Theses supervised by Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Mert Arslanalp
10 theses · Boğaziçi University
Coping with repression: How oppositional CSOs build resilience under Turkey's competitive authoritarianism
This study aims to reveal the strategies employed by oppositional civil society organizations (CSOs) in Turkey to deal with government-imposed repressive elements. Turkey has been undergoing a process of autocratization for about fifteen years, and this process has reached the point where the regime is classified as "competitive authoritarian". In such a regime, where critical voices in civil society are tried to be controlled as much as possible, the field of action of many oppositional CSOs has been limited or completely destroyed. However, there are still CSOs that can survive despite all the pressures, continue their work, defend liberal democratic values, and develop various strategies to achieve this all. To reveal these strategies, a qualitative field research was conducted based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 16 CSO representatives from eight different fields. As a result of the research, seven focus areas were determined to help building institutional resilience against the pressures that CSOs are exposed to under Turkey's competitive authoritarian regime. These can be listed as building and managing organizational reputation, establishing national and international alliances, taking part in non-violent contentious actions, pursuing continuous resistance with strategic adaptations, building legal competencies in the organization, ensuring financial sustainability, and effective social media management.
Seçimli otoriterlikle mücadele: Türkiye ve Macaristan'da siyasi muhalefetin seçim stratejileri
Despite receiving increasing scholarly attention in recent times, the actions, preferences, and strategies of political opposition actors in contexts of autocratization remain understudied in comparative political science literature. This dissertation investigates the electoral strategies pursued by opposition parties in Turkey and Hungary, two prominent examples of electoral autocracy that have undergone a process of populist autocratization. Identifying cooperation and depolarization as two main strategic elements for winning elections against the populist autocrats in power, the dissertation seeks to uncover how opposition parties change their electoral strategies over the course of autocratization and particularly understand when they manage to cooperate and/or depolarize. An in-depth qualitative analysis of the electoral strategies of opposition parties during the process of autocratization in Turkey and Hungary reveals that the pursuit of these two strategies depends on the presence of incentivizing electoral institutions, the transformation of fault lines dividing both the opposition's bases and the broader society, and the existence of positive feedback from the latest experiences. These findings demonstrate that the evolution in the electoral strategies pursued by opposition parties over the course of autocratization mainly takes place through a process of political learning triggered by the transformative impact of unfolding regime change on the opposition parties' approach to the fault lines dividing their societies.
Kent marjinlerinde gündelik yaşamda şiddet deneyimleri: Okmeydanı örneği
This thesis examines the transformation of an Alevi working-class district in Istanbul, Okmeydanı, with a long history of left-wing politics since the 1960s, to depoliticization, with a specific focus on how women experienced this shift. The fieldwork that lasted on-and-off four years indicate that Okmeydanı's robust contentious politics from the past have significantly diminished since the 2000s, mainly because of increased state interference in daily life. The state interfered in everyday life through both repression and cooptation. While the increasing presence of police in everyday life increased, the state co-opted with social aids. Such state-led interventions have resulted in decreasing number of protests, narrowing of repertoire of actions, and the intertwining of municipalities and muhtars. The fieldwork revealed that the district's gendered nature and the gender-based impacts of urban violence are integral to analyzing the depoliticization process transformation. With their nuanced and sometimes ambiguous responses to these political changes, the women living in Okmeydanı offer more than a narrative of temporal transition. Their experiences underscore the complex dynamics at play as they move back and forth between the region's political past and present. The analysis of transformations in Okmeydanı aims to contribute to the depoliticization literature by examining it in an authoritarian context, exploring the effects of neoliberal state practices in urban margins, and assessing the gendered consequences of depoliticization.
The politics of judicial independence: Explaining the trajectories of judicial councils in Italy and Turkey
This thesis presents a comparative historical analysis of the trajectories of judicial councils in Italy and Turkey from their inception at the beginning of the second half of the 20th century. Through a detailed analysis of relevant literature, laws and documents as well as complementary semi-structured in-depth interviews, it demonstrates that professional career courses of judges and prosecutors, which are by and large administered by judicial councils, play a central role in explaining judicial independence or lack thereof. Thus, reading in tandem developments at the macro level with career courses of individual judges and prosecutors, this thesis delves into a relatively unexplored area of political inquiry; that is the relations between different levels within the judiciary. It is specifically argued that the vertical, hierarchical setting of Turkish judiciary that stems from the nature of relations between higher and lower ranks of the judiciary as well as between judicial councils and individual judges and prosecutors renders it prone to takeovers by external actors in short time spans as seen recurrently after 2010, as opposed to the horizontal and decentralized structure of Italian judiciary.
İstanbul'da ki düzensiz Afgan göçmenlerin kente entegrasyonu: Yeni Mahalle örneği
Turkey, located on the border with regions of instability and conflict, has been considered as a transit country in migration flows. However, the socio-political and economic developments in the 2000s have gradually transformed Turkey into a migrant receiving country. The main subject of this thesis is the survival/urban integration tactics of the irregular Afghan migrants living in Yeni Mahalle neighborhood of Istanbul in the absence of both state assistance and NGOs services. The existing academic studies on local and urban aspects of the migrants' integration—particularly the ones dealing with Afghan migrants' integration to Istanbul—seem to be inadequate. The thesis will explore how these young and mostly bachelor Afghan migrants have settled in Yeni Mahalle, how they create a living space for themselves, how they are integrated into the working life, how they are solving their daily problems, and how they develop their survival strategies based on keeping appropriate distance with the natives in the absence of macro policies.
Everyday practices of domination and resistance in the Turkish mainstream media
This thesis aims to find an answer to the following question: How does domination work inside Turkish mainstream media outlets? Although the neoliberal transformation and the establishment of a competitive authoritarian regime under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule provide us a macro-level understanding, they do not explain the functioning of domination on a daily basis. The thesis uses the 'everyday resistance' theory to capture the dynamic and dialectical relationship between micro-level everyday practices of domination and resistance in the media space. The thesis claims that the neoliberal media structure leads to the precarization of the journalists which makes them more vulnerable to the domination of government. In order for the domination to work in the media arena, the government does not need total control of the minds of the journalists as long as it forces journalists to seek covert forms of resistance rather than open confrontation. Since these covert forms are not adequate to challenge the system, even journalists' resistance strategies can become tools for strengthening the domination of media arena.
When do movements against femicide succeed? The cases of Mexico and Turkey
Femicide refers to the killing of women because of their gender and is the deadliest form of violence against women. Data shows that it exists in every country around the world. While some of these countries may be deadlier for women than others, few stand out for their strong mobilization against the issue. In this thesis, I try to pinpoint when movements against femicide succeed by using the feminist and the subsequent antifemicide movements in Mexico and Turkey as my cases. Previous research shows that social movements have a higher chance of success in times and spaces where political opportunity structures exist. This thesis aims to clarify whether political opportunities have been conducive to the success of antifemicide movements. To test that hypothesis, I first trace the emergence of antifemicide movements in both cases through qualitative methods. While outlining these movements, I point out when these movements have achieved success based on the theory of political opportunities. Then, through a wide historic lens, I define what success means for a movement and the circumstances of the turning points that allow the movement the gain traction or achieve success. As a result, I find that antifemicide movements are compatible with the political opportunity paradigm, but only when an expanded definition of political opportunities is used. With that definition in place, I argue that political opportunities that present in various forms are conducive to the success of movements against femicide.
Between anxiety and hope: The ebb and flow of prefigurative politics after gezi protests
This thesis traces one of the enduring legacies of the Gezi Protests, prefigurative politics. Defined as a set of political actions that seeks to realize now the social relations that are aspired to be experienced in the future, the concept has come to be one of the defining characteristics of the global mass mobilizations in the twenty first century. Although it is possible to point out various remarkable prefigurative political actions throughout the 2000s, it was only after Gezi Protests that prefigurative politics received broader reception and propagation in Turkey. Based on in-depth interviews conducted with various prefigurative politics in Istanbul, this research focuses on the affective micro-dynamics behind the prefigurative experiences within the park and their multiplication into different sites. I argue that prefigurative practices provide certain mechanisms for the production and reproduction of a set of shared feelings that arose in the park, emboldening activists to undertake and sustain their political actions. While these mechanisms have been influential in terms of the initial drive for the proliferation of prefigurative politics right after Gezi Protests, I imply that their effects may have also been important for their sustenance despite the limitations related to the increasing authoritarianism. In that regard, in the last chapter, I focus on a specific case, Kadıköy Cooperative, to discuss how this initial drive has developed into an enduring institutional legacy. After all, I argue that this legacy indicates an emergent subjectivity that developed around the fundamental tenets of prefiguration, self-reflection, and solidarity that seeks to settle itself through a horizontal constitutional order.
Between rupture and bargaining: Political strategies of secessionist governing parties in Catalonia and Scotland
What drives mainstream stateless nationalist parties to adopt secessionist positions? Over the past decade, independence referendums in Catalonia and Scotland have made this question a timely and crucial topic in studies of political parties and nationalism. Although these referendums did not result in the creation of new states, they represented the most concrete attempts toward secession. Using process-tracing and semi-structured in-depth interviews with political elites and activists, this comparative study examines the political strategies of the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia and the Scottish National Party, the mainstream nationalist parties in their respective contexts. It seeks to address the puzzle of how these two parties, positioned on the relatively moderate end of the stateless nationalist party family spectrum, moved beyond the discourse of secessionism to undertake a concrete initiative toward independence through referendums. The study analyzes the divergent paths of radicalization in their territorial strategies and their strategic ambiguities, oscillating between rupture and bargaining. It explains this process through three interrelated variables: the "loosely framed" constitutional contexts at the center, escalating demands for fiscal sovereignty in the periphery, and the internal configuration of secessionism. Challenging traditional structuralist approaches, it highlights the interplay between leadership agency and institutional contexts at critical junctures, framing secessionism as a heterogeneous and dynamic phenomenon.
Exceptional legislation in the Turkish parliament: Explaining temporal patterns of law-making (1991-2015)
This dissertation investigates the normalization of exceptional legislative procedures and law types in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA) between 1991 and 2015. These are mainly omnibus legislation, expedited procedure, and decree-law—initially designed as extraordinary measures— apart from ordinary law-making. Drawing on two original datasets and a multi-level institutionalist framework, the study combines qualitative and quantitative methods to explain why and how these non-standard tools became embedded in parliamentary practice. Contrary to expectations that such instruments are primarily used by weak or minority governments or in extraordinary periods, findings reveal their extensive deployment by strong single-party governments in ordinary times. The analysis identifies temporal control, rather than legislative necessity, as a central motivation: exceptional procedures offer ruling parties the ability to accelerate law-making, bypass opposition, and manage political timing, especially during election periods and recesses. External pressures—such as EU harmonization and economic crises—contributed to initial procedural innovations, but their persistence is best explained by actors' strategic use of time. The study also documents the formal and informal institutional changes that enabled the routinization of exceptional legislation. It contributes to broader debates on legislative rationalization, democratic backsliding, and the strategic manipulation of parliamentary time, offering both empirical insight and conceptual innovation in the study of legislative politics.