scholarly journals “Blue Homeland” and Cyprus: The “Survival of the State” Coalition and Turkey’s Changing Geopolitical Doctrine in the Eastern Mediterranean

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-471
Author(s):  
Nikos Moudouros
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The State ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Northern Cyprus ◽  
Turkish Politics ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Turkish Cypriot ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Ideological Construction

The importance of the Eastern Mediterranean for the Turkish state is diachronic. In recent years, however, a renewed interest of Ankara is being recorded as a result of the developments in the energy sphere. This is expressed through various forms of interventionist policy of Turkey in the area. This article examines the reshaping of Turkeys geopolitical dogma and its connection with Turkish perception of the Eastern Mediterranean. It examines the impact of the failed coup attempt in 2016 on the ruling power bloc and its reflections in the Turkish geopolitical doctrine. In this framework the article explores the reinstatement of the need for survival of the state ( devletin bekası ) as a result of the reshaping of the ruling coalition and the legitimisation of the attempt to strengthen the authority of the state. At the same time, the ideological construction of the Eastern Mediterranean is important, as it can reveal the process of construction of security issues or the instrumentalisation of real threats through which geopolitical orientation is reshaped and specific policies are implemented. This study consequently reviews the identification of the Eastern Mediterranean with a wider hostile region and analyses the functioning of the blue homeland concept as a legitimising axis of Turkish politics. The concept of blue homeland is examined in conjunction with internal developments in Turkey and especially the change of balance in the power bloc. Finally, the last part of the article analyses the ideological legitimisation of the blue homeland concept in Turkeys strategy for the Eastern Mediterranean. Through these dynamics, the change in Ankaras perception of the Turkish Cypriot community and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is also identified.

Religion and Politics in Contemporary Turkey

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ateş Altınordu
Keyword(s):  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Political Incorporation ◽  
Turkish Politics ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Islamic Parties ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Religion and secularism have been central threads in Turkish politics throughout the history of the republic. This chapter focuses on three important aspects of the relationship between religion and politics in contemporary Turkey. First, it explores the political functions of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a government agency that has served as the primary means for the implementation of the religious policies of the Turkish state. Second, it investigates the relations between Islamic communities, political parties, and the state and argues that the distinction between official and unofficial Islam that has informed much of the work on the Turkish religious field must be strongly qualified. Finally, the author focuses on the trajectory of political Islam in Turkey, critically reviewing the literature on the rise, political incorporation, and authoritarian turn of Islamic parties. The conclusion emphasizes the need for studies investigating the impact of politics on religiosity in Turkish society.

scholarly journals Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti`nde Okutulan Kıbrıs Tarihi Ders Kitaplarındaki “Tarih Öncesi Çağlar” Ünitelerinin İçerik Analizi / Content Analysis of Units on "Prehistoric Ages" of Cyprus History Course Books in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Efdal Özkul ◽  
Gülcan Faika Ülvay
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Northern Cyprus ◽  
Turkish Cypriot ◽  
Qualitative Part ◽  
History Book

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>This study is based on the content analysis of the units on pre-historic periods of Cyprus History, Book 1 used in secondary schools between 2004 and 2009 and of Turkish Cypriot History, 6th Grade Books used for the secondary schools between 2009 and 2016. Mixed research methods, which compromises qualitative and quantitative research method, was used in this study. The qualitative part of the study includes the examination of the units on prehistoric ages in the textbooks according to criteria such as concepts, skills and visuals. In the quantitative part of the study, it has been consulted 67 teachers who are able to give a history lesson in secondary schools. According to the findings obtained from the study, it is possible to say that the opinions of the teachers with regard to the Cyprus History, Book I between 2004-2009 are more positive than 6th Grade Books of Cyprus History between 2009-2016. Additionally, it was seen that there were missing points in the units on pre-historic periods of the said course books in terms of concepts, skills and visuals. </p><p><strong>Öz</strong></p><p>Çalışmada 2004-2009 yılları arasında orta dereceli okullarda okutulan Kıbrıs Tarihi 1. Kitap ile 2009-2016 yılları arasında orta dereceli okullarda okutulan Kıbrıs Türk Tarihi 6. Sınıf ders kitaplarının tarih öncesi devirlerini içeren ünitelerinin içerik açısından değerlendirilmesi esas alınmıştır. Çalışmada nitel ve nicel araştırma yöntemlerini içerisine alan karma araştırma modeli kullanılmıştır. Çalışmanın nitel bölümünde ders kitapları içerisinde yer alan tarih öncesi çağları içeren ünitelerin kavramlar, beceriler ve görseller gibi kriterler doğrultusunda incelenmesi yer almaktadır. Araştırmanın nicel bölümünde ise orta dereceli okullarda tarih dersi verebilecek niteliklere sahip 67 öğretmenin görüşüne başvurulmuştur. Çalışmanın sonucunda elde edilen bulgulara göre 2004-2009 Kıbrıs Tarihi 1. Kitap ders kitabına ait öğretmen görüşlerinin 2009-2016 Kıbrıs Türk Tarihi 6. Sınıf ders kitabı öğretmen görüşlerine göre daha olumlu olduğunu söylemek mümkündür. Ayrıca söz konusu ders kitaplarının tarih öncesi devirleri içeren ünitelerinde kavramlar, beceriler ve görseller açısından eksikliklerin yer aldığı görülmektedir.</p>

Floating Sophia, Polarizing to Abeyance, Waqf-izing the State

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Murat Akan
Keyword(s):  
Political Context ◽  
The State ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Present Stage ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current State ◽  
Turkish Politics ◽  
Hagia Sophia ◽  
Turkish State

Abstract The 2020 ‘mosque-ing’ of Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia) shook a cornerstone of the Turkish Republican tradition. I lay out the immediate political context, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the content of five court decisions that built up to the mosque-ing, and what these show about the current state of secularism, democracy and institutions in Turkey. I argue that the Ayasofya episode is a case of polarization to the point of abeyance and waqf-izing the Turkish state. Evaluating the episode in light of the past decade of Turkish politics, I propose that it is the present stage of a trajectory from the politics of modernity to the anti-politics of abeyance, and that the midpoint of this trajectory is the politics of ‘multiple modernities’. It is time to lay to rest the wave of conservative epistemologies emerging from Shmuel Eisenstadt’s ‘multiple modernities’.

Terrorism and State Sponsorship in World Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 493-515
Author(s):  
David B. Carter ◽  
Saurabh Pant
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Work ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Terrorist Group ◽  
Target State ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
State Sponsorship ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

The state sponsorship of terrorist groups poses significant risks to international security. Accordingly, a growing body of scholarship focuses on understanding different aspects of the relationship between the patron state, the sponsored terrorist group, and the target state. This chapter first reviews the findings and arguments in this literature, exploring both the theoretical and empirical work over the strategic dynamics of and the effects of state support. Existing research contains numerous insights and provides some counterintuitive advances to our understanding of the different manifestations of sponsorship, the rationale for sponsorship, and the impact of sponsorship on both the terrorist group and the target state. Yet, there is much more work that remains to be done in this field. Specifically, we propose that further study on the connections between sponsorship and other important security issues in world politics is necessary to better understand the broader role that sponsorship plays in international relations. To promote this end, we empirically demonstrate the connection between territorial disputes, the state sponsorship of militant groups, and the onset of interstate conflict. This evidence is preliminary but opens a potentially promising new avenue for research on the effects of state sponsorship of terrorist groups.

scholarly journals A General Look on the Impact of Turkish Horror Movies: An Exploratory Study on the Opinions of Youth on Horror Movies

SAGE Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 215824402097970
Author(s):  
Vali Gjinali ◽  
Elif Asude Tunca
Keyword(s):  
Horror Films ◽  
Special Effect ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Northern Cyprus ◽  
Exploratory Survey ◽  
Turkish Cinema ◽  
Turkish University Students ◽  
The Impact

This study aims to examine young Turkish university students’ perceptions on horror movies and the impact of this genre on them. Also, this study aims to gain an understanding of the role of makeup and special effect makeup in horror movies for this particular audience. An exploratory survey was conducted with 1,000 randomly selected participants 18 years and older who were students studying at five universities in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Findings suggest that 70.4% of the respondents prefer watching supernatural horror films where the djinn was reported to be the most feared religious horror character; 86.4% of women and 65.8% of men reported supernatural events as scary. With regard to the importance of makeup in horror movies, 67.1% females and 53.9% males reported that makeup in horror movies was very important, where 26.9% preferred blood as a special effect, 51.1% reported that hand-based makeup was more acceptable, and 65.4% indicated that PC-supported makeup would never replace hand-based makeup. These findings suggest that although there is a potential inclination to watch the horror movie genre, which is a very new genre in Turkish cinema as well as the makeup and special effects used in horror movies, specifically djinn makeup appears to be of importance for the young Turkish film audiences.

scholarly journals Northern Cyprus as an ‘inner neighbour’: A critical analysis of European Union enlargement in Cyprus

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Casaglia
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Eu Enlargement ◽  
Negotiation Process ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Union Enlargement ◽  
Northern Cyprus ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Turkish Cypriot ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Eu

This article analyses the impact of Cyprus’s accession to the European Union (EU) on the northern part of the island, and tackles the political actorness of the EU with regard to the enduring Cypriot conflict. Much literature has critically analysed the EU enlargement process, underlining its imperialistic features and its problematic nature. At the same time, scholars have highlighted the EU’s difficulties in acting as a political actor and its impact on situations of ethno-national conflict. This article brings together these critical aspects by analysing them in the peculiar context of Cyprus. It retraces the negotiation process and the Turkish Cypriots’ in/visibility throughout it, and presents research conducted following Cyprus’s accession in three different periods between 2008 and 2015. We propose an interpretation of Northern Cyprus as an ‘inner neighbour’ of the EU, because of its anomalous and liminal status, the suspended application of the acquis communautaire, the unresolved conflict and the ambiguity of the border management of the Green Line, the line of partition between north and south. All these problematic features of Northern Cyprus’s situation are examined in detail to identify the unique position of this entity within the EU. In addition to this, and supporting the importance of a bottom-up understanding of the EU’s normative and symbolic projection, the article presents the opinions of Turkish Cypriot citizens about their expectations before and after 2004, and how their ideas and imaginaries related to the EU have evolved and interacted with the process of Europeanisation.

scholarly journals The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus as an Example of a Non-Recognized State

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 149-160
Author(s):  
Przemysław Osiewicz
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Northern Cyprus

The issue of Cyprus remains one of the longest unregulated international dis­putes. For nearly half a century of the island’s de facto division, it has been one of the factors destabilizing the situation in the eastern Mediterranean. It has periodically led to tensions, not only between members of the two Cypriot communities, the Greek and Turkish Cypriots, but also between Greece and Turkey, and finally, Turkey and the European Union. The purpose of this article was to present the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus as an exam­ple of a so-called unrecognized state and to assign it to an appropriate type of unrecognized states. The selected case was examined on the basis of the attributes of an unrecognized state, formulated by a leading researcher of this issue, Nina Caspersen, and a selected typology of unrecognized states.

scholarly journals The Cyprus Issue: Reflection on TRNC

2012 ◽  
pp. 137-146
Author(s):  
Md Ataur Rahman Biswas
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Sea ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Northern Cyprus ◽  
Strategic Location ◽  
Of Greece

Cyprus is a Eurasian island country located in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and Lebanon and north of Egypt. Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. The earliest known human activity on the island dates back to around the 10th millennium BC. At a strategic location in the Middle East, Cyprus has been occupied by several major powers, including the empires of the Hittites, Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Rashidun and Umayyad Arab caliphates, Lusignans, Venetians, and Ottomans. Settled by Mycenean Greeks in the 2nd millennium BCE, the island also experienced long periods of Greek rule under the Ptolemaic Egyptians and the Byzantines. In 333 BC, Alexander the Great conquered the island from the Persians. The Ottoman Empire conquered the island in 1571 and it remained under Ottoman control for over three centuries. It was placed under British administration in 1878 until it was granted independence in 1960, becoming a member of the Commonwealth the following year. In this paper an attempt is made to discuss the details about the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) commonly called Northern Cyprus, which is a self-declared state that comprises the northeastern part of the island of Cyprus recognized only by Turkey and the problems associated with it. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/afj.v4i0.12937 The Arts Faculty Journal Vol.4 July 2010-June 2011 pp.137-146

The Impact of Aid on the Economy of Northern Cyprus

2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmet Özyigit
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Production ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Buffer Zone ◽  
The Self ◽  
Small Islands ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Northern Cyprus ◽  
The World ◽  
Mediterranean Island ◽  
The Impact

Since 1974, U.N. peacekeepers on the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus have patrolled a buffer zone that divides the Greek-leaning, government-controlled south from the northern third, the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). The economy of Northern Cyprus resembles that of other small islands with negligible industrial production that rely on the service sector to generate income. What makes Northern Cyprus unique, however, is that the rest of the world does not acknowledge it as a separate political entity. This limits economic functions because the “country” cannot trade freely and depends on Turkey, the only nation to formally recognize Northern Cyprus.

scholarly journals A theoretical approach to the Cyprus Problem: Neoclassical Realism with Neoliberalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-59
Author(s):  
Nikos Lekakis
Keyword(s):  
International System ◽  
Small States ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Hard Power ◽  
Greek Cypriot ◽  
Northern Cyprus ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Republic Of Cyprus ◽  
Turkish Cypriot ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract This paper, which covers the period of the 2004 Annan Plan and its rejection to date, places the Cyprus Problem in an International Relations theoretic framework. It searches for a “foreign policy outcome,” essentially a decision by the leaders of the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities, to politically reunite these two communities under the auspices of the UN. The paper provides a synthesis of the neo-liberal and the neoclassical realist paradigms, aiming to better interpret the existing experience and to shed light on the prospect of a future solution to the problem. The strategic environment for the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) is ‘permissive’ because the message sent by the international system for reunification does not require the use of hard power. The leaders of the two communities play a key role, although the strategic political culture in small states such as the TRNC is not developed and state-society relations are underdeveloped. Also, the civil society at large can play a role in influencing the leaders' images regarding the reunification opportunity.

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