The Justice and Development Party (JDP Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi) has launched a rapprochement policy toward the Alevis. The JDP's Alevi Opening has presented a unique case in Turkey's latest identity politics not only because Alevi claims for the first time came to be involved in political processes for official recognition and accommodation but also because the process was handled by a political party which is regarded to have retained Islamist roots in Sunni interpretation. This article explores ...

The article stems from empirical research conducted with a group of women living in Istanbul who have conservative life styles bounded by an Islamic worldview. It attempts to illuminate the negotiation and contestation between the official civil law and Islamic law. The findings demonstrate that women inherit and bequeath property in a social setting where their gender roles are defined by their adherence to Islam. We argue that in Turkey women's inheritance practices are not determined solely in ...

This article aims to describe the achievements of the women's movement in the struggle against domestic violence in Turkey and the points of contention between the state and feminists regarding this issue. Our goal in analyzing the Turkish case of violence against women is to reflect on how women's organizations work with the state; what they demand from it; and how they respond to the complex situations and dilemmas of state funded women's shelters. The article is based on field research; we used ...

This article employs Turkey as a case study to explore the relationship between property ownership inheritance and women's empowerment. In Turkey as in much of the world men dominate ownership of property. This is despite the fact that women have had equal rights to own and inherit property since 1926. With the establishment of the Republic in 1923 came a series of reforms one of which replaced Islamic Sharia law with a secular civil law that was based on the Swiss Civil Code. The new law among ...

This article examines the role that think tanks have played in the formulation of national security and a culture of security through field research conducted on fourteen think tanks located in Istanbul and Ankara. In addition to participant observation at the think tanks twenty-five in-depth interviews were conducted with administrators and specialists. The findings revealed that in terms of their strategic attitudes about national security in Turkey there are three groups of think tanks: critical ...

Since the 1990s there has been a global proliferation of transnational organized crime (TOC). Turkey as a transit site between the East and the West has been one of the routes through which organized crime groups transport illicit goods in collaboration with other networks of crime. This paper investigates TOC in Turkey and maps out Turkey's role as a transit country in smuggling and trafficking. The paper also deals with Turkey's contribution to international efforts in combating TOC in light of ...

Describe the development of minority rights in Turkey in light of the European Union accession process. They conclude that Turkey initiated several reforms that were necessary for EU membership but failed to alter its established “minority regime,” which recognizes as minorities the non-Muslim Armenian, Jewish and Greek communities and excludes other groups from the minority category.

This article uses a comparative approach to discuss women's access to property using evidence collected from field research conducted on two distinct communities of Istanbul: one secular and one Islamic. The two groups of women possess distinctly different views of the world and how it is organized. This is particularly the case concerning gender where secular women put forth a view rooted in the sameness of the genders where the Islamic women were clear in their commitment to the idea of difference. ...

Despite a long history of women's movements and policy-making efforts to ameliorate women's status in Turkey, the number and quality of women's shelters are far from sufficient. This article aims to reveal the shortcomings of shelter policy through the lens of those "at work" on this important social issue using a qualitative research design. Forty semistructured in-depth interviews were conducted with municipal administrative officials, state social workers, and employees of civil society ...