movement? Drawing on the Laclauian concept of populism, I demonstrate that Gezi mobilised various groups by turning into a symbol of the repressive responses of the hegemonic power to various social demands. This popular mobilisation could not go beyond a conjunctural experience due to its inability to unify heterogeneous protesters and to respond effectively to the counter-strategies of the hegemonic power.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 4
    Citation - Scopus: 9
    Post-Truth Politics in the 2017 Euro-Turkish Crisis
    (Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2019) Yilmaz, Gozde
    The year 2017 constituted a period of deep crisis and mutual distrust in relations between Turkey and Europe. During the referendum campaign on a proposed change to the constitution, the Turkish government reacted harshly to European countries that prohibited politicians campaigning in their territories. The key members of the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi - AKP) also met the European response with enmity. A detailed analysis of the discourse of the AKP's key cadre during the 2017 crisis reveals element of a new phenomenon which is emerging in the politics of many countries: post-truth.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 12
    Citation - Scopus: 13
    Are Gender-Neutral Pronouns Really Neutral? Testing a Male Bias in the Grammatical Genderless Languages Turkish and Finnish
    (Sage Publications inc, 2023) Renstrom, Emma A.; Lindqvist, Anna; Akbas, Gulcin; Hekanaho, Laura; Senden, Marie Gustafsson
    Languages differ in how grammatically salient gender is. We explored if grammatically gender-neutral pronouns in Finnish and Turkish, two grammatically genderless languages, are gender neutral or male biased, thereby activating male, rather than female, exemplars. We also tested whether differences in national level gender equality influence the male bias. Results indicated a male bias in both languages, whereas national level gender equality had no influence. Implications for gender-fair language reforms in grammatically genderless languages are discussed.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 11
    Citation - Scopus: 16
    Overcoming Environmental Challenges by Antagonizing Environmental Protesters: the Turkish Government Discourse Against Anti-Hydroelectric Power Plants Movements
    (Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2014) Ozen, Hayriye
    Due to the growing public importance of environmental concerns in the contemporary world, governments that prioritize economic interests over environmental concerns may try to counter environmental challenges not by openly declaring that they do not want to consider environmental demands, but by attempting to antagonize the protesters who voice such demands. This essay explores such a governmental response by analyzing the discourse articulated by the Turkish Government against movements that oppose the construction of hydroelectric power plants (HEPPs) on environmental grounds. In particular, the analysis focuses on how HEPPs, environmental claims and demands of movements, and environmental protesters are represented within the pro-HEPP discourse, and in what ways these representations appeal to popular perceptions. It is demonstrated that the discourse of the government attempts to counter the challenges of protesters by establishing an antagonist relation between the protesters and society by representing HEPPs as crucial for the economic development and, therefore, as compatible with the interests of society as a whole. Moreover, it also attempts to achieve this through portraying the protesters as criminals and terrorists who block the economic development of the country and pose significant threats to the commonwealth, not for legitimate environmental concerns but for some dubious motives and incentives. It is concluded that, with this approach, the government has managed to gain popular consent not only for the construction of HEPPs, but also for the repression of such movements.
  • Review
    Citation - WoS: 71
    Citation - Scopus: 87
    Vision 2023: Assessing the Feasibility of Electricity and Biogas Production From Municipal Solid Waste in Turkey
    (Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd, 2013) Melikoglu, Mehmet
    Turkey imports most of its energy. However, according to the recently avowed Vision 2023 agenda the country also plans to produce 30% of its electricity demand from renewable energy sources by 2023. Meanwhile, each year around 25 million tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) is generated nationwide. Not only MSW pollutes the environment handling, processing and storage requires precious labour and capital. In that context, a synergistic solution can be created between MSW management and energy supply. In this study, economics and environmental impacts of electricity generation from MSW via (i) direct combustion and (ii) biogas harnessing in 81 cities of Turkey is analysed in detail for a period between 2012 and 2023. Firstly, it is estimated that nationwide 8500 GWh of electricity could have been generated by direct combustion of MSW in 2012. This is predicted to rise 9700 GWh in 2023. It is calculated that 3100 million m(3) of methane would be emitted from the landfills of Turkey in 2012. If no action taken this would rise to 3600 million m(3) in 2023. Furthermore, it is estimated that by capturing 25% of this methane via landfill bioreactors 2900 GWh or 0.5% of Turkey's annual electricity demand could be supplied in 2023. Simulations also showed that by realizing apposite landfill investments by 2023 annual energy savings worth 200-900 million (sic) could be generated from MSW. Consequently, this could lead to greenhouse gas emission savings up to 11.0 million tonnes of CO2 per annum. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.