This study analyses the portrayal of women in Turkish films on the Dutch Netflix. With the help of three concepts from feminist film theory, namely male gaze, male voice and female subjectivity,...Show moreThis study analyses the portrayal of women in Turkish films on the Dutch Netflix. With the help of three concepts from feminist film theory, namely male gaze, male voice and female subjectivity, and with the help from earlier studies on the portrayal of women in Turkish films, it finds that women in the Turkish films on the Dutch Netflix are overall portrayed in more passive ways than men, that the female characters often play a supporting role as compared to the male characters and that the concepts from feminist film theorists can still be applied to recently released films. Some films in the corpus however also contain feminist themes and elements, such as female protagonists and female characters that are not occupied with a search for love, but focus on their own personal development. This study concludes that while women are overall not portrayed in a positive way in the corpus, these feminist themes show a promising development that will hopefully continue in the future.Show less
This paper will seek possible and convincing explanations of Turkey’s military involvements in the Syrian conflict. It is positioned in the researches of third party interventions in intrastate...Show moreThis paper will seek possible and convincing explanations of Turkey’s military involvements in the Syrian conflict. It is positioned in the researches of third party interventions in intrastate conflicts within the field of International Relations. I will use qualitative method and test Patrick M. Regan’s theoretical assumptions on military interventions by using the case of Turkey’s military interventions in the Syrian conflict. In terms of case study, I will provide two sub-cases, which are Operation Olive Branch, launched on January 20, 2018 till March 18, 2018 and Operation Euphrates Shield conducted from August 24, 2016 to March 29, 2017. By examining these two intervention policies, I will seek Turkey’s main objectives in meddling in the Syrian quagmire.Show less
This thesis will try to shed light upon the interactions of the state with the public in the landscape of a changing state-society relationship and the consolidation of a dominant hegemonic power,...Show moreThis thesis will try to shed light upon the interactions of the state with the public in the landscape of a changing state-society relationship and the consolidation of a dominant hegemonic power, in order to find answers to these contemporary questions and establish an understanding of the contemporary political and social landscape – and their interrelatedness – in the Turkish state. Therefore, this thesis will combine concepts from societal and political studies – namely Public Sphere, Identity Politics and Modes of Governance – to point out their interconnectedness and, perhaps, mutually enforcing nature. Through in-depth analyses of the context, the AKP’s campaign and of electoral behaviour during the 2002, 2007 and 2015 parliamentary and – in the case of 2007 – presidential elections, this essay will cover the question what strategies are being used by Erdogan and the AKP to alter the public sphere and utilize the changed societal sentiments for their own cause. Ultimately, this thesis serves to establish a comprehensive theoretical framework and case study analysis on the contemporary political situation in Turkey in times of elections and to add another facet to the research on the interconnectedness of social transformation and state policies.Show less
Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) are on their way to becoming the next step in the evolution of warfare and power projection. As the increasing proliferation of armed drones in recent years...Show moreUnmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) are on their way to becoming the next step in the evolution of warfare and power projection. As the increasing proliferation of armed drones in recent years suggests, UCAVs are starting to replace the conventional military units and introduce new dimensions to armed conflicts. This study seeks to understand how these new capabilities shape the foreign policy behavior of states. By introducing three causal mechanisms, namely cost efficiency, operational and strategic superiority, and risk reduction, the study suggests that some unique characteristics of UCAVs have profound effects on state behavior. With a focus on the case of Turkey, the study concludes that the introduction of the armed drones to the Turkish national inventory played a major role in the reorientation and paradigm change of Turkish Foreign Policy (TFP) after 2016.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
Child marriage is connected to several socio-economical and sociocultural factors. Many people make the misunderstanding to link the practice to religion or a specific country/area or claim that ...Show moreChild marriage is connected to several socio-economical and sociocultural factors. Many people make the misunderstanding to link the practice to religion or a specific country/area or claim that "only poor people marry their daughters off at an early age". To what extent are girls protected by their countries laws, and are the underlying causes the same in the three countries or are there significant differences?Show less
The overwhelming majority of the more than five and a half million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries in the Middle East without their civil documents. Particularly in a refugee context, it...Show moreThe overwhelming majority of the more than five and a half million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries in the Middle East without their civil documents. Particularly in a refugee context, it is crucial for the standard of living for Syrian refugees and eventual return to Syria to be adequately documented. Complex civil registration systems in the host countries, however, often prevent Syrian refugees from obtaining civil documentation, thereby expanding the problem of the lack and loss of civil documentation of Syrian refugees. This thesis examines the different civil registration systems and their consequences for Syrian refugees in Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon through an in-depth analysis focusing on legal status, marriage and birth registration. This thesis argues that the difference in implemented civil registration systems is determined by each host country’s social, political, and economic situation before and during the Syrian refugee influx and the extent to which the Syrian refugees have impacted the country, positively and negatively. In Turkey, the government has adopted a temporary protection regime, which includes refugee-sensitive civil registration systems. However, in Lebanon and to a lesser extent Jordan, Syrian refugees are still facing many challenges trying to obtain civil documentation due to the complex civil registration systems. As the eight years of hosting refugees has turned out more harmful than beneficial for the host countries, discussions on the return of Syrian refugees has increasingly become louder. However, a lot of change is still required to ensure that Syrian refugees are adequately documented.Show less
Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
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The discussions surrounding the authenticity of the extra-Qur'ānic traditions in Islam has been a prevalent theme in the scholarship for the last six decades. This thesis is about the modern...Show moreThe discussions surrounding the authenticity of the extra-Qur'ānic traditions in Islam has been a prevalent theme in the scholarship for the last six decades. This thesis is about the modern polemics surrounding the parts of the Islamic tradition with supposed Jewish origins, also known as the “Isrāʾīliyyāt”. The term Isrāʾīliyyāt has been the subject of numerous religious-polemical works since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with Modernist Muslim commentators arguing for the ejection of this material to make way for a return to pristine Islam. Although such arguments against Isrāʾīliyyāt find considerable coverage in the academic literature, the dynamic exegetical scene in Turkey is often neglected. Highlighting the discussions in Turkey, this research aims to bring out the contemporary debates about Isrāʾīliyyāt therein with a study of the ‘new media’, a platform that is widely used by preachers from different ideological camps. This thesis seeks to situate the Turkish case within the larger Middle Eastern context of Modernist Islam by discovering the connections between exegetes from different localities and eras, aiming to locate the intellectual influences of the figures that are studied.Show less
De laatste tien à vijtien jaar is er in Turkije onder invloed van het verschijnsel “Ottomania,” nostalgie en liefde voor alles wat naar de Osmaanse tijd ‘smaakt,’ redelijk veel geschreven over de...Show moreDe laatste tien à vijtien jaar is er in Turkije onder invloed van het verschijnsel “Ottomania,” nostalgie en liefde voor alles wat naar de Osmaanse tijd ‘smaakt,’ redelijk veel geschreven over de Osmaanse keuken en met name Osmaanse gerechten. Kookboeken om thuis de authentieke Osmaanse cuisine te doen herleven worden als warme broodjes verkocht. Een vergelijkbare fascinatie voor de Osmaanse cultuur is op het gebied van dranken te zien. Zo wordt boza, een gefermenteerd drankje van gierst dat erg populair was in Osmaanse tijden maar een tijd lang, op een enkele uitzondering na nergens meer verkocht werd, nu verkocht in Turkse supermarkten. Deze plotselinge hernieuwde belangstelling voor boza wekte bij mij de interesse op om de geschiedenis van de Turkse drinkcultuur te onderzoeken: Wat dronken de Osmanen, waren er problematische dranken, veranderde de drinkcultuur met de oprichting van de Republiek Turkije in 1923, hoe kunnen we de opleving van de belangstelling voor Osmaanse drankjes sinds enkele jaren verklaren en wat zijn de redenen voor het recente alcoholverbod/genotsmiddelenontmoedigingsbeleid van de AKP-regering?Show less
“Although, according to the founders of the Republic of Turkey, a Turkish ethnic nationalist ideology had to become the fabric of society, the irony is that this ideology is at the same time the...Show more“Although, according to the founders of the Republic of Turkey, a Turkish ethnic nationalist ideology had to become the fabric of society, the irony is that this ideology is at the same time the main source of political conflict and violence” (Jongerden 2001, 81). The establishment of the Turkish Republic under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, consolidating Turkish Nationalism as State Ideology, was the beginning of a history full of paradoxes and contradictions. Especially the Turkish central government and the Kurdish community entered a century of ups and downs what would become known as the ‘Kurdish Question’. While the Turkish Nationalists have remained constant in their ideology, the Kurds have witnessed a turbulent ideological development throughout history, which has both divided as unified the Kurdish community on different occasions. Although the dream of an independent Kurdistan has always been in the background, the Kurdish community has not always been able to pursue this dream, or been willing to. In the more modern days, however, when the Kurds in Turkey became more active again in their struggle for independence, the PKK gained prominence among the Kurds, with Abdullah Ocalan as its leader. Thereupon, since the late 1990s, Ocalan would become to represent the PKK, whereas the PKK in its turn would represent the entire Kurdish Nation (Bozarslan 2008, 351). Thus, when Abdullah Ocalan came up with the ideology of democratic confederalism, the Kurdish community followed. How did Ocalan, however, after all these years, come up with this ideology one may wonder, and how does this democratic confederalism apply to the ‘Kurdish Question’? In order to be able to research this complicated issue in the most effective ways, the theoretical framework of the issue must be determined and defined correctly, prior to the actual analysis of the case. This means that in order to fully comprehend concepts such as the ‘Nation-State’, it must be established what the concepts of the ‘Nation’ and the ‘State’ individually withhold, after which, the concept of the ‘Nation-State’ can be explained and analyzed in the light of the Kurdish Question. Furthermore, to properly grasp these conceptions, we must understand their foundations. Therefore, by means of chronological order, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Ernest Renan, and Max Weber will be examined, to lay down the basic rationale behind ‘State formation’, ‘the Nation’ and the ‘State’. In addition, the contexts of ‘Nationalism’ and the Right to Self-Determination will be assessed. Based on this theoretical framework the ideological development of the Kurds in Turkey will be decomposed and analyzed to investigate how the direct secessionist Kurdish ambitions for an independent Nation-State evolved into an ideology of Democratic Confederalism.Show less
Does the European Union accession process foster democracy in EU candidate countries? Using the theory of external anchoring, the process of democratization in candidate countries has been examined...Show moreDoes the European Union accession process foster democracy in EU candidate countries? Using the theory of external anchoring, the process of democratization in candidate countries has been examined. The case of Turkey was used to show the EU’s democratization effects throughout the accession process. The European Union accession process does foster democratization in EU candidate countries. However, there are several reasons why the EU’s efforts are not as effective as intended. The appeal of EU membership requires consistency to be effective. But the accession process is subject to changing favoritism by EU member states. The inconsistency of the EU on demands in previous accession cases also undermines its effectiveness in more recent cases. Democratization requires both time to be anchored in a country, and incentive for the states to engage in it. For the candidate country’s decision-makers, the accession needs to be reachable in the short-term in order for it to have value. For the EU, accession is a process which requires time and certainty that the country has fulfilled all demands. A problem arises when the part of short-term benefits conflicts with the EU’s inclination for open-ended duration.Show less
