ABSTRACT We explore the burgeoning concept, and practical implementation, of aviation diplomacy, defined as all sorts of diplomatic processes and structures pursued within the area of civil aviation in this article. Addressing a theoretical gap concerning the diplomatic role of this industry, we analyse the dynamic relationship between Qatar and the Balkans through the operations of Qatar Airways in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and North Macedonia. Our primary research question is: How does Qatar Airways’ operationalization of aviation diplomacy influence Qatar’s strategic objectives and international relations as a soft power instrument within the Balkans? Airlines as flag carriers particularly those with government backing, function not merely as commercial entities, but as soft power instruments of state foreign policy. Employing the comprehensive tripartite framework for aviation diplomacy, we operationalize this analysis across three dimensions: aviation as a direct foreign policy tool, a catalyst for soft power and national image, and autonomous diplomatic actors through business diplomacy. We demonstrate the practical operationalization of a novel soft power instrument and underscoring the increasing importance of non-state actors in modern diplomacy.

ABSTRACT Atatürk’s influence on Asian liberation movements is well known, yet his reception in China is underexplored. How did Chinese intellectuals and the public engage with Atatürk’s example, and how did these perceptions intersect with China’s struggles for independence and reform? This study offers the first systematic, theme-driven content analysis of Chinese press coverage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Turkish Revolution, showing how Shenbao (申报) and other newspapers actively appropriated Atatürk’s legacy to frame China’s debates on national liberation, modernization, and leadership. Focusing on 1919–1939, from Türkiye’s liberation struggle to Atatürk’s death and World War II’s onset, the study highlights a period when both nations pursued nation-building and reforms, making Türkiye’s experience resonant for Chinese discussions on sovereignty and modernization. Using qualitative content analysis of Shenbao, known as the ‘encyclopedia of modern Chinese history’, the study identifies four themes: anti-imperialist struggle and liberation, modernization and reform, international recognition, and Atatürk’s leadership and symbolic legacy. These reveal the multifaceted ways Atatürk and the Turkish Revolution were understood in Republican-era China, illustrating how Shenbao used Türkiye’s example to reflect, debate, and inspire China’s quests for independence, reform, global stature, and transformative leadership, shedding light on cross-cultural exchanges in nation-building.

ABSTRACT This article examines how scholarly knowledge production shapes prevailing policy narratives regarding the Eastern Mediterranean. Relying on Haas’s epistemic community concept, the article investigates how epistemic community on the Eastern Mediterranean influence particular conceptions of collaboration, conflict, and regional order. Rather than accepting academic studies as merely explicators of the regional status quo, the article emphasizes how these studies contribute to the creation and reproduction of Eurocentric, state-centric, and security-oriented perspectives. To provide a more in-depth engagement regarding the production, legitimization, and dissemination of knowledge within the academic community, the article examines academic studies on the Eastern Mediterranean indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection between 1995 and 2025 through a combination of bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review methodologies. By employing a two-pronged methodology, including descriptive statistics, network analysis, textual analysis, and coding of authors’ genders, and theoretical and methodological frameworks, this article presents a multifaceted perspective regarding the Eastern Mediterranean, illuminating both biases and knowledge gaps. Findings reveal a prevalence of discursive bias towards conflict rather than cooperation, dominance of Eurocentric approaches at the expense of non-Western or local perspectives, and gender disparities in authorship.

ABSTRACT This study investigates how early Republican educational inspectors evaluated and regulated the Halki Seminary, using it as a focused case to analyse the mechanisms through which the new Turkish Republic reshaped minority religious schooling. Based on 82 pages of archival inspection reports, official correspondence, and ministerial directives obtained from the Turkish State Archives, the study employs a qualitative documentary analysis to trace how state power was operationalized in practice. Five analytical themes emerged from the coding process: (1) state authorization and legal redefinition of minority schools, (2) enforcement of national curriculum and Turkish-language instruction, (3) ministry-controlled staffing and administrative compliance, (4) surveillance of student population and facilities, and (5) multi-layer bureaucratic oversight. The study contributes to the literature by demonstrating how inspection functioned not merely as administrative supervision but as an instrument of nation-building and secular state consolidation revealing, through original archival evidence, the concrete practices by which minority educational institutions were incorporated into the centralized Republican order.

ABSTRACT The proliferation of conflict in the Middle East and the involvement of the US and of other global players in it is at the forefront of the political debate in this time and age. While the sources of Islamization and radicalization are complex and have received a great deal of attention both in the scholarly debate and in policy making circles, this article sought to trace them back to the role played by civil society and social capital. This article has analysed the issue by looking at both Islamization in countries of origin, and radicalization, social unrest and terrorism in receiving countries. In both cases the discussion rotates around the importance of the role of civil society and social capital.

ABSTRACT In recent years, the title Reis has emerged as a popular nickname for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, both within Turkey and beyond. While majority of studies consider this title merely as a superficial element of the authoritarian rule of Erdoğan, this paper argues that Reis is a significant political symbol in modern Turkey, transcending Erdoğan’s individual political identity or cult of personality. Utilizing the concept of ‘invented traditions’, this study suggests that Reis constitutes a deliberately designated political symbol. Being constructed by various state actors, ruling elite and mass population, it serves to legitimize not only Erdoğan’s personal authority, but also to disseminate authorities’ dominant ideological discourses and narratives, thereby providing popular mobilization around them. The paper shows the history of construction of the symbol of reis and the evolution of Reis’s discursive meanings starting from a sacred image of national leader to a symbol of ideological fusion of Turkish nationalism and Turkish Islamism, as well as Ottoman nostalgia.

ABSTRACT As China’s supreme organ of state power, the National People’s Congress plays a unique role in its international exchanges. NPC’s international exchanges plays an important supplementary and promotive role to governmental diplomacy. Parliamentary diplomacy with Middle East countries is guided by China’s overall diplomacy, implemented primarily by the NPC, and aims to promote overall cooperation between China and Middle East countries, conduct legislative experience exchanges, safeguard national sovereignty and interests, and strengthen international publicity. It promotes bilateral exchanges and cooperation through mechanisms such as exchanges between legislative bodies, interactions between friendship groups, and multilateral parliamentary engagements. The NPC further strengthens engagement and cooperation with Middle East countries through five channels: meetings between the Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee and foreign parliamentary speakers; meetings between leaders of the NPC Standing Committee and foreign heads-of-state and premiers; meetings between Vice Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee and various foreign delegations; special envoy missions undertaken by Vice Chairman on behalf of Chinese President; and the holding of seminars for foreign parliamentarians. Through parliamentary diplomacy, the NPC has further deepened the development of relations between China and Middle East countries, strengthened mutual political trust, and promoted bilateral and multilateral pragmatic cooperation.

ABSTRACT The ‘Sun Language Theory’ was part of the language reforms in Turkey. Its official proclamation took place at the Third Linguistic Congress held in İstanbul in August 1936. The assessments available in historiography of the Soviet contribution to the creation of the ‘Sun Language Theory’ and the Soviet reaction to its proclamation indicate the ideas of the Soviet scientist Nikolai Marr as the most important contribution to this theory. Also, there are conclusions that in the 1930s the Soviet Union supported the ‘Sun Language Theory’. However, the research presented in this article demonstrates that the ‘Sun Language Theory’ differed from Marr’s ‘doctrine’ in a number of fundamental points. The scale of the discrepancy between these two theories was almost equal to the scale of the similarity between them. The ‘Sun Language Theory’ was not supported at all in the USSR. Though Soviet scientists to a certain extent positively assessed the new research of Turkish linguists, but only until it turned out that these studies had gone too far. At the Third Linguistic Congress in 1936 and after it, Soviet scientists publicly criticized the ‘Sun Language Theory’.

ABSTRACT Since 2015, Turkey has staged a series of crises; an election crisis, a failed coup attempt, the currency and debt crisis, the pandemic, the recent major earthquakes, and the ongoing crisis of transition to a new pattern of capital accumulation. Two major accounts, the competitive authoritarianism camp and the authoritarian neoliberal camp, highlighted the AKP’s rising authoritarianism. Contrary to both approaches, this paper examines the interaction between the abovementioned crises and state-capital-class relations bringing about a set of exceptional forms, relations, processes in politics. It argues that these crises fundamentally indicate the transformation of the state apparatus under the AKP, beyond authoritarianism, and particularly the shift to an exceptional state and fascism, manifesting a specific configuration of class conflict.