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Alimony debates in Turkey: Masculinist restoration, male self-victimization, and gender inequality
This thesis examines alimony debates that have been on public agenda in Turkey since 2016 in the context of neoliberal social policies and neoconservative familialist political discourse towards gender equality, family, and divorce. Article 175 of the Turkish Civil Code, which covers alimony regulations, stipulates that the spouse who fall into poverty upon divorce has the right to receive alimony for an indefinite period of time. In most cases, it is the woman who becomes entitled to receive alimony as a result of the deep-seated gender inequality in social, economic, and familial relations. In 2014, a group of people who called themselves as "alimony victims" started organizing on social media with a demand of introducing time limitation to alimony. The same year, a parliamentary commission was established to investigate the reasons for divorces and the factors that negatively influence the integrity of family, and "alimony victims" were invited to the parliamentary commission. The commission report, released in 2016, involved a recommendation on introducing time limitation to alimony. Since then, various groups, overwhelmingly consisting of men, have been protesting "male victimization" on the ground of the right to alimony as well as two other legislations; one on assuring gender equality and the other on the prevention of violence against women (the "Istanbul Convention" and Law No. 6284 respectively). The AKP (Justice and Development Party) government has emphasized "preventing divorces" as well as brought these legal rights into question in its political discourse, particularly since 2016. The thesis is grounded in the ethnographic research that was conducted between October 2018 and October 2020 that consists of 30 interviews with divorced men and women supporters actively involved in anti-alimony groups, divorced women, and divorce lawyers and feminist lawyers. It offers a three-fold discussion from a critical and feminist perspective. Firstly, it reveals the political influence on the rising anti-women's rights movement in contemporary Turkey within the context of the neoliberal restructuring of welfare and neoconservative familialism. Drawing from Deniz Kandiyoti's conceptualization of masculinist restoration, that is top-down and bottom-up efforts to maintain and reproduce patriarchy, thesis discusses alimony debates in the context of masculinist restoration. Secondly, based on interviews with men and women actively involved in anti-alimony groups, it investigates their experiences in marriage and divorce as well as the formation and workings of "male victimization" in anti-alimony discourse. In this sense, this thesis puts forth the concept of "male self-victimization" as one significant pillar of this masculinist restoration. Thirdly, interviews conducted with divorced women aim to shed light on common problems that women face during the process of marriage, divorce, and post-divorce. This thesis pays special attention to the financial and social consequences of divorce, to women's unpaid domestic work and to male violence in marriage and divorce in its analysis of experiences of both women and men. Keywords: divorce, alimony debates, neoconservative familialism, masculinist restoration, women's rights, male self-victimization, gender, Turkey, masculinity
Kentteki İslami akademik seçkinler: 1970–2010 arasında İstanbul'da akademik sermayenin dönüşümü ve aktarımı
This thesis aims to explain the accumulation of Islamic academic capital in Istanbul between the 1970s and 2010s. Based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 19 Islamic individuals, I analyzed the structure of the social space of Turkey that gave rise to the increased visibility of Islamic individuals in the academic field. By focusing on both macro and micro levels, I paid attention to the structure of the Islamic urban academic elite habitus to explain the factors that motivate young Islamic individuals to pursue academic career. In order to have a comprehensive perspective, first I utilized Bourdieusian social theory to explain the main axes of social conflicts in Turkey. By underlining the centrality of symbolic struggles in social conflicts, I revealed how Islamic movements mobilize people from different social classes by referring to Islam. The perspective enabled me to explain the role of academic capital in acquiring legitimacy in the symbolic field. Based on this framework, I presented the eight most referred motivations behind Islamic youth's interest in academic activity. By introducing gender and class differences in analysis, I aimed to cover different aspects that influence agents' perceptions about the academic field. Based on the findings of the fieldwork, I claimed the social space of Turkey is built upon two axes: cultural/economic capital and symbolic capital. Due to the decrease in professional human resources in the late Ottoman era, the new republic introduced education policies to involve more people in higher education. These policies resulted in the rise of a new professional class that has not embraced the secular norms of the republic. The coalition of the new elites with the culturally and economically marginalized population led to a dual structure in the Islamic movements in Turkey. Although the demands, habits, and strategies of these two compounds have been diverse, Islamic symbolic language united them against the hegemony of Kemalist elites in the symbolic field. This phenomenon led to misinterpretation of Islamic movements as anti-systemic by attributing the demands of the lower classes to the whole movement. Although economically and culturally deprived segments of society seek to challenge the rules of the fields that they are excluded from, upper-class individuals with religious tendencies aimed to increase the value of their symbolic capital to reach better positions in the field of power. Due to the principles of Islam that undermine class differences, the diverse demands of the two groups became blended. Since Islamism is built upon the alliance against the symbolic hegemony of republican elites, academia is one of the fields that Islamic agents perceived as a site of struggle. In order to acquire the right to articulate legitimate categories of vision and division, Islamic habitus instrumentalized academic production. Nevertheless, the changes in the structure of symbolic space gave rise to the individualization of the political meaning of academic activity. The findings of the research showed how young agents have hybrid motivations to pursue academic career. Keywords: Academic capital, cultural capital, field of education, field of academy, Islamic elites, Islamic movements, Islamic habitus, Islamic youth, Islamism, Turkey.
Gender, contested intimacies, and subjectivities in the field of theatre in Turkey
This thesis examines institutional and cultural structures that produce, sustain and normalize gender-based hierarchies and domination in Turkey's theatre field. Drawing upon the semi-structured interviews with 15 theatre professionals working in the field of theatre as an actor, writer, director, designer, or technician, the thesis brings a non-Eurocentric perspective to gender and art literature in the post-#MeToo era and a gender perspective to theatre studies in Turkey. Using the analytical lens of theatrical intimacy, I first argue that the ambiguous discourses and practices surrounding how performers' bodies act in intimate encounters, conceal and reproduce sexual harassment culture in Turkish theatre. Second, intimate encounters in theatre are not in and of themselves empowering or liberating for women and LGBTQIA+ individuals. On the contrary, uncharted territory of intimate encounters renders performers vulnerable to the unexpected forms of sexual harassment and contributes to the reproduction of hegemonic patriarchal conventions in society. Finally, as more women and LGBTQIA+ people share their uncomfortable experiences during theatre performances as well as their hidden and everyday strategies to prevent them, the seemingly progressive but mostly normative conventions become the subject of feminist discussion and intervention and pave the way to a more egalitarian and non-sexist education and production processes in theatre.
Another School is Possible (BBOM): A case of parent co-op school as a claim on alternative educational assemblages
This thesis aims to explore the institutionalization of alternative education in contemporary Turkey through the construction of different educational assemblages based on the educational model developed by Another School is Possible Association (BBOM). Based on 14 interviews with educational professionals and parents who experienced this institutionalization process from the very beginning, this study aims to provide a holistic picture of diverse concerns and experiences of BBOM stakeholders. To reveal the socio-cultural and political factors behind the development of such different educational assemblages, I analyse the educational policies and discourses of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) in contemporary Turkey. Although education in neoliberal times might seem to provide a wide range of possibilities which are adapted to competitive educational purposes, lately emerging educational alternatives demonstrate how a particular group of parents avoid performing typical parental preferences under the present conditions of the Turkish educational system. Therefore, the study documents how their perceptions on education, their subjectivities, and their relations with the collective efforts developed with other parents result in constructing such educational alternatives. Findings point out insightful reflections on the challenges of implementing BBOM's alternative education model mainly due to financial resources and the dichotomy of parents' academic worries versus alternative education. The findings particularly reveal the indications of isolated and exclusive class closure built through parent co-op initiatives.
Opposing trajectories of public Islam in Turkey: a comparative study between the Justice and Labor Platform and Furkan Foundation
This study investigates how and when Islam as a public religion promotes or undermines the public sphere. To that end, it compares two dissident Islamic civil society organizations, Labor and Justice Platform and Furkan Foundation, in terms of their different ways of engagement with Islam in the public sphere, using Habermas's theory of communicative action. My findings suggest that the ultimate impact of Islam as a public religion is contingent upon the adoption of two characteristics by the Islamic group in question: rational-critical debate ethos and deliberative tolerance towards the "other". While these Habermasian insights have been addressed in recent scholarship, I found also that the failures of an inclusive project in political society can turn into invaluable lessons when this project is transferred to civil society: the abortive HAS Party experience predisposed the EAP to become a contributing civil actor to an interconnected public sphere.
Gendered anxieties in urban space: Urban mobility of middle-class women in contemporary Istanbul
With the understanding that space is a complex network of relationships that includes domination and subordination, solidarity, and cooperation at the same time, this comparative sociological research aims to interrogate how gendered anxieties affect middle-class women's mobility in urban space. Through the study of the mobility of middle-class professional women in Istanbul, I aim to assess and analyze the relationships among gender, social class, urban space and mobility. Physical space and social space have a relationship based on mutual construction. In this case, space, gender and class relations mutually and continuously construct each other; they cannot be considered independently. Using qualitative research methods, I had semi-structured in-depth interviews with 15 middle-class women settled in Istanbul. I seek to understand the impact of gendered anxieties on the urban mobility and urban experience of middle-class women, further focusing on the impact of class, and conveying the participants' suggestions for a safer city. I argue that gender and class-based concerns affect women's urban mobility and that this can only change with changes in the legal framework.
At the margins of Turkish poetry field: A Comparative study on the literary transfers of futurism and surrealism (1925-1970)
This study investigates the historical conditions of differentiation in the outcomes of literary transfer processes. To this end, it compares the literary transfers of Futurism and Surrealism into the Turkish poetry field. Drawing on the main insights from Pierre Bourdieu's Field Theory, I construct a theoretical prism, namely, the "triadic prism", which formulates the literary transfer processes through three parameters: the level of field fragmentation, the actors' political autonomy/heteronomy, and the existence of literary networks. By providing a historical sociological analysis of the Turkish poetry field through this triadic prism, I arrive at two significant conclusions. First, the low level of field fragmentation is historically the key to the widespread circulation of the transferred templates. Second, the explanatory potential of the political determinations is found to be limited, and it is concluded that these determinations have to be conjoined by the actors' literary networks and social connectedness. In light of these findings, I critically engage with the theoretically magnified determinative role of political factors on cultural processes. I also propose a genuine inclusion of social networks into the Bourdieusian theoretical framework.
The contemporary changes in subcontracting of Istanbul's apparel industry: An Analysis of syrian refugees' bargaining power in global capitalism
The apparel industry, which has been the driving force of the European economy since the Industrial Revolution, and therefore its Istanbul branch, is deeply tied to the chains of global capitalism. The non-skilled positions in the sector are occupied mainly by minority groups, immigrants with or without documentation. After their migration, Syrian refugees have started to occupy a vital position within this system through subcontracting in the workshops. This fact demonstrates a shift in labor dynamics and population in the textile industry of Turkey. This thesis investigates how the shift of demographic changes has occurred and how it is related to globalization, multi-staged production, and subcontracting in particular. The main aim is to understand and evaluate in which conditions these changes took place and how the former and new-coming workers' bargaining power is established through these changes.
Nomads, animal breeding and agriculture in post-settlement Çukurova
Ottoman Çukurova (historical Cilicia) was a borderland between Anatolia and Syria where the surrounding mountain ranges and the Mediterranean had rendered the region challenging to penetrate for central authorities for centuries. In this setting, various powerholders of different capacities enjoyed autonomy that curtailed state authority in the area. Another major challenge to state control over populations in this region was the high level of human and animal mobility. Çukurova-based nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes constituted a substantial segment of the population. They practiced different forms of seasonal migration with their animals in a large area from Central Anatolia to Syria. In the nineteenth century, imperial and provincial authorities launched a series of operations, including the Reform Division (Fırka-i Islahiye), to enhance the state's power in the region by controlling the movements of local populations. These operations brought comprehensive environmental, socioeconomic, political, and cultural transformations. Nomads and their animals were among the most affected by these transformations. This thesis examines the environmental, socioeconomic, and political transformations that the Çukurova region underwent in the nineteenth century with a particular focus on the experiences of nomadic tribes and their animals by focusing on socioeconomic, political, and environmental entanglements. It demonstrates that animals played a central role in the local transformations and have been integral to numerous political negotiations and conflicts. Animals were more than economic assets; they strongly shaped local cultures, traditions, and habits. The thesis also contextualizes relationships between state agents and tribes, with an emphasis on animal-related events. After settlement and agricultural production gained momentum vis-à-vis nomadism and pastoralism, the relationships between people and animals of Çukurova continued to be important parts and parcels of the regional order, however, in an altered form.
Reading the cinema discussions of 1960s Turkey through political magazines: The cases of yön and ant
This thesis investigates a central discussion of the 1960s Turkish cinema, remembered as "the National Cinema Discussion," which separated the cinema circles into two opposing camps: National Cinema directors versus the cinema critics and writers who came together around the Turkish Cinematheque (founded in 1965). The 1960s corresponded to a period in the country when intellectual discussions pursued in leftist magazines with meaningfully high reach in society had the power to impact how the fine arts were practiced, including theatre, painting, and cinema. The belief in cinema's power of influencing and shaping the masses contributed to the high visibility of the discussions about cinema, its relationship with the state, and its economic structure. These discussions also mirrored how the intellectuals of the period perceived their country and what they wished for its development. Incorporating secondary literature about Turkish cinema and cinema articles and surveys published in two selected leftist magazines of the period, Yön and Ant, this study argues that the cinema discussions of the 1960s are meaningful for understanding the historical development of the intellectual life and discussions in the country. The discussions analyzed show that some fundamental concerns and conflicts of the new Turkish cinema, such as the separation between art cinema and entertainment cinema and the capitalist model of the Turkish cinema sector, existed in the 1960s. The first chapter of the thesis offers a detailed analysis of the National Cinema discussion through the perspectives of the representatives of the two sides of the conflict: Halit Refiğ in the name of directors and Onat Kutlar in the name of the Turkish Cinematheque. The second chapter analyzes and categorizes the discussions pursued through Yön and Ant magazines. The third chapter focuses on three selected movies from three "National Cinema" directors: Bir Türk'e Gönül Verdim (1969) by Halit Refiğ, Kuyu (1968) by Metin Erksan and Bitmeyen Yol (1965) by Duygu Sağıroğlu. The analyses of the movies question whether the ideas and concepts heavily discussed in magazines had an actual impact in films' techniques, cinematography, and stories.
Guney Asya'da matbaa ve İslami modernizm: Nigar dergisi aracılıgıyla urduca matbaa alanının incelenmesi (1922-1947)
This thesis is an attempt to understand Islamic modernism in light of print media in colonial South Asia. The area of focus is reformist ideas and their dissemination through the Urdu print media. The analysis is based on the study of the Nigār magazine. Nigār was edited by Niyaz Fatehpuri. Fatehpuri was one of the prominent Muslim reformers who strongly advocated for the reinterpretation of Islam in light of reason and rationality. Fatehpuri used Nigār to disseminate his ideas on religion. The timeline of the study is 1922-47. 1922 marks the start of Nigār, and in 1947, India gained independence from British rule. Print culture played an essential role as a vehicle for modernization in colonial South Asia. Printing presses were introduced as early as the 1840s and spread across multiple cities and towns in the Indian subcontinent in the following decades. Religious tracts were first among the documents to be reproduced as 'ulamā took over the role of guardians of Islam. This was a result of the consolidation of British rule, which resulted in the extinction of the state structure of Islamic authorities. The 19th century witnessed the growth of a number of revivalist and reform Islamic movements, seeing itself under the image of Western modernity. Fatehpuri found himself close to the ideas and spirit of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, whose philosophy based on naturalism asked for the reconciliation of Islam with science. Print played a huge role in disseminating these reformist ideas. The study attempts to analyze how Niyaz, through Nigār, navigated through the colonial society in which 'ulamā held a strong base. Urdu print was a critical medium of creative expression during the late 19th and 20th centuries. Against the backdrop of colonial rule and the emergent nationalism with various manifestations, we see a transformation in Muslim political and social life and the emergence of a community consciousness. The research is an attempt to understand this Muslim consciousness. It will do so by following the debates in Nigār in the decade (1937-47) leading up to the partition. The decade witnessed extreme political polarization. The thesis also investigates the notion of a unified Indian Muslim identity by analyzing the competing ideas of nationalism. The thesis attempts to contribute to genres of social history, partition studies, religious studies, and print studies.
Monetization processes and changing societal relations in Bursa, 1739-1842
This thesis examines the deep monetization processes in Bursa between 1739 – 1842. Deep monetization is the process of increased use of small denominations of currency and involvement of a large number of social actors in small change. Deep monetization is not a linear process since the use of small denominations has changed over centuries, even decades. Firstly, the thesis underlines the global monetization processes and their relationship with production relations. On the one hand, British, Dutch, and Indian historiographies demonstrate that the deep monetization processes had socioeconomic effects on the society, which shaped the relations of wage labor, media of exchange, and access to coinage. On the other hand, Ottoman historians only use the concept of monetization as a side explanation to support their arguments regarding social, political, and economic transformation in the Empire. No study in Ottoman historiography directly deals with the concept of monetization. Therefore, monetization appears as a blurred concept in the Ottoman studies. This thesis on deep monetization in the Ottoman Empire focuses on Bursa, one of the central hubs of economic activity and cultural exchange throughout the Ottoman era. This thesis will address the situation of individuals from different social strata as actors of deep monetization processes. The thesis discusses how creditor-debtor relations reflected in probate inventories can be utilized in deep monetization studies. Overall, this thesis provides insights into the complex and dynamic changes that occurred in the Ottoman Empire during 1739-1842 and highlights the importance of deep monetization in the development of modern states and societies.
The role and impact of the 1908 Revolution in the socio-political transformation of the Ottoman Empire
By drawing upon the bourgeois revolution theoretical framework, this thesis reveals three crucial aspects of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. First, it identifies the bourgeois actors, comprising both Muslim and non-Muslim capitalists, behind the revolution. Socio-economic changes in the late Ottoman and early Republican eras are often understood as "bureaucracy creating a native bourgeoisie" rather than as a mutual interaction and symbiosis between the Muslim-Turkish bourgeoisie and the state bureaucracy. This thesis challenges this dominant paradigm, showing that, like their non-Muslim counterparts, the Muslim-Turkish bourgeoisie had significant agency and profoundly influenced the political process and policymaking during and after the 1908 Revolution. Second, the thesis identifies the significant contradictions between long-term capital accumulation in the Ottoman Empire and the structures of the regime of Abdulhamid II, explaining how the revolution helped remove obstacles to bourgeois power and capitalist development. Finally, by focusing on the place of the Ottoman Empire in the world economy and geopolitics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the thesis explains the interplay between global and local actors and factors that shaped the processes and outcomes of the Young Turk Revolution.
The translocal lives and communities of Istanbul's Antakyali Rum Church Guardians
This thesis investigates the lived experiences and translocal community networks of Greek Orthodox church guardians in Istanbul, Türkiye, the vast majority of which hail from Arabic- speaking Rum villages in Altınözü and Samandağ districts in Hatay Province. The church guardians and their families are part of interconnected communities that have migrated out to the provincial capital of Antakya, to the economic and cultural centre of Istanbul, and abroad to Europe. As such, I aim to elucidate how their translocal networks have allowed their communities and identities to sustain themselves on the one hand, while also greatly transforming them on the other. While other works have analyzed the broader Antakyalı Rum community in a variety of contexts, this thesis differs by focusing heavily on the testimonies and experiences of church guardians, and by placing them within the translocal network that Antakyalı Rum people have developed and sustained over the past half century. In order to explain not only this intense translocality, but also the impacts of urban regeneration, tourism, inter and intra-faith relations, non-Muslim institutions, and Istanbul and Hatay's contested history and memory, upon church guardian lives, this thesis' chapters are organized along regimes of space: Istanbul, Abroad, and the Homeland. It is my aim that this thesis shows that by dint of their position, church guardians live, work, and pray at sites of intersecting historical and sociological forces, which uniquely hinders and enables their participation in their homeland communities' mobility and transformation.
British-Ottoman press opinion(s) during the Balkan Wars: Unraveling the perception-building practices, fighting discourses, and societal engagements
The Balkan Wars have a multifaceted history that should be explored from different angles and new historiographical perspectives. This thesis focuses on the British and Ottoman press opinion(s) to unravel different discourse- and perception-building practices, propaganda strategies, and social responses during the wars. It aims to vocalize various social and state actors using several receptive channels in the Ottoman Empire and Britain. For this quest, different newspapers will be the core of the research to display how newspapers were used as a common medium by both ruling elites and social actors during the Balkan Wars. Alongside providing a survey on the historical roots of the newspapers in Britain and the Ottoman Empire, the first chapter discusses the concepts of press opinion, public opinion, and constructed discourses in placing itself to explain how newspaper sources were valuable to understanding different perceptions. It argues that there was a symbiotic relationship between social and state actors in navigating press sources during the Balkan Wars. The second chapter provides a case study that explores how the initial phase of the wars affected wartime politics and how people perceived them. It aims to delve into the British-Ottoman encounters through the lenses of perceptions and discursive practices within a comparative setting. In this chapter, the present research applies a discourse-historical approach to unravel varying perceptions and un(der)vocalized discourses of the time. Another purpose of this chapter is to show to what extent international-level politics during the wars can be read from the newspapers and to underscore different aspects that the existing literature does not. In the last chapter, the thesis examines the societal-level engagements in the Ottoman and British cases during the Balkan Wars. It attempts to show how different social groups reacted to the wars through mass political channels such as protests, demonstrations, and donations. It aims to show to what extent people in Britain and the Ottoman Empire became involved in wartime politics on the home front via several channels on the basis of varying discourses and perception-building practices by implementing a comparative inquiry.
New faces of work, new faces of resistance: Instant delivery work in Istanbul
This thesis scrutinizes the work experiences and resistant subjectivities of instant delivery workers, based on interviews with 19 individuals with platform work experience, including a small subset of labor activists, and brief participant observations conducted in a warehouse and at small-scale public demonstrations in Istanbul. Platform-mediated instant delivery work is nested within the specific sector of delivery work and in the trends of the global political economy. By investigating the power relations and mechanisms of control specific to instant delivery work, this study brings insights into the emerging labor landscape and the types and implications of employment relations that are becoming increasingly prevalent. The experience of instant delivery workers hinges on multiple, entangled regimes of power that cannot be reduced to the economic domain but rather intersect with it to generate, sustain, and sometimes challenge a multi-level hierarchy of power relations. Therefore, this thesis further explores how past frameworks of familial and intimate networks of responsibility urge workers to take risks and accept precarious conditions to make what they perceive as a decent living. In this context, characterized by the stark power imbalance between the platforms and the workers, the prospects for pushing for work-related demands through conventional ways of workers' organization and representation are minimal. However, workers consult novel, sometimes tacit, forms of resistance that would complement or, at times, even replace collective outright defiance. Attending to the processes in which workers oscillate and blur the line between individual and collective, explicit and non-explicit forms of resistance, this thesis suggests taking the resistant subjectivities of the workers as a starting point to think about the modalities of power in the contemporary labor landscape in Turkey.
Social class and mobility in the context of forced migration: Experiences of Syrian NGO employees in Türkiye
This thesis examines Syrian NGO employees' migration experiences and mobility trajectories in Türkiye by focusing on pre- and post-migration social class narratives and capital conditions that are predominantly marginalized in the forced migration context. The research aims to shed light not only on the experiences of highly skilled and middle-class backgrounds Syrians in Türkiye but also on the labor conditions of I/NGOs by taking into consideration Syrians as service mediators rather than beneficiaries. Through the qualitative analysis of 15 Syrian NGO employees' stories that work in a total of 7 I/NGOs in Türkiye, the thesis presents how pre-existing economic, social, and cultural capital influence migration experience and generate conversion and acquisition of new forms of capital that paved the way for taking relatively better job positions in I/NGO settings, ability to negotiate refugee label, and shaping aspirations. On the other hand, the findings reveal that lack of sufficient social capital at the beginning of the post-migration period, the lack of recognition for cultural capital, the de-skilling experiences in I/NGOs through a mismatch of skills and tasks, and precarious working conditions pose obstacles for potential social mobility. Therefore, the thesis suggests the concept of "deprived mobility" to the existing literature in which forced migrants can encounter being stuck in underqualified job positions despite highly skilled and middle-class backgrounds and newly acquired local forms of capital in the host country due to the ignoration and lack of recognition of their skills and knowledge, stereotypical attitudes, and labeling.
The transformation of academic labor in Türkiye: Experiences from foundation universities
This thesis examines academics' labor experiences in Istanbul, Türkiye, using semi-structured interviews with 24 academics from 13 foundation universities. It focuses on the impacts of neoliberal colonization of higher education, digitalization, and new academic labor, highlighting labor control, wage inequalities, and exploitation issues. The study explores how academics see themselves, cope with precarity, and experience in a patriarchal, market-driven labor market. It finds significant disparities caused by institutional orientation and broader political and economic contexts. The analysis emphasizes how audit technologies, publication pressures, and performance indicators foster insecurity and erode academic autonomy, commodifying education. It also discusses the differences between teaching and research universities. Findings reveal that academics accept common elements such as performance metrics, publication and project pressure, and the commodification of education across all institutions. However, academics tend to be more satisfied with their conditions in institutions that offer less control and pressure, provide temporal flexibility and freedom, and foster solidarity and communication. This leads to varying responses from academics, as the labor processes in these two types of foundation universities differ. Academics at research universities are generally more satisfied, while those at teaching universities are experiencing high levels of anxiety, stress, and fear due to precarious employment. Similarly, research assistants experience the transformed labor process the most harshly; they work in more uncertain and insecure conditions and are at the bottom of the status hierarchy. Keywords: Academic Labor, Neoliberalism, Higher Education, Foundation Universities, Audit and Performance Metrics, Flexibility, Precarization
Constructing an "Elephant Cage" in Anatolia: The U.S. Airbase in Karamürsel and its impact on social life (1950s-1970s)
In the bipolar world order that emerged after the Second World War, the United States, as the leading power of the Western bloc, established a wide network of military bases across various regions of the world to counter the Soviet Union. Beyond their military functions, these bases also served as instruments through which the U.S. projected its economic and cultural hegemony. This study examines the transformations experienced by Karamürsel, a small Anatolian town hosting an American military base during the Cold War, focusing on the new social and economic order shaped by the U.S. military presence. Drawing on local and national newspapers, school yearbooks, memoirs, and oral testimonies, the thesis demonstrates that the base, established in 1957, had a tangible economic impact by providing significant employment opportunities for the local population and facilitating the spread of American goods into Turkish markets. The American personnel and their families stationed at the base also played a key role in disseminating the American way of life in the region. However, this mission of transmitting American cultural and social norms to host communities during the Cold War did not proceed unchallenged. The newly emerging social and economic order in Karamürsel occasionally gave rise to tensions and conflicts, especially in the field of labor, that proved difficult to contain.
The generosity in futuwwah tradition between the 11th and 15th centuries
This master's thesis investigated the meaning, role, and operation of generosity in the Futuwwah tradition between the 11th-15th centuries, primarily through Futuwwah treatises. Futuwwah, a term associated with a variety of virtues, inspired many popular social movements, especially in the eastern part of the Islamic World. After the establishment of Futuwwah as a term and social organisation, from the 11th century, numerous Futuwwah treatises were written in various parts of the Islamic World. In the Medieval Islamic World, these Futuwwah treatises were addressed to specific Futuwwah groups to teach them good morals, including generosity, and regulate their conduct and ceremonies. In the present thesis, Futuwwah treatises were analysed in chronological order to understand continuity and changes over different historical contexts from the 11th century to the 15th century to understand the function of generosity within Futuwwah organisations. The research revealed that generosity was a central virtue that almost became synonymous with Futuwwah itself. This is because many members of Futuwwah groups were professionals and workers; they were expected to be generous. When Futuwwah tradition became infused with Sufism, these good morals, and in particular generosity, took on a new meaning. Sufi-inspiring Futuwwah treatises often compare the path of Sufism and the path of Futuwwah to present Futuwwah as the more facile and inclusive alternative for lay people in comparison to Sufism, which is hard to follow, but spiritually superior for the elects. In this comparative discourse in Sufi-inspired Futuwwah treatises, generosity plays a role as an alternative way of disciplining the self. In contrast to the Sufi way of holy poverty and abandonment, Futuwwah members were encouraged to be active in worldly professions to earn money for reinvesting in charitable works, such as feeding the poor, hosting travellers, and serving the community. This discourse suggests that even if lay members of society could not practice the hard obligations of Sufism, they could achieve a similar spiritual station by generosity as an alternative means of disciplining the self.
Kentle başa çıkabilmek: İstanbul'daki kürt genç kadınların taktikleri
This thesis analyzes the coping methods implemented by the Kurdish adolescent women, who live in Dolapdere neighborhood in Istanbul, which is predominantly populated by displaced Kurds. Through using their own narratives and theoretical conceptualizations of Henri Lefebvre and Michel De Certeau, I scrutinize the tactics of the Kurdish adolescent girls to appropriate the urban public space. I argue that there is a spatial variation between the space of Dolapdere and the urban public space outside Dolapdere in terms of the dominant nationalist discourses that oppress the daily lives of these women. In line with these discourses, they apply various tactics that create cleavages and breaks within ideologies and that enable them to develop sense of comfort and belonging to the urban public space of Istanbul. This research opens up a space to interrogate the way second generation migrants of the Kurdish community, Kurdish adolescent girls, construct their subjectivities in the discriminatory environment of the city.
Türk televizyonunda sınıf tasviri: İki drama dizisinin orjinal ve yeni yapımlarının karşılaştırılması
This thesis examines how the lifestyles of different classes are portrayed in two Turkish television series,Aşk-ı Memnu and Yaprak Dökümü, through a comparative analysis of their oldand new versions. Notions of Weber?s social status, Bourdieu?s taste, habitus and field, and Lamont?s analysis of morality were employed to understand how class formations wererepresented in the TV series. In addition, Read (2009) and Lazzarato (2009)?s discussions that follow a Foucauldian analysis were used to explain the relationship between class depictions and neoliberal portrayals in two TV series. Content analysis was utilized to investigate this relationship and analyze the established hypotheses. It was argued that the new versions of the TV series would depict neoliberal values more in higher class lifestyles, and episodes that represented lower class lifestyles would not be affected by the changes in the neoliberal era. In addition, the new versions would not portray the morality of lower class lifestyles less, but adjustthe depiction of upper class lifestyles in accordance with the features of the neoliberal era, due to its promotion of profit-maximization, calculation, self-interest and depoliticization. In a parallel vein, a more extensive of upper class lifestyles was expected in the new versions of the TV series. Significant results in support of the established hypotheses were found only with regards to Aşk-ı Memnu. The ways in which Yaprak Dökümü deviates from the perused literature will bediscussed through its unique narration, and the effects of producers? aim to increase ratings.
İşyeri ve hanehalkı kesişiminde ahlak bekçiliği: Denizli'de kadın fabrika işçileri
This thesis examines how women factory workers in Denizli experience and give meaning to their labor through their household and workplace relations. Based on ethnographic research conducted in three factories in Denizli, which has a relatively high rate of female labor force participation in the country, I argue that women factory workers? subjectivities in the workplace are shaped through their religious practices and moral understandings. This research shows how women workers perform various religious practices in the workplace such as praying, wearing headscarves, attending religious meetings through which they give meaning to their labor. Although justifying their work with references to material needs, women workers also try to negotiate a spiritual existence and confirmation of their work on moral and religious grounds. Factory managements seek to control labor via religious and moral practices such as enforcing gender segregation in the workplace, obligation to wear headscarves, intervention in gender relations and a quest to have control over the private lives of women. While the factory management tries to create productive women workers through moral and religious codes and awards, it acts as a moral guardian by penetrating into their households and emotional world. Yet these top-down tactics do not lead to a total subordination. On the contrary, in their search for spiritual fulfillment, women workers, to a certain extent, both consent to and react against these policies through gossiping and creating discourses on being and acting as ?ideal? religious and moral women. And they also use moral guardianism towards management?s practices and towards co-workers at the level of everyday relationships. With this outlook, they actively construct their own moral interpretations and religious models. I analyze how the articulation of all these practices contributes to the shaping of women?s subjectivities at the intersection of the shop floor and the household as breadwinners, responsible mothers, moral and religious persons and workers.Keywords: manufacturing industry, globalization, women‟s labor, household, workplace relations, labor control, subjectivity, moral guardianism, Islam, Denizli, Turkey.
Geç Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nda ipek işçileri: Bursa'nın filatürlerinde toplumsal cinsiyet, emek ve kolektif mücadele
This study provides an examination of the capitalist transformation of the silk industry in Bursa from the viewpoint of its workers. As the Ottoman economy integrated into the world market in the nineteenth century, silk fabric weaving on independent hand looms and artisan workshops declined. Instead, Ottoman and foreign entrepreneurs established many silk-reeling workshops (filatures) in major silk manufacturing centers to meet the demand for raw silk thread from the silk factories in Europe. In order to lower labor costs, these filatures employed young women and children of rural origin, instead of skilled male artisans available in the city. The present study sheds light on the experiences, working conditions and collective struggles of the filature workers in Bursa, a center of silk trade and manufacturing for centuries, based on primary sources including previously untapped archival material. It demonstrates that gender norms which undervalued women?s work in the labor market underlay the boost in local silk production after the 1880s. It presents a challenge to the common argument in the literature that Ottoman women joined the filatures to purchase luxury items for their dowries and suggests that these accounts reflected the perspectives of the factory owners and legitimized the low wages and poor working conditions. Gender ideologies operated not only as instruments of suppression and exploitation, but also as instruments of resistance in Bursa?s silk-reeling sector. During the strike in 1910, the workers mobilized gendered discourses to gather support from the local community and authorities. Lastly, this study presents an analysis of the controversy between the provincial and central government authorities on the labor unrest in 1910 and suggests that the Ottoman State was not a detached entity overarching the struggle between the workers and their employers. Rather, it was one of the grounds upon which this struggle took place. Keywords: Ottoman Empire, Bursa, silk industry, labor activism, labor process, gender
Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnamesi'nde korku: Bir on yedinci yüzyıl Osmanlı Seyahatnamesi'nde siyaset ve tarih yazımı
This thesis explores the narratives of fear in the travelogue of the seventeenth century Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi. Evliya Çelebi's uses of the word "fear" (havf) in the Seyahatnâme (the Book of Travels) is examined to understand how this prominent traveler participated in, observed, and commented upon the seventeenth century Ottoman transformations. In this respect, this research focuses on Evliya Çelebi's own fears and the fears of other political actors which he narrated to discuss how different political actors perceived the seventeenth century transformations and what they feared about their world. Evliya Çelebi's own fears are categorized under four titles: the fears of centrifugal subjects, the fears of supernatural beings, the fear of nature, and the fear of God. Then, this study seeks to understand the most fearful figure, a seventeenth century Ottoman pasha, namely İbşir Mustafa Pasha, in Evliya Çelebi's account. Here the aim is to use a first-person narrative, the Seyahatnâme, as a source of history. With this aim, the narratives of fear are compared with contemporary narrative sources like Îsâ-zâde Târîhi, Abdurrahman Abdi Paşa Vekâyi'-Nâmesi, Târih-i Gılmânî, Târih-i Nâ'ima, and Solak-zâde Tarihi. The results of this study are as follows: First, Evliya Çelebi mostly expresses "worldly" fears, such as the fears of robbers and pashas. Therefore specific historical contexts must be considered in studying the subjects of fear, in this case, the seventeenth-century Ottoman state's politics and limits of its hegemony. This thesis has also shown that Evliya Çelebi's choices in his depiction of fear were not shaped solely by his patronage relations and career path. The shifts in Evliya Çelebi's use of the word "fear" in the case of İbşir Mustafa Pasha show that his personal interests and political views also shaped his interpretations of seventeenth-century Ottoman politics. Keywords: Evliya Çelebi, the Seyahatnâme, fear, havf, the history of emotions, first - person narrative, İbşir Mustafa Pasha, the seventeenth century, transformation, state
Türkiye'de çokkültürcülük: Kültürel çeşitlilik tahayyülleri ve bir açmaz olarak tanıma
This thesis examines how ordinary Turkish citizens perceive and respond to changes throughout the last decade in the cultural politics of the Turkish state regarding the Kurdish question. Based on in-depth interviews with fourteen Turkish Sunni-Muslim individuals, I aim to understand how collective belonging and otherness is imagined by subjects of the dominant identity and what do these narratives tell about identity-based structural inequalities in Turkey. Setting neoliberal multiculturalism as the analytical framework of the study, I take recognition to be a governmental project to reconstruct the political community within the rhetoric of unity-in-diversity. Three pivotal mechanisms of government are discerned to be in operation: Culturalization of politics; demarcation of the public and private spheres as respectively realms of universality and particularity; and differentiation between desirable and undesirable subjectivities via the neoliberal trope of responsible-moral citizen. The resulting explanatory scheme is the conundrum of recognition, intended to delineate that recognition of the Kurdish identity goes hand in hand with its denial according to the extent to which difference is politicized by the Other. Second, this conundrum is daily experienced by Turkish subjects in such ways that Turkishness is affectively reproduced in everyday encounters with the manifestations of Kurdishness, whereby the latter is fantasized as disrupting the otherwise possible wholeness of the nation. It is the main argument of the study that within the institutional, discursive and affective ground at hand, nationalism is functioning in more effective ways to undermine the right-claims of Kurds when coevally reproducing the normativity of Turkishness in the face of politicized group difference.
Göçmen işçinin bedeninin inşası: Federal Almanya'nın 1961 ve 1973 yılları arasında Türkiye'den gelen göçmen işçilerine uyguladığı sağlık muayenesi
This thesis focuses on a distinct moment of Federal Germany's recruitment of migrant labour in the period from 1961 to 1973: the medical selection examinations of labour migrant applicants from Turkey. These examinations, which aimed at the selection of physically fit and healthy labour migrants for the West German labour market, were conducted by West German health officers in so-called 'German recruitment offices' in Istanbul and Ankara between 1961 and 1973. Drawing on in-depth interviews with former labour migrants and examining physicians as well as on a discourse analysis of primary sources dating from the period in question, I concentrate on the question of how in relation to the requirements of industrial labour and public health politics the body of the labour migrant was shaped and defined in the medical examinations. Combining concepts taken from the work of Foucault, constructionist body theory and disability studies, I trace how certain conceptualisations of the labour migrant's body emerged along the lines of health, disease, bodily ability and disability. Furthermore, I analyse how this construction process of the body overlapped in various ways with notions of race and gender. I argue that these examinations were no neutral scientific endeavour. Rather, in accordance with industrial requirements and national health politics, they served as a selection procedure combining inclusionary and exclusionary power mechanisms with the logic of risk management to rationalise, normalise and commodify the labour migrant's body.
Türkiye'deki beden eğitimi sisteminde bedenin tanımlanması (1969-1983)
This thesis focuses on the physical education classes during the initial Ministry of Youth and Sport period (1969-1983) in Turkey from a sociology of the body point of view. Based on a discourse analysis of primary sources and in-depth interviews with physical education teachers and students, this study argues that the founding of the Ministry reflected not only an organizational, but also a discursive shift in the way the body and physical education were defined. As physical education and the body are dynamic, malleable, and ambiguous concepts, this thesis historicizes them and investigates the meanings attached to them by different sites of meaning production. With a theoretical framework that combines social constructionism and existential phenomenology it also uncovers how the bodies in physical education classes experienced, sensed and felt themselves and their surroundings. At least six different ways the body was defined in this period are identified, which are the mindful, mechanistic, nationalist, militarized, gendered, and disabled bodies. Although some of these bodies contrast each other, they existed simultaneously. This was made possible in relation to the needs of power centers, as how physical education and the body were defined enabled these centers to control, mold, and survey the bodies according to their social, political, and economic needs.
Osmanlı halı sanayisinin bir analizi, 1843 - 1914: İşçiler, tüccarlar ve devlet
This study examines the carpet industry across Asia Minor during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It shows that various Central and Western Anatolian towns such as Uşak, Kayseri, Isparta, Niğde, Nevşehir and Sivas were significant carpet production centers working in close cooperation with each other. It also reveals that beginning in the mid-19th century, demand for the Ottoman Empire's carpets thrived in the foreign markets and this sparked various transformations in the industry. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the industry became increasingly export-oriented and this development caused significant changes in the carpet production industry, altered traditional production methods and existing relations of productions. It examines how workers and local merchants reacted to these changes and how they took part in this restructuring. This study also demonstrates that the Ottoman state also played a role in the transformations that took place in the carpet industry. Last, the present analysis aims to make the experiences of female carpet workers visible, who constituted the majority of the carpet industry's work force. It investigates what kinds of gender ideologies were at play in regulating the female carpet workers' relationship with the state and how these ideologies influenced female workers' daily and work experiences. It argues that, especially during the reign of Abdülhamid II (r. 1876-1909), the Ottoman government demonstrated a patriarchal attitude towards female workers, in which a father-daughter kind of a relationship was established between the female workers and the state. Keywords: Ottoman Empire, carpet industry, gender and labor, Uşak, Kayseri, the Hereke Imperial Factory, labor activism
Muhalefet ve iktidar: Türkiye'de devletin İslamcı eleştirisinin 1990'lardan bu yana dönüşümü
This thesis explores the transformation of the Islamic political thought in Turkey since the 1990s from a dissenting ideology which criticizes the existing state establishment to a state-centric worldview integrated into the existing political system. The study focusses on an Islamic political magazine of the 1990s, Yeni Zemin, and the later writings of its major authors who are key members of the Islamic intelligentsia in Turkey. The thesis argues that although the moderation of Islamist critique of the state establishment can be traced back to the aftermath of February 28 military intervention, the longevity of the AKP rule and the party's ability to integrate both different Islamic social groups and Muslim intellectuals into the existing socio-political system is more decisive in the ideological moderation process. The content-based analysis of the writings of Muslim intellectuals covers three different periods. First, the Islamic political thought of the mid-1990s is explored through a close reading of Yeni Zemin whose main editorial line revolves around offering a radical opposition to the existing political system by invoking liberal democratic concepts. Second, a scrutiny of the writings of major Yeni Zemin authors in the aftermath of February 28 (1998-2004) singles out this event and its aftermath as the starting point of the moderation of the Islamist critique of the state. Finally, the same intellectuals are examined in the period between 2008 and 2014 in which the AKP consolidated its political power as Turkey's ruling party. The analysis shows that the duration of the AKP rule brings forth the crystallization of ideological moderation among intellectuals close to the party.
Kürt kadınlarının yerel siyasete katılımı: Nusaybin örneği
This thesis focuses on the political participation of Kurdish women in Nusaybin. Based both on an analysis of programs and statutes of pro-Kurdish political parties, and in-depth interviews conducted in Nusaybin with politically active women, this thesis claims that the political mobilization of Kurdish women cannot be solely explained by the new opportunities provided by the Kurdish political movement since this leaves women, who do not join the movement, out of our sight. Instead, this study argues that, along with the Kurdish movement's gender policies, women's very own struggle is essential in explaining Kurdish women's participation in local politics. Furthermore, this thesis attempts to reveal the impact of ideology and the Kurdish movement's gender policy on women's political participation within a dialogue with the social movements, new social movements, and cultural opportunity structure literatures. The analysis of the interviews is structured so that they reflect women's experiences in politics and the relationships these women establish with various actors in Nusaybin's political arena such as politically active men, the state, and the municipality. Although individual stories of women reflect a change in gender roles brought by their engagement with politics, a significant transformation of gender roles in Nusaybin seems still far from sight.
İstanbul'daki feminist avukatlar: Hukuksal olanla hukuksal olmayan arasındaki sınırlar üzerine yeniden düşünmek
This thesis scrutinizes the inclusion, approaches, and roles of feminist lawyers in İstanbul to the legal field through law-making and litigation processes. Although feminist lawyers are trained in law, which claims itself to be neutral and equally distant to all citizens, they do not only exist as legal experts and lawyers in the legal field, but also as activists. This study demonstrates that feminist lawyers maintain their struggle without abandoning any of the three (legal expertise, lawyering, activism) and their existence harbors unique potentials and conundrums, without adhering to binary oppositions between lawyering and activism, and the legal and non-legal. Based on the interviews with feminist lawyers and observations in the meetings with women's organizations, first, I historicize how law is constituted as a field of struggle by women. By doing so, I explain how law became a modifiable and highly-contested field of struggle, as well as women's different focuses and modes of solidarity. Following that, I trace how feminist lawyers' legal expertise, lawyering experiences, and activism intermingle throughout their relations with state institutions, authorities, and developments in the transnational arena. Lastly, I elaborate how they maintain their activism and lawyering in the court rooms, along with their experiences and strategies.
İstanbul'da yaşayan işçi sınıfı hanelerinin proleterleşme süreçleri ve yeterlililik düzeyinde ürettikleri geçim stratejileri
This study analyzes the proletarianization processes of low-income families who are migrated to İstanbul in different periods and depicts how it is possible for low-income households by only relying heavily on subsistence activities to prosper in İstanbul in the harsh conditions of neoliberalism. This thesis takes the household as a unit of analysis and draws out its conclusions by focusing on the life-stories of both female and male adult members of the households. The existing literature argues that the social transfers provided by the state and extended family members of the household, options for obtaining non-wage incomes and informal housing opportunities are the prominent social and economic mechanisms that ease the adaptation process of families, confers the chances of getting by in the city and also has a substantial impact on the proletarianization process of low-income households. The empirical findings of this thesis allows for testing the relevance of these assumptions for low-income families residing in İstanbul in the last decade. This thesis argues that the migration period has a minor impact in terms experiencing proletarianization. Supplemental non-wage income related activities and informal housing options has depleted in İstanbul for low-income families. The social transfers mostly provided by the state have a partial contribution in the household economy. The primary sources for low-income households to prosper in the city has become wage related activities, capacity to increase level of indebtedness and maintenance of the reproduction of the household unit which is done by female members of the households. Keywords: Household, Migration period, Proletarianization, Neoliberalism, Wage work, Indebtedness, The role of women
İhtiyatlı talip: Leonid Ilyiç Brejnev ve Kremlin'de siyaset sanatı
This study investigates the role of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev in the 1964 Coup and his consolidation of power after the ouster of Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev. Mostly under the influence of the stagnation interpretation of his rule, Brezhnev's role in the Khrushchev's removal was underestimated, and he was depicted as a mediocre politician who could not take any important decision without consulting his colleagues. However, it is necessary to make a division between the "early" and "late" Brezhnevs. He was in power for eighteen years and suffered serious health problems; thus it is very natural that his deteriorated health affected his performance and policy-making role in his last nine years in power. Hence, I analyze the "early" Brezhnev to understand how he overthrew his patron in 1964 and consolidated his power by eliminating his rivals over almost one decade. Contrary to the general view depicting Brezhnev as a vain and weak figure, he was one of the main initiators of the 1964 coup and able to keep power skillfully almost until his death.
Yeşilçam melodramlarında sakatlık metaforu ve normun kuruluşu (1960-1980)
This study seeks to problematize the recurring images of disability in Yeşilçam melodramas produced between the years 1960-1980, a period known as the "golden age" of Yeşilçam film-making. After determining the number of films with disabled protagonists and main plotlines which make use of stereotypical representations of the disabled characters, the study sets out to relate the frequency of these images to the socio-historical context of production and to the genre itself. The study first situates the sensational effect disabled imagery musters in the narrative structure and genre conventions. In order to analyze how such sensation is evoked and how the disability is rendered a metaphor, the study then situates the meanings attached to disability within the eugenicist discourse of Kemalist modernization project. The film analyses presented in this study suggest that it is the fusion of the Yeşilçam melodramas narrative framework and the meanings assigned to gender roles and to body that render the melodramatic disability legible, relatable and sensational. The study asserts that aside from the versatile functionality that figurative disability provides within the narrative structure and aesthetics of melodrama genre, images of disability in intricate relationship with images of sexuality in Yeşilçam melodramas both delineate and transgress the norms set forth by nationalist modernization project, by standing for absolute and immutable difference.
Sağlık ve varlık arayışında iş-yaşam sınırının bulanıklaşması: Türkiye'de ağ pazarlama örneği
This thesis focuses on a qualitative analysis of a network direct selling organization (DSO) – a form of multilevel marketing which sells its products through a network of distributors. Through a case study of a DSO in Turkey marketing nutritional supplements and weight management products, this thesis explores the labor process, forms of labor control, and formation of distributors' subjectivities. Firstly, by looking at the practices of consuming, advertising, selling and recruiting, it demonstrates that social relations and bodies of the DSO employees are integrated into the capital accumulation process to a very significant extent. Secondly, it investigates how direct sellers reconstitute themselves as neoliberal, autonomous and desiring subjects. Finally, this study scrutinizes self-control and network surveillance mechanisms, which help to keep direct sellers active in the labor process.
Çin-Pakistan ekonomik koridorunun politikaları
China's presence in the Global South has increased dramatically in a span of a decade. The discourse of mutual benefit and nonintervention has found huge attraction in the developing world that is now facing the consequences of Western interventions. However, to what extent does Chinese engagement in the developing world stays true to these principles needs to be evaluated in terms of its effects on the political economic structures of the host nations. To this end, I propose a framework to understand the implications of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor on the political economic structure of Pakistan. This thesis begins with an investigation of the history and dynamics of China's development and internationalization, the political economic structure of Pakistan (specifically in the areas of industrialization and infrastructure development), and different forms of foreign assistance that Pakistan has received over the years. This thesis then analyzes how China and CPEC interacts with the political economic realities of Pakistan. Firstly, the study Pakistan's history of regionalism shows that over the years, developmental mission of the central state has created deep-seated regionalism in Pakistan. My study shows that CPEC is deepening such cleavages. The regionalist forces have opposed the project in two broad ways: through demanding greater share in the project or through completely rejecting the interventions. Secondly, I analyze the lop-sided civil-military relations in Pakistan and conclude that Chinese engagement in Pakistan is leading to a tighter control of military over civilian and economic matters relating to CPEC. Lastly, based on the case study of Sahiwal Power Project, and my historical analysis of state-labor relations in Pakistan and China's industrialization model, I conclude that CPEC means little for the working class of Pakistan. The informalized and unskilled labor workforce of Pakistan has found its place only in the construction stages of the CPEC projects. Keywords: China, Pakistan, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, One Belt One Road (OBOR) Initiative, South-South Cooperation, Infrastructure, Military, Regionalism, Labor.
Türkiyedeki aile hekimliği uygulamasına hekim-hasta ilişkileri üzerinden bakmak aile hekimlerinin görüşleri üzerinden
Bu araştırma İstanbul'da aile hekimi olarak çalışmış ya da çalışmakta olan 18 hekimle yapılan mülakatlar ve iki farklı Aile Sağlığı merkezinde gerçekleştirilen gözlem temel alınarak yapılmıştır. Araştırmanın amacı, birinci basamak sağlık hizmetlerinde gerçekleştirilen radikal değişime aile hekimlerinin nasıl yaklaştığını araştırmaktır. Aile Hekimliği Uygulaması'yla beraber, pratisyen hekimler, verilen kısa eğitimler neticesinde aile hekimi oldular ve hem yönetici hem de hekimlik yapmak üzere, Aile Sağlığı Merkezleri'nde çalışmaya başladılar. Sorumluluklarına idari ve yönetimsel bir takım görevler eklendi ve böylece, tek görevleri hekimlik olmaktan çıktı. Aile hekimleri bir taraftan yönetimsel ve ekonomik otonomi kazanırken; diğer taraftan da özerklik kaybı tartışmalarına neden olan performans sistemiyle aile hekiminin emeği artan bir denetime tabii tutuldu. Öte yandan, Sağlıkta Dönüşüm Programı sonrasındaki Yeni Kamu Yönetimi uygulamaları ve Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi'nin sağlıktaki popülist politikaları ile birlikte, hasta hakları ve hasta memnuniyetine verilen önem arttı. Böylece hastalar tüketiciye/müşteriye dönüşürken, birinci basamaktaki hekim ve hasta ilişkileri de yeniden şekillendi. Bu tez, sağlık hizmetlerindeki bu neoliberal ve popülist girişimlerin, aile hekimlerinin görüşleri doğrultusunda, Aile Sağlığı Merkezleri'ndeki gündelik rutini ve hekim-hasta ilişkisini nasıl etkilediğini göstermeye çalışmaktadır.
Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda medrese öğrencilerinin askere alınma meselesi
This study examines the issue of the military service of religious students in the Ottoman Empire. Students enrolled in medreses could gain exemption from service. In the first decades of the system, religious students had to pass an annual "conscription examination" before a commission of officials in order to receive their exemption. In 1892, Sultan Abdulhamid II suspended these examinations and granted all religious students indefinite exemption. On the surface, this measure was taken in response to the public resentment caused by an attempt by the authorities in Istanbul to deport religious students from the provinces. However, this thesis argues that the policy of exemption was part of the regime's strategy. It was meant to gain popular support in the face of growing opposition in the 1890s. The policy of indefinite exemption was reversed after the Young Turks rose to power with a vision of strict social control. This triggered much resentment and resistance among the religious students and were a major factor in their participation in an uprising in the imperial capital in April 1909, known as the 31 March Incident. This thesis argues that the suppression of the uprising gave the new regime the opportunity to solidify its strict control over society. As such, this is a study of the evolution of Ottoman state-society relations through the lens of the religious students' military service. However, it also shows that the Ottoman state was not monolithic. Instead, different branches of the state sought to pursue their own agenda.
Yeni orta sınıf velilerin Türk eğitim sistemi alanında sınıfsal yeniden üretim stratejileri
This study aims to reveal the class strategies of the new middle class (NMC) parents in the field of Turkish education system in Istanbul. The NMC parents engage in schooling process to increase academic success, and social mobility chances of their children as education is a central sustaining mechanism of class reproduction from the perspectives of middle class families. Schooling is an overemphasized practice for parents in their struggle to protect class privilege in the broader social and economic context in which middle-class identities of families are continuously under threat. The lack of the sense of security, the tension of high cultural capital with the shaky ground of economic capital, appear as significant determinants of the relationship between NMC parents, children, and education. The rapid and immense privatization of education contributed to the sense of insecurity and worries of NMC parents for their children's social mobility. Against this background, this study focuses on the reproduction strategies of the NMC parents. Drawing on three years of in-depth interviews with the students and parents from a middle class background, it first shows that NMC parents strategically enroll their children in a public school in a gated community and transform the schools through their available resources rather than paying for private schools. In doing so, they create "private-school-like spaces" in public schools together with other NMC parents. In other words, by doing so, parents from similar socioeconomic background creates a more homogenous school environment where they can interfere and transform conditions and opportunities of the school by using their resources. The study also documents how NMC parents engage in their children's schooling and organize the childrearing process as a whole to empower mobility chances of their children. In exploring these issues, the study particularly reveals the strategic use of the intergenerational closure, relations among parents, lobbying activities by this group. Key Words: class strategies, education, new middle class, privatization, school choice.
Sakatlık ve anneliği yeniden düşünmek: Sağır çocukları olan annelerin deneyimleri
The welfare and healthcare structures and hegemonic social and cultural discourses in Turkey inform mothers' understandings of deafness. First, by laying out mothers' experiences of medical procedures including diagnoses, hearing tests, hearing aids and cochlear implantation in settings such as hospitals, rehabilitation services, and schools, this thesis examines how mothers make sense of disability in their encounters with medical and rehabilitative experts, school teachers, doctors and family members. Second, this thesis also examines how mothering experience is transformed in relation to caring experience. I investigate mothers' experiences at two levels: I examine the mechanisms through which mothers are reproduced as the main caregiver for disabled children and how mothers, doctors, medical and rehabilitative experts, teachers and family members reproduce the idea that women are the primary caregivers for the disabled. Second, I tease out how inadequate healthcare services and unequal division of care labor in the family push these women to engage in public advocacy concerning the rights of their disabled children. Drawing on the mothers' advocacy work in the "Association for Families" (AF), which was founded by mothers in 2004, I analyze how mothers translate their own difficulties in medical and educational settings into a struggle for improved services.
Tanzimat kurumları aracılığıyla pazarlık: Geç Dönem Osmanlı imparatorluğunda Bosna Meclis-i Umumisi örneği
This thesis examines the consolidation of the Bosnian General Council after the promulgation of the Provincial Regulation in 1867. It focuses on relations between the council representatives and different segments of the state mechanism—local state officials and the Council of State or Conseil d'État (Şura-yı Devlet)—in the form of requests, offers and responses negotiating the resolution of socio-economic, educational, security-related, and infrastructural problems. The study considers the relevance to council functioning of socio-spatial contexts and historical temporalities—including a comparison of the Bosnian council with those of Crete, Sivas, and Trabzon—and looks at the functioning of the council in terms of its role as a modernizing institution of governance. Set in the context of the adaptation of the region and (newly created) province of Bosnia to the Tanzimat reforms, the general council was established with the aim of promoting development in the territory. The provincial councils are generally overlooked in the literature because of their lack of executive powers, yet the council in Bosnia is here found to have been a significant administrative organ that functioned quite well, both in terms on the program of imperial administration and in tacking immediate problems. Although some deeper, structural issues were avoided, the strategic location of this province effectively gave the council representatives considerable leverage with the center. This becomes evident in the comparative case study with the differences between the four provinces considered; indeed, various dependent variables shaped the agendas and fortunes of these councils. Regarding the pressing issue of civic and infrastructural development in the struggling empire, this research also claims that the council in Bosnia acted as a state-supported institution for the replacement of the deficient waqfs and Ayans, which had been losing ground during the nineteenth century as a result of the empire-wide financial reforms aimed at fiscal centralization. Inspection of the specific cases adjudged by the Bosnian council reveals that it promoted a donation-based economy for local development by dividing the burden of projects among many rather than a few. This enabled the central government to undermine the local powerholders, making the Ottoman central government a major actor in Bosnia's development through its controlling mechanism. Finally, therefore, this study presents a challenge to the standard assumption that the provincial general councils were ineffective and unimportant institutions. Keywords: Bosnia, the Tanzimat, provincial general councils, Ottoman central administration, infrastructural development, negotiation.
Türkiye'de Kürtaj: Gebelik kaybı sürecine doğum-teşvik politikaları ve sağlık çalışanları üzerinden bakmak
This thesis aims to explore women's voluntary and involuntary abortion experiences in Turkey. Based on participant observation in a private clinic for over six months and 13 interviews with medical professionals and women who experienced spontaneous abortion, this study aims to shed light on the political and social factors that inform pregnancy loss process. To reveal the political factors, I analyse the population policies, legal amendments on reproduction in Turkey, and pronatal discourses of Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) in contemporary Turkey. In addition to this, I explore how medical professionals' ethical approach towards abortion inform this process. Although legal code in Turkey allows women to have voluntary abortion in ten weeks of gestation, a great majority of the clinicians avoid performing voluntary abortion because of their moral stance towards abortion. Therefore, secondly, through an ethnographic research in a private hospital, I investigate how personal position of the obstetricians, delivery midwives and nurses can inform their medical practices. Lastly, I analyse women's narratives of pregnancy loss, their perceptions on motherhood and reproduction, and their relations with their bodies during post-pregnancy loss period.
Geç dönem Osmanlı Irakında emprovizasyon ve teknoloji arasında sulama: Hindiye Barajı 1890-1914
This thesis examines the role of irrigation practices in the Ottoman centralization attempts in Iraq between the years 1890 and 1914. It questions the ways in which the irrigation infrastructures served and/or opposed the political and economic interests of the Ottoman central power in the Iraqi provinces. In doing so, the research focuses on the Hindiya Barrage which was one of the largest-scale irrigation projects across the Ottoman Middle East in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The thesis basically examines the building process of the Barrage from the point of view of the Ottoman state, benefiting from official correspondence, local petitions, in addition to some British newspapers, and the memoirs of the Ottoman-Iraqi officials in order to trace the dynamics of the center-periphery and state-society relationships. Moreover, this study aims to bring an environmental perspective to the ways in which water resources were organized and used by the Ottoman administration through the construction of the Barrage.