M.A. Theses
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Item China’s shifting position in the global climate change(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Elmalı, Burak.; Eder, Mine, 1965- .Over the past two decades, China has emerged as a rising economic power with excessive amounts of carbon emissions that directly contribute to global climate change. Being a part of the international regime for global climate change regime, the country has also pursued a different set of policies to address the issue both domestically and internationally. This is also apparent in China’s vast investment landscape. The country has shown shifting patterns from a fossil-oriented investor to a more climate-friendly one. Also, it has proactively engaged in the regime's institutional platforms and revealed strong signals to cooperate on this global issue. This thesis aims to answer why China decided to move in such a direction and showed shifts in its investment allocation preferences by contextualizing foreign investments between 2005 and 2022. In contrast to the arguments based on liberal institutionalism and regime theory, China’s moves can be better attributed to realist considerations and strategic calculations within the scope of its incentive structure. This consists of economic gains and reputational benefits, both of which led China to increase its relative gains and reduce international pressures. From energy and transport investments to positioning in international negotiations, several cases are presented to demonstrate how China operationalizes its incentive structure. Combining climate change with some prominent international relations theories, this thesis contributes to an interest- based understanding of China’s climate policies and places them into a broader context of an incentive structure framework.Item Globalization and diminishing local tastes : the case of Spice Bazaar(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Aksu, Osman Zinnur.; Eder, Mine, 1965- .Food industry, together with the agricultural production is getting more dominated by globalization effects. As the companies get dominant within the sector, they raise many problems for those whose income is based on harvesting with traditional methods that are ineffective compared to the mass production methods. Local foods are getting standardized throughout the world and most of the exotic tastes are either lost, facing depletion, or standardized so that they are not exotic anymore. Spice Bazaar has been one of the central places to attract tourists. The bazaar used to offer various local food from different groups of products including olive, fish, coffee and it was characterized with spices. Bazaar is recently facing a major problem of standardization. In order to offer “proper” products to their clients, the dealers in Bazaar left the small businesses which produce at relatively higher prices in their unique way compared to the big companies which use standardized mass production that allow them to produce at lower prices. The dealers also changed the type, sector, and overall structure of their shops. This thesis deals with the question why such a transformation happened. Three possible explanations of this question were detected in literature. The transformation could be an outcome of the global trends towards liberalized trade and globalized world, the effect of Turkish political economy, or changing consumer preferences as the expected standardization from the demand side. This research made use of qualitative data, more specifically semi-structured interviews with two groups of actors: the current shop owners within the Spice Bazaar and the current and former suppliers (producers) of those shops.Item Hyper-precarity and organization : the case of waste pickers in Istanbul(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Terzi, Gülen Naz.; Kadirbeyoğlu, Zeynep.This thesis discusses the waste pickers’ working and living conditions as well as their organizational experiences in Istanbul. In order to understand the organizational experiences, first of all, the living and working conditions of the waste pickers are discussed with the concept of hyper- precarity. Hyper-precarity has emerged as a result of the combination of the precarities created by the socio-legal status of waste pickers and their place in the labor market. The causes of hyper-precarity are the informalization created by the neoliberal capitalist system, the dispossession of peasants, forced displacement, transnational migration movements, and social and ethnic discrimination. People who live under hyper-precarity have to do jobs in informal sectors such as waste picking since they do not have any acceptable alternative. The commodification of garbage and the expansion of the recycling industry in Turkey has also increased the number of waste pickers. However, the commodification of garbage means a profit opportunity for international capitalists. Private companies, seeing the profitability in the recycling sector, want to monopolize waste management by cooperating with the state. This situation causes the waste pickers to be deprived of their job opportunities through state intervention and their hyper-precarity to deepen. Eliminating hyper-precarity has been the impetus for waste pickers' organization which aim to be treated as equal citizens and regain their livelihoods.Item Examining the echo chambers of countermovements to Black Lives Matter on twitter(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Duran, Kadir Cihan.; Taraktaş, Başak.This research examines the changes in echo chambers formed by individuals with similar beliefs in opposition movements from their emergence to the present day. In this context, the thesis compares the echo chambers of countermovements, including “All Lives Matter”, “Blue Lives Matter”, “Police Lives Matter”, and “White Lives Matter”, which emerged in opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement, between 2013 and 2022. Topic modeling and network analysis methods were used to define the echo chambers. With the use of these methods, the topics discussed in the echo chambers and the members belonging to these groups were easily identified. This allowed for the observation of changes in echo chambers from 2013 to 2022. In this study, changes in echo chambers were examined from two perspectives: the dominant topics in the echo chambers and the members of the echo chambers. The continuity, change, and differences between countermovements in terms of these two factors are the focal points of this study. Accordingly, the thesis demonstrates that there is an increasing trend in the number of echo chambers and their members during times of crisis. It also shows that the continuity of echo chambers differs, dominant topics have distinct seasonal trends, and the continuity of the echo chambers that contain both similar members and topics varies between countermovements.Item Effects of supranationalism on environmental policy resilience : an analysis of the EU emissions trading system(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Baran, Hunca Seyfettin.; Kadirbeyoğlu, Zeynep.This research examines the effects of supranationalism on the viability and resilience of environmental policies through an analysis of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS). It hypothesizes that the increased level of supranationalism has a positive effect on the viability and resilience of environmental policies. This thesis examines the internal debates in the EU, ETS- related reports, and policy design choices to uncover patterns that can increase viability and resilience. The main argument is that the increased level of supranationalism caused the ETS to be more centralized and made non-compliance harder for the EU Member States as well as several Member State-internal stakeholders. This thesis also argues that the information channels between the Commission and the stakeholders increased the resilience of ETS by allowing the Commission the tailor it according to business stakeholder needs. This research focuses on the puzzle of how the EU, a multinational structure with many actors, was able to build and sustain its ETS.Item Voter-party incongruence and affective polarization : a comparative appraisal by Enes Yapar ; thesis advisor Alper Yağcı.(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Yapar, Enes.; Yağcı, Alper.This thesis examines the relationship between party-voter congruence and affective polarization at individual and country level drawing on a cross-national dataset comprising 95 elections in 27 democracies. First part of the thesis focuses on the hypothesized relationship between party-voter congruence on the one hand and three affect measures, namely affective polarization, in-party affective evaluations and outparty affective evaluations on the other. Upon situating the notion of party-voter congruence within the literature, findings of the first chapter suggest that voter perceptions of party-voter congruence are linked to negative in-party evaluations and positive out-party evaluations, as well as significantly lower affective polarization scores at voter level. In the second part of the thesis, the existing literature on citizenrepresentative congruence and its possible links to affective polarization are presented. Testing the same hypotheses employed in voter-level analyses, findings in the second part of thesis suggest that increasing party-voter incongruence measured by the average distance of voters to their parties is associated with higher levels of affective polarization and more negative evaluations of other political parties. However, when congruence is measured by this average distance relative to the variance of voter self-placements in each partisan group, it is shown to curb affective polarization and yield more positive evaluations toward other parties.Item Role of media in fueling affective polarization analysis of online news about Turkey’s opposition party(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Yılmaz, Cemalettin.; Yağcı, Alper.Today, amid the absence of major election-day frauds and overtly violent repression, autocratizing incumbents depend on some level of genuine popular support for political survival. Affective polarization and negative partisanship are considered crucial factors for this support. This thesis attempts to contribute to this line of research by tracking the evolution of content in the media that could fuel this polarization in the Turkish context. It analyzes more than 45.000 online news articles about the main opposition party published since 2009 in two newspapers. Focusing on news from pro-government Sabah and centrist Hürriyet, machine learning algorithms predict the amount of language that portrays opposition as an enemy or rival within politics. Together with the change in ownership of centrist outlet to a pro-government conglomerate in 2018, and the establishment of hyper-presidential system in Turkey, the analysis establishes the long-term trajectory of such language, its changes during election periods, and how it is affected by these junctures across the newspapers. Findings show that vilifying language increases during most election periods for both newspapers, that the pro-government newspaper uses more vilifying language, and that both newspapers got more vilifying towards the opposition after Turkish regime change. In addition, with one newspaper increasingly vilifying while the other reducing the overall coverage of opposition after its change in ownership, it also shows that the influence of incumbent-control over different friendly news outlets may be heterogeneous, depending on the audience.Item Shifting alliances among nationalist elites : factors that shape elite cooperation in nationalist movements(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2023) Ademi, Ubeydullah.; Taraktaş, Başak.What are the factors that facilitate or hinder cooperation among nationalist elites? To answer this question, this thesis studies nationalist movements that are composed of various factions at different points in time. I deploy an original network dataset of the nationalist elites in late Ottoman Empire from three different ethnic backgrounds and observe their relations over a period of 25 years from 1895 to 1920. To analyze the network data on the period, I use pooled temporal exponential random graph models (TERGM) and study two kinds of impacts on the socialization of the nationalist elites. I initially test the impact of factors that are endogenous to the group and focus on the role of popularity of individual elites and dense organizational patterns. Then, I analyze the effect of elements external to the network of elites. The thesis suggests that the impact of ideological factions, foreign support, and threat perception among the elites provide strong indicators for the likelihood of tie formation within the nationalist network. While ideological similarity and threat perception generally increase the likelihood of cooperation among nationalist elites, more radical factions tend to be less popular with fewer chances of cooperation. Periods of repression on nationalist elites tend to mitigate the negative effect of radical ideologies and favor tighter organizational patterns across different ideological factions within the movement.Item China’s shifting position in the global climate change(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023., 2022) Elmalı, Burak.; Eder, Mine, 1965- .Over the past two decades, China has emerged as a rising economic power with excessive amounts of carbon emissions that directly contribute to global climate change. Being a part of the international regime for global climate change regime, the country has also pursued a different set of policies to address the issue both domestically and internationally. This is also apparent in China’s vast investment landscape. The country has shown shifting patterns from a fossil-oriented investor to a more climate-friendly one. Also, it has proactively engaged in the regime's institutional platforms and revealed strong signals to cooperate on this global issue. This thesis aims to answer why China decided to move in such a direction and showed shifts in its investment allocation preferences by contextualizing foreign investments between 2005 and 2022. In contrast to the arguments based on liberal institutionalism and regime theory, China’s moves can be better attributed to realist considerations and strategic calculations within the scope of its incentive structure. This consists of economic gains and reputational benefits, both of which led China to increase its relative gains and reduce international pressures. From energy and transport investments to positioning in international negotiations, several cases are presented to demonstrate how China operationalizes its incentive structure. Combining climate change with some prominent international relations theories, this thesis contributes to an interest- based understanding of China’s climate policies and places them into a broader context of an incentive structure framework.Item On Hannah Arendt’s conception of judgment with regard to political action: an attempt at reconciling the perspectives of actor and spectator(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2014., 2014.) Menasse, Sophie.; Gambetti, Zeynep Ç.This thesis explores the relation between judgment and action in Arendt’s theory and comprises four main arguments. Firstly, I challenge the argument that there is a shift in Arendt’s theory of judgment from a future-‐oriented capacity of the actor in her early writings to a backward-‐looking faculty of the spectator in her late work. I advocate a more continuous reading by showing how the two theories are intertwined throughout her work and present in both phases, early and late. Secondly, I propose a way of understanding the relationship between judgment and action and between prospective and retrospective judgment. I show that we can find in Arendt many different fields of application of judgment that establish this link (i.e. prospective judgment of the actor, retrospective judgment of the spectator, retrospective judgment of the actor, future-‐oriented retrospective judgment of the spectator, judgment as action, judgment as a precondition for action, anticipated retrospective judgment of the actor). Thirdly, I emphasis the in-‐between location of judgment with regard to the level of rationality (in between subjectivity and objectivity, in between rationality and emotionality) and I explicate the relation of judgment to facts. Fourthly, I argue that this interpretation of Arendt’s theory of judgment may provide a useful theoretical framework for analysing current political events: it provides concepts that can prove helpful for trying to understand the occurrence of political change, of protest movements and new beginnings for it allows to conceptualize novelty and the consciousness formation processes related to political action.Item Rethinking the Kurdish movement: the role of the neighborhood assemblies in Diyarbala.r(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2013., 2013.) Tuncel, Deniz.; Eder, Mine,Based on the judicial violence of the Turkish state against the Kurds after 2009 and the attempts of the Kurdish political movement for the implementation of participatory politics at a local level since 2005, this thesis argues how the Kurds have been pushed out of legal order and rendered silenced by the Turkish judiciary, and how the Kurdish movement used the neighborhood assemblies to enable the Kurds to have the representation of their own voice. The case studies of the thesis are accordingly composed of the KCK trial and the neighborhood assemblies in Diyarbak1r. By exploring the process of the KCK trial, it argues that the Turkish judiciary as an institution of the sovereign power, through Schmitt, Agamben, Jakobs and Benjamin, decides the state of exception and makes "friend-enemy distinction" among its citizens concerning the security of the political and judicial order of the state. By observing the process of the decision-making processes from neighborhood to municipal level and, it asserts that the Democratic Autonomy is a practice of freedom of the Kurds and other subaltern communities, who were pushed out of legal order and mobilized outside the borders of that legal order, and the local assemblies founded by the Kurdish movement as the instruments of bottom-up democracy emerged as a space of struggle that were constituted by and constitutive of a community of struggle.Item Media and democracy in Turkey: the 2011 Turkish national election coverage(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2013., 2013.) Bieber, Selina Denise.; Kaynak, M. Selcan.This thesis aims to examine the ability of the Turkish media to fulfil its democratic role for the Turkish public by case studying the 2011 national Turkish elections. Given the limited number of previous studies existing on Turkey, this thesis takes the notion of the press politics relationship, as put forward by Bennett, and economic pressures influencing the way in which the press functions to question whether the Turkish media effectively carries out a watchdog and messenger role. This study codes newspaper articles leading up to the elections to test the hypothesis that despite continued patterns of polarized parallelism, the media coverage will reinforce the AKP‟s consolidated governmental position. Split into two separate research question, the first research question discusses the coded article characteristics and keywords to draw out patterns and trends apparent in the coverage with a major focus on sources, main article subjects and handling of critical agenda issues. This lays the foundation for the second research question in which an in depth textual analysis is employed to determine the frames being put forward by publications when relaying two topics drawn from the data set - the Inan Kirac and Prime Minister Erdogan conflict and foreign press commentary - to make conclusions about the press politics relationship and position of the AKP in Turkey. Ultimately, this study argues that the press politics relationship is defined by the AKP‟s strong political position and media coverage serves to support this position by largely employing the frames put forward by the government to generate neutral or positive commentary, instead of offering critical coverage or diversity in reporting.Item Formation of a majoritarian democracy discourse in Turkey: an examination of the Democratic Party, 1946-1960(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2013., 2013.) Geliş, Naz.; Yılmaz, Hakan.This thesis aims to study the formation of a majoritarian democracy discourse in Turkish politics, which has become the main trend in Turkish political life starting with the Democratic Party (DP) that ruled the country from 1950 to 1960. The DP, also the first party that was elected with a competitive election, had a majoritarian approach to democracy, a view that has become the fundamental tendency in center-right politics in Turkey, and a legacy that the DP passed to its future successors. In testing this hypothesis, the democracy rhetoric of the DP is analyzed to shed light over its conceptualization of the party basis, meaning of democracy, elections, political control and political accountability, political and social opposition, civil institutions, definition of nation and individualism. This evaluation is presented through a discourse analysis of the parliamentary speeches of the leading figures of the DP. Finally, by briefly looking at the democratic view of the DP’s future successors (Justice Party, Motherland Party, True Path Party and Justice and Development Party), it is argued that the DP's majoritarian understanding of democracy became a legacy for the forthcoming center-right parties in Turkey.Item Producing confrontational alterity: urban regeneration in Tarlabaşı, Istanbul(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2013., 2013.) Mountfort Parker, Guy Alexander.; Kadirbeyoğlu, Zeynep.This thesis is concerned with large-scale urban regeneration, and its impact on the socialization and behaviour of the populations who suffer through its mechanisms of exclusion. The field research is focused on the Istanbul neighbourhood of Tarlabaşı, where a renewal project in the name of historical preservation has displaced approximately 3,000 residents. While the local community was already living on Turkish society's margins to varying degrees, the presence of the project under investigation is found to be necessitating or encouraging the performance of a confrontational form of alterity. Control mechanisms are rendered ineffective, and individual subjectivities distorted, by the visible confirmation of the status of the neighbourhood's residents in the eyes of official power, and by the examples of individuals temporarily reclaiming their rights to the city in the spaces of the project itself.Item Compliance and negotiation: the role of Turkish Diyanet in the production of Friday Khutbas(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2013., 2013.) Saçmalı, Muhammet Habib.; Arat, Yeşim,Friday khutbas are important instruments for reaching the public in Turkey, since approximately twenty million men could be addressed through the khutbas in the mosques every week. These khutbas are written by officials of the Directorate of Religious Affairs in the khutba committees in each city separately and distributed to imams to be delivered during Friday prayers. Due to the fact that these khutbas are religious texts and presented by the translators of a holy text in the eyes of the public, Friday khutbas have great influence on people through appealing to their hearts and minds. I consider the state and society to be the main actors that determine and shape the position, aim, discourse, and activities of the Diyanet. With the AK Parti government, for the first time in the history of Turkish Republic there has been a cleavage between the government and established state ideology in the understandings of religion and nationalism. Because of this, I take the AK Parti government as another agent within the state in this determination and shaping. The argument of this thesis is that the officials in the khutba committee, who seem to be the real actors writing Friday khutbas are mostly passive agents and employ self-censorship in the process of khutba writing to comply with the orders and demands of the state, government, and society and to abstain from confrontation and conflict with these actors. To elaborate my thesis, I shall also present the boundaries of various kinds of initiatives taken by the Diyanet officials in the process of khutba production to stand against the demands of these actors.Item Kurdish urban politics in the neoliberal era: cases of Diyarbakir and Van mobilized under BDP(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2012., 2012.) Sümer, Bilgesu; Kadirbeyoğlu, Zeynep.This thesis explores why urban politics became integral for Kurdish movement and how Kurdish movement mobilizes municipalities by examining the cases of Diyarbakir and Van whose municipalities are run by the political party of Kurdish movement, BDP. This study contextualizes the ongoing conflict with neoliberal transformations at the local government level in Turkey. Furthermore, it analyzes the extent to which the motivating factors and reasons for local politics are realized while mobilizing municipalities; given the structural constraints of the conflict and neoliberalism. To address this question, the life trajectories, experience and mobilization of the local actors and activists within their urban localities and local institutions are investigated through ethnography and in depth interviews. This research is an ethnographic fieldwork on an urban social movement with popular composition struggling to steer the wheel of urbanization which occurred ever so rapidly since the 1990s. It is based on my personal engagement and immersion into local activists spheres at the urban localities. It studies two urban localities: Diyarbakir and Van. The argument of the thesis is that local politics became central to Kurdish actors because the experience in mobilizing municipalities have given them the opportunity to address grievances – mostly developed due to the conflict. Meanwhile the project of Democratic Autonomy has given them a field in which how they want to mobilize local governments could be articulated and would be constituted. In this sense, Kurdish movement as a popular urban movement is situated against ill-effects of neoliberalism and is mindful of the conflict and would like to determine the collective consumption at the local and regional level through participatory mechanism to counter problems induced by both contexts.Item Contesting the terrain of the' Ambiguous': the struggle of gender migration and the issue of sex reassignment in Turkey(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2012., 2012.) Şahin, Deniz.; Candaş, Ayşen.This thesis aims to analyze the puzzle that the sex reassignment is an officially recognized right; however it is regulated in a sense that the applicant individual should confirm his/her adaptation to an archetypal transsexual within the scope of regulation. Through the reading of sex reassignment process, this study tries to understand how 'equal' citizenship in Turkey turns out to be exclusivist in the case of trans individuals. It argues that despite the legalization of sex re-assignment indicates an emancipatory attempt at the first instance, its practice reflects the lawmaker's "heteropatriarchal" rationale. In its scrutiny of legal framework of sex reassignment, this study maintains that word of law aims to dissolve ambiguities, and control the process in a way that it leaves the final say to the medical and legal experts. Furthermore, this study intends to show that trans individuals, in order to be allowed to undergo sex reassignment, endeavor and in a way are forced to persuade the officials that they fit into the frame drawn for the "transsexual" prototype; while they might not want to live within that frame completely. In addition to that, this thesis emphasizes the demand of the trans individuals for a better regulation that would be systematized in consideration, and in harmony with their own definitions and their own needs. Under the light of the, combination of legal and theoretical frameworks of the issue of sex reassignment with the fieldwork, this thesis suggests that a politics that would make sense, should ori the one hand recognize the right of reassignment, and on the other hand it should reveal and struggle against the heteronormative and heterosexist mental structure that enforces the individuals to fit into the predetermined patterns in the reassignment process.Item Cooperation or abjection? a Re-conceptualization of civil society beyond liberal values and dichotomies: the ‘Islam vs. homosexuality’ debate in Turkey(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2012., 2012.) Atuk, Sumru.; Gambetti, Zeynep Ç.The main argument of this study is that the liberal tradition which idealizes civil society as a sphere for the cultivation of democratic values, equality, pluralism and cooperation lacks explanatory value in terms of explaining the complex dynamics and internal contradictions of civil society. Supporting this argument, the debate which was initiated by the discriminatory declaration of the former Minister of Women and Family in Turkey - who announced that “homosexuality is a sickness” - and turned into an “Islam vs. homosexuality” debate with the intervention of Islamic civil society organizations (CSOs) and Muslim columnists, revealed that neither the identities nor the practices of civil society actors are pre-established and fixed. They rather are context and actor dependent. Another important factor upon which this debate shed light is the centrality of power relations to the civil society. As Foucault argues, there is no Power as such invested in predetermined institutions, groups or individuals; rather it exists in every aspect of the social. Thus, there is no essential boundary and opposition between the ruler (state) and the ruled (civil society) as liberal thinkers have depicted. Depending on the context, this boundary might get blurred and the actors of civil society might cooperate with the discriminatory state due to the fact that their subjectivities are affected by the same discursive formations. In this respect, the notion of civil society needs to be re-conceptualized in a way as to reveal relations of power and negotiability of subjectivities.|Keywords : Civil Society, Islam, Homosexuality, Bio-power, Discourse, Alliance.Item The impact of foreign nationals on state policy: refugees and asylum seekers, European Court of Human Rights case law and Turkish asylum law(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2012., 2012.) Yılmaz, Gökçen.; Kirişçi, Kemal,This thesis addresses the question of how an individual who is foreign and in a vulnerable position can affect state policy. Considering recent developments as preparation of a draft asylum law and increasing European Court of Human Rights judgments in refugees' cases against Turkey, this question attracts attention in context of Turkey. In line with this question, the aim of this thesis is to understand how an individual refugee, who is part of the most vulnerable group in the society in economic, political or social terms, can have impact on Turkish state asylum policy. This thesis is based on the central argument that ECtHR judgments have been effective in shaping the draft asylum law of Turkey. Since ECtHR procedures proceed through individual petition, the thesis also argues that even an individual refugee can have influence on state policy even if this effect is mediated by other actors. At this point, involvement of third parties into relation between individual refugee and state is of utmost significance. Moreover, ECtHR’s inclusion of individuals by virtue of right to individual petition is crucial as well. However, refugees' lack of action capacity restrains them from exploiting those legal opportunities. From this perspective; NGOs, activists, and lawyers come to front as mediators not only between state and individual but also between ECtHR and applicant refugee. Focus on ECtHR judgments as significant effects on draft asylum law brings about questioning refugees* access to the Court. Therefore, this thesis analyzes both the content of the draft law in comparison with judgments of the Court and the actual application process. Accordingly, major contribution of the thesis is analysis of Court judgments’ effect on domestic legislation from the lenses of individual level of analysis. In other words, ECtHR judgments' effect is analyzed as a mediated effect of individual on state outcome.Item The impact of Turkey's natiolistic culture on Turkish foreign policymaking as observed in Turkey's relations with the central Asian Turkic Republics(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute of Social Sciences, 1995., 1995.) Mersin Alıcı, Didem.; Winrow, Gareth M.The emergence of independent Turkic states in former Soviet Central Asia and Azerbaijan has triggered off the latent Turkish nationalistic culture in Turkey. Indeed, it has been lying dormant since the last days of the Ottoman Empire. In this thesis, the existence of a latent undercurrent of extreme Turkish nationalism has been related to the nature of the particular model of the national identity building adopted by the Turkish intelligentsia. The incompatible combination of Anthony D. Smith's Western/civic-territorial and non-Western/ethnic models constituted the Turkish framework of the nation. In Smith's ethnic model of the nation, there is an overe mphasis on the mythical, historical, and linguistic traditions of the community. Genealogy assumes a special importance in this non-Western conception of the nation. The Western type, on the other hand, underlines the existence of a common civic-legal ideology, and an historic homeland. In this thesis, the mythical aspects of some of the important tools employed by the elites iil transforming the Ottoman Empire to the modern Turkish nation have been examined. These national myths have been decomposed by using Roland Barthes's theory on the nature of mythologies. Barthes conceived of myths as the outcome of the association between a signifier and a signified. He further emphasized the two-level semiological system underlying every mythical speech. The message conveyed by the myth operates on the plane of language- the immediate, surface meaning , and the plane of myth the distortion of the surface meaning. The combination of Barthes's views on mythologies with Smith's conception of the nation has demonstrated that the overreliance on mythical ele ments in the initial phase of the Turkish nation-b uilding process has unwittingly nourished a latent stream of pan-Turkism. The pan-Turkist attitude which used to have negative implications has, however, assumed a relatively positive connotation at present. Its claim for a political-geographical unity of all the Turkic peoples has been replaced by a yearning for Turkic cultural unity. The factors that have paved the way to the current popularization of cultural panTurkism will be analyzed with regard to Turkey's relations with the Turkic republics in post-Soviet Central Asia and Azerbaijan. The hypothesis that Turkey might be intending to establish and lead a prospective Turkic culture area has been studied in this context. It has been concluded that while the Ministries of Education and Culture tend to form their policies in a cultural pan-Turkist line, this would not seem to be the policy pursued by Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.