Theses supervised by Prof. Dr. Hatice Pınar Bilgin
11 theses · İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University
İran nükleer programının çerçevelenmesi: İran'ın 2019 uranyum zenginleştirme duyurusuna eleştirel inşacı bir yaklaşım
This thesis analyzes how the United States, Russia, and China frame Iran's 2019 announcement of uranium enrichment differently. The literature on nuclear nonproliferation mostly rests on traditional security thinking, which expects that nuclear weapon states show similar behavior towards a civilian nuclear program with uranium enrichment to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Despite their similarities, the US, Russia, and China responded to Iran's 2019 announcement differently. To study this puzzle, this thesis uses a critical constructivist approach to examine how the case countries constructed their identities of Self and Other, and how the identity construction affected their framing of Iran's nuclear move. This thesis uses articulation and interpellation as analytical tools and discourse analysis to analyze the authorized state officials' official statements, interviews, and presidential speeches during 2019. The US attached exact opposite meanings to the representations of itself and Iran, constructing the identities of Self and Iran as Other through juxtaposition. The US framed Iran's 2019 announcement as a security threat. Russia constructed Self and Other identities in a hierarchical position vis-à-vis Iran. Russia framed Iran's 2019 announcement not through a security framing, but rather considered it a reaction to the unilateral acts of the US. China's construction of identities mainly focuses on the representations of Self that it did not construct an identity of Iran as other, rather it represented Iran as a rational and legitimate actor. China did not consider Iran's 2019 announcement through a security framing but saw it as a reaction based on a cause-and-effect relation with the US. Thus, the US, Russia, and China differently constructed identities of Self and Other vis-à-vis Iran and had divergent responses to Iran's 2019 announcement, which is overlooked by the literature on nuclear nonproliferation.
Dış yardımda kalkınma ve güvenliğin kesişimi: Çin ve Japonya'nın Afrika'daki dış yardım faaliyetleri üzerine bir inceleme (2001–2021)
This thesis examines the post-Cold War merger of development and security in foreign aid by analyzing China's and Japan's aid strategies in Africa between 2001 and 2021. Guided by the research question, "How have development aid and security merged in the post–Cold War period?", the study investigates whether the merger pattern, previously identified in the aid strategies of North American and Western European donors, is also reflected in the cases of China and Japan. Employing a case study approach, the analysis draws on official documents from the Forum on China- Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), using policy discourse and policy design indicators of the merger derived from existing scholarship. The findings reveal a consistent pattern: development and security are merged in both policy discourse and policy design in China's and Japan's foreign aid strategies in Africa after the Cold War.
Türkiye'de "Uluslararası" anlayışları
In the last several decades, the discipline of International Relations (IR) has been problematized because of its limitations in engaging with non-core actors. A burgeoning literature in IR has underscored that the prevalent approaches in the discipline have particular understandings of world politics which are based on the experiences of core actors, and ideas and experiences of non-core actors are overlooked in these understandings. This literature has asked what IR would look like if ideas and experiences of non-core actors are also considered. This dissertation's objective is to contribute to this literature by studying the conceptions of "the international" as found in one of the non-core contexts, namely Turkey. The dissertation develops and offers a novel analytical framework for studying the conceptions of "the international" in any given context. This framework is employed firstly to examine the understandings as found in IR scholarship so as to see what is available in the literature. Then, the framework is employed for analyzing the conceptions of "the international" in Turkey as one example to non-core actors of world politics. The dissertation discusses what IR scholarship captures and overlooks when the conceptions of "the international" in non-core contexts are taken into account.
Militarizm çalışmaları: İngilizce dünya literatürü ve Türkiye literatürünün karşılaştırmalı analizi
Militarism has attracted academic attention since late seventeenth century. Scholars have defined and studied militarism in different ways. While during the First World War, militarism was studied as an ideology, in the post – Second World War period civil-military relations was the focus of analysis. Since the 1970s, the scholarship on militarism began to diversify. During the late 1980s, scholars started to study militarism as a sociological and historical phenomenon. This thesis aims to analyze how militarism has been studied in (English-speaking) world scholarship and in Turkey. By adopting meta-study technique, the thesis identifies the similarities and differences between the two bodies of scholarship. In the concluding section, the thesis discusses what Turkey's scholarship on militarism has focused on and overlooked in comparison to world scholarship.
Güvenlik çalışmalarında modernite kavrayışları: Küresel Güney'de güvenliğin çalışılması
Security Studies has portrayed states in the Global South as a threat to international security and overlooked insecurities experienced by people and social groups in the Global South. In security studies, security in the Global South has been explained in terms of incompleteness of states in the Global South. The dissertation questions how it is possible that security studies has accounted for security in the Global South in terms of a lack. The argument of dissertation is that the study of security in the Global South is related to the conception of modernity shaping security studies, which locates the Global South outside of world politics. This dissertation builds its argument in four steps. First, it identifies three dimensions of modernity, namely, time, ontology and sociality of world politics. These dimensions help to unpack conceptions of modernity in security studies, which vary across these three dimensions. Second, the dissertation unpacks conception of modernity shaping realist approaches to security and Third World security scholars' analyses in order to examine their respective understandings of the relationship between the Global North and the Global South in security relations. Third, it asks how those, who are critical of these approaches, namely, critical and postcolonial approaches to security have understood the relationship. Fourth, the dissertation shows its argument by illustrating from studies on nuclear non-proliferation in the Global South.
Siber alan yönetişiminin güvenlikleştirilmesi ve gizlilik hakkı: ABD, Çin ve İzlanda örneği
This thesis adopts securitization theory to analyse the securitization of cyberspace governance in different parts of the world to understand how the securitization of cyberspace governance affects the right to privacy, because securitization and the right to privacy are intertwined. Every step taken by states regarding securitization has crucial impacts on the right to privacy either positive or negative manner. The thesis asks: "How do the USA, China, and Iceland securitize cyberspace governance, and what is the relationship between the securitization of cyberspace governance and the right to privacy in these countries?" To answer this question, the thesis analyzes the National Cybersecurity Strategies and Freedom on the Net reports that were published in the post-2015 period. The thesis observes a complicated relationship between the securitization of cyberspace governance and the right to privacy. What governments declare and the results of their actions in the securitization process can be inconsistent as in the US, can be consistent as in Iceland, and can be consistent and inconsistent at the same time as in China. According to the comparison of cases with each other, a free and not-free state can take non-democratic measures to secure cyberspace governance.
Soğuk Savaş sonrası dönemde Türkiye'de resmi söylemde göçün güvenlikleştirilmesi
Since the end of the Cold War, Turkey has become a destination country for the human mobility of people who are not of 'Turkish descent and culture'. For the first time in the history of the Republic, Turkey has become a destination and not only a transit country. The thesis is interested in the changing official responses of the Republic to this transition. The question asked is whether and/or in what ways major human mobility cases to Turkey in the post-Cold War Era were securitized in the official discourse of the Republic. The cases that are focused on are the mobility of the 1989 Ethnic Turks of Bulgaria, and the Northern Iraqis in 1991, mobility from the post-Soviet countries and from the Central African countries since the early 1990s, and post-2011 Syrian human mobility. While examining this question, the thesis adopts the perspective of securitization theory and looks to see whether these human mobilities were portrayed as a threat to Turkey's national security or not.
Avrupa Birliği ve Türkiye: Hareketlilik ve güvenlik(siz)lik
International Political Sociology (IPS) literature mainly focuses on the actions of the European Union (EU) in their analyses of externalization in the Mediterranean, examining how border security policies and practices of the EU actors constitute insecurities for multiple referents. The thesis shows that most IPS studies either overlook or underemphasize how non-EU actors also play a significant role in creating these insecurities. It argues that non-EU actors have agency in the constitution of the EU's external border in/security policies and practices. The thesis also argues that, with its meta-theoretical and theoretical commitments, IPS is a suitable approach to locating multiple actors' agency in the making of in/security. Through focusing on the case of Turkey, the dissertation concludes that border in/security cooperation between EU and non-EU states of the Mediterranean may be unbalanced in nature, but non-EU actors still have agency in the constitution of in/security.
Çevre güvenliği analizinde Aberystwyth Okulu ve Kopenhag Okulu katkıları ve kısıtlamalarının bir değerlendirmesi
The end of the Cold War created a contextual change in security studies along with a proliferation of scientific research revealing the pressing impacts of human activities on the environment since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Since then environmental security has been increasingly studied in different ways: as a new field of analysis, as a referent object or a security threat. Recent initiatives like the 2015 UN Climate Conference COP 21 and more frequent and more powerful environmental disasters such as hurricanes, droughts and famines attracted even more scholarly attention for environmental security studies. This thesis specifically aims to assess the contributions and limitations of the Aberystwyth School and the Copenhagen School for the analysis of environmental security. As a result, the Aberystwyth School broadens the research agenda by allowing room for the analysis of different environmental problems experienced by various referents. The school offers bringing about progress and change in the meaning and making of security through politicization and emancipation. However, the cases fall short demonstrating how to reach emancipation at the global level. The Copenhagen School shows how securitization process works and reveals how this process attracts attention, measure, policies and resources to environmental concerns. Given the School's fixed understanding of construction of security through urgency, speech acts and state elites, limits the analytical strength of the Copenhagen School for the environmental security analysis. Keywords: Aberystwyth School, Copenhagen School, Critical Security Studies,Environment, Security.
Küresel bakım zincirleri kapsamında kadınlar ve devletler nasıl güvensizleştirilmektedir?
This research explores the insecurities of states and women connected to global care chains. It analyzes the economic, social, and demographic context in which these insecurities exist and reproduced. Using Critical Security Studies and Feminist Security Studies as the theoretical framework together with an International Political Economy approach, it takes Germany, Poland, and Ukraine as the case study. It also aims to put state-women's security into a perspective in which the meaning of security is deepened. The problematization is how the commodification of care brings insecurities for states and women, while done in search for security.
Olağanüstü güvenlik önlemlerinin hukuki-siyasi ve mekansal-zamansal koşulları: 1923-2019 arası Türkiye örneği
This dissertation examines the state's interference with the constitutional rights and liberties regime in the name of security in light of the practices in Türkiye between 1923 and 2019. It aims to explain what juridical and political aspects such measures of the state may have, explore the spatial and temporal dimensions of these security measures, and relate these dimensions to the juridico-political conditions of the security measures contradicting the norms concerning rights and liberties, which are constructed legally by states. It seeks to conceptualise exceptional security measures by examining the state as a whole with all its relevant institutions instead of examining a specific source of powers, such as the executive, the legislature, or the police. It shows that the exercisers of state power and the power to make the decision that interferes with rights and liberties vary depending on the time and the juridico-political context. It seeks to understand how and when state authorities act in contradiction to the norms concerning rights and liberties, the source of state authorities' power to interfere with the rights and liberties regime, and what spatiotemporal aspects these practices have.