Kürk Mantolu Madonna is a love story written in Turkish language by Sabahattin Ali, a Turkish journalist, poet and writer who is remembered for his Leftist political stance and articulated...Show moreKürk Mantolu Madonna is a love story written in Turkish language by Sabahattin Ali, a Turkish journalist, poet and writer who is remembered for his Leftist political stance and articulated criticism towards the Turkish Republic’s Kemalist one-party state. One of the most interesting aspects of Kürk Mantolu Madonna is that it was written over seven decades ago but over the last decade or so it has become extremely popular, exemplified by a myriad of posts about the novel on social media, in Turkey. This thesis is intrigued by the sudden, unexpected and unprecedented nature of the novel’s current becoming very popular. Hence, it sets out to address Kürk Mantolu Madonna’s present popularity by examining, through different academic lenses, various types of evidence such as publishing history, customers’ reviews, and social and political contexts.Show less
The debate surrounding the headscarf ban in Turkey has been omnipresent since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk came to power in 1923. After 624 years under Ottoman rule, the Turkish people were offered a new...Show moreThe debate surrounding the headscarf ban in Turkey has been omnipresent since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk came to power in 1923. After 624 years under Ottoman rule, the Turkish people were offered a new secular Republican nation-State. Ataturk presented his six principles- republicanism, secularism, nationalism, populism, statism and reformism, altogether constituting Kemalism- as the much-needed vehicle for the modernization of society (Karabelias,2009). These ideologies initiated the ongoing search for identity in which Turkey finds itself today- between global aspirations and the local realities. For women, the reformist principle was translated into a ban of the headscarf in public spaces. This ban was seen as an attack on Islamist women’s freedom and access to public spaces such as universities and political organs, and recently some women’s movements in the 1980s and 1990s turned their activism toward ending the headscarf ban. However women did not always agree on the terms of this lack of visibility. For example, both feminist groups working in the public sphere and Islamic women’s groups acting within religious political parties are against the ban, as it prevents women from being represented in politics and limits right as woman (Cubukçu,2009). However, discourse shows that on the one hand, Islamic women do not support the ban because the veil is a fundamental aspect of their religion. On the other hand, feminist movements support lifting the ban so long as the old rule, where women live as men’s property, is not reinstated. (Cubukçu et al. 2004: 2012). These women fight the same battle but do not have the same rationale. Their campaign to end the headscarf ban stands between a global understanding of human rights - including women’s rights - and a local social reality concerning the needs of religious women. The research question for this dissertation is twofold: What is the tension between the local and the global in gender issues in Turkey? What role did women play in activism for human rights in the 1980s and the 1990s?Show less
Informed by ethnographic research the purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes of Turkish women who consume Korean popular culture with regards to their identity formation and how it...Show moreInformed by ethnographic research the purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes of Turkish women who consume Korean popular culture with regards to their identity formation and how it relates to the possible transformation of Turkish patriarchal society. The argument made in this study is that people in the K-Wave community have a skewed interpretation of South Korea, because of their admiration of the country through the K-Wave they are exposed to, but that this misconception has an impact on their resistance against patriarchy in their own country. This study argues that it is a two-edged sword: on the one hand K-Wave reinforces patriarchy through the messages it conveys, on the other hand it creates an imaginary space to which women can escape from their daily lives and encourages them to resist the socially defined masculine domination.Show less
In a globalizing world, where experiencing new cultures is on a lot of bucket lists, the study of cultural interaction has become very popular. In our modern day and age, we like to project this...Show moreIn a globalizing world, where experiencing new cultures is on a lot of bucket lists, the study of cultural interaction has become very popular. In our modern day and age, we like to project this etic phenomenon of our modern day globalization onto the ancient world. And not without avail, research has found that cultural interaction did indeed take place in the ancient world, although we need to keep in mind that the emic perspective might have been a bit different from our own. A lot of intercultural interaction took place in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age. During this period ships filled with luxurious gifts and exotic merchandise were plying the seas. However, this transfer of material culture did not only occur through trade or gift exchange, but also through warfare and travelling craftsmen. The transfer of non-material culture also took place, for example through the transfer of techniques and ideas. This could also take the form of motif transference. This thesis examines the phenomenon of motif transference between the Aegean, the Near East and Egypt during the Bronze Age. Besides the acculturation between two cultures, it is also possible for cultural interaction to take place between three or more cultures. This is reflected in the art of the Bronze Age, in which some motifs were shared by the artistic traditions of the Aegean, the Near East and Egypt. The transfer in style as well as technology and iconography created a new level of hybridity that lasted until the end of the Late Bronze Age and which is often called the international style. But the objects which are considered to belong to the international style, were not the only ones displaying a common style. Throughout the Eastern Mediterranean frescoes were found with motifs from the Aegean artistic tradition, which were produced during the Middle and Late Bronze Age. They are found in geographically important cities, which were located along important trade routes. These paintings were found at Alalakh, Miletus and Hattusa in Turkey, Qatna in Syria, Tel Kabri in Israel, Tell el-Dab’a, Malkata and Amarna in Egypt and display hybrid influences in iconography as well as technology. The goal of this thesis is to determine if the much-debated international style at present has a too narrow definition, which might need to be expanded to include these frescoes. This study tries to determine whether or not the palatial art found in the Eastern Mediterranean can be seen as a part of the international style.Show less
Many factors influenced the eradication of the peace process between Turkey and the PKK in early 2015. Some scholars argue that the elections in 2015 and Recep Tayyip Erdogan's personal political...Show moreMany factors influenced the eradication of the peace process between Turkey and the PKK in early 2015. Some scholars argue that the elections in 2015 and Recep Tayyip Erdogan's personal political ambitions towards a presidential system were the major factors behind the revival of the violence between Kurdish armed groups and Turkish security forces. Another given argument is the suspended bid of Turkey for accession to the European Union, and the incapability of the EU to enforce reforms within Turkey. Others state that the civil war in Syria, and the policies of Turkey concerning the Kurds in the region was crucial and caused a spill over of the conflict. The central question of this thesis is: what factors have led the Turkish government to change its policies towards the Kurdish groups after 2011 and subsequently led to the end of the Turkey-PKK peace process?Show less
This thesis attempts to analyse the effects of the Turkish coup of 12 September 1980 on Çarşaf; a satirical magazine in Turkey. The coup had enormous impacts on civil society and critical voices...Show moreThis thesis attempts to analyse the effects of the Turkish coup of 12 September 1980 on Çarşaf; a satirical magazine in Turkey. The coup had enormous impacts on civil society and critical voices in Turkey and the media struggled to carry on their line of coverage and reporting after the intervention. While, as many of them were closed in purges and journalists were arrested, others tried to survive with a form of self-censorship. In the (political) discourses of Çarşaf, there are significant changes between pre-coup and post-coup period.Show less
This MA Thesis explores the small Syriac Orthodox community of Istanbul. The micro study includes portraits of three Syriac Orthodox families who moved away from Mardin. They give insight into the...Show moreThis MA Thesis explores the small Syriac Orthodox community of Istanbul. The micro study includes portraits of three Syriac Orthodox families who moved away from Mardin. They give insight into the way the community members stay connected, the study searches how the social identity of the Syriac Orthodox community in Istanbul is being experienced. It considers how members see themselves and others from within their community, and how they see ‘the outsiders.’ Qualifications are given based on religious and cultural customs and on collective memory. The differences between generations are kept in mind and reveal why the identification process is changing throughout time.Show less
This thesis utilises a constructivist perspective to understand the ideational components of the AK Party’s foreign policy discourse and how it dramatically transformed Turkey’s relationships with...Show moreThis thesis utilises a constructivist perspective to understand the ideational components of the AK Party’s foreign policy discourse and how it dramatically transformed Turkey’s relationships with states in the MENA region. The thesis then goes on to analyse the difficulties the AK Party's foreign policy struggled to cope with the regional disorder brought about by the Arab Spring. The party’s electoral hegemony and almost-continuous rule allowed them to wield tremendous power and transform conceptions of the Turkish nation. The AK Party’s nationalist project departed sharply from Kemalist discourses by eschewing the traditional concern for secularism and a realist foreign policy outlook by instrumentalising and reinventing discourses of Islamic and Ottoman Heritage. This new nationalist project positioned Turkey at the centre of the Islamic World and as inheritor to the Ottoman Empire and sought to justify an unprecedentedly proactive foreign policy that saw Turkey forge ties with most states in the MENA region. Furthermore, it constructed durable ideological ties between the AKP, the state and Turkish society when formulating, justifying and defending the party’s foreign policy discourse and practice. Key to this transformation in theory and practice of Turkish foreign policy was former Professor of International Relations, and chief advisor to Prime Minister Erdoğan, Ahmet Davutoğlu. Davutoğlu can be clearly identified as the key personality leading this transformation, successfully channeling his theory into practice under the AKP and dramatically improving Turkey’s ties with MENA states with the “no problems with neighbours policy”. However, though Davutoglu and the AKP experienced profound success, the regional discontent and transformations brought about by the Arab Spring necessitated a dramatic recallibration of Turkish foreign policy discourse and practice to be more in line with the realist, Kemalist paradigm of the past.Show less
