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.

ABSTRACT This study examines how Türkiye’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (RPP), framed Syrian refugees in its discourse between 2013 and 2017. Drawing on 2,171 documents, including parliamentary speeches, parliamentary questions, party group meetings, and official publications, a ‘qualitative content analysis’ was conducted using inductive coding and computer-assisted software. The findings reveal a dual discourse: while the RPP’s official publications highlight humanitarian values such as refugee rights and modern hosting standards, its oppositional discourse portrays refugees as security threats. Themes such as demographic change, public spending, public order, labour competition, citizenship, and health risks dominate this securitized framing. The study applies ‘securitization theory’ as an analytical framework to explain the RPP’s security-focused language while maintaining a normative stance in formal party texts. This duality illustrates how opposition parties, even those with progressive agendas, may employ exclusionary discourses under political pressure, contributing to the broader securitization of migration in democratic settings. These findings challenge conventional assumptions about the relationship between party ideology, power status, and securitization, and underscore the need to critically assess the complex role opposition parties play in shaping refugee discourse in democratic contexts.

ABSTRACT This study applies economic voting theory to data for 26 European Union countries from 2000 to 2023. The macroeconomic factors influencing government changes were investigated using the Common Correlated Effects Mean Group and Averaged Mean Group methods. The findings show that increasing inflation and unemployment strengthen the likelihood of a government change, while the effects of per capita income and income disparity are ineffective. Furthermore, this study contributes to the theory of economic voting by demonstrating that voter behaviour is influenced by the level of economic indicators, changes in these indicators, and people’s views of these trends. The findings show that immediate signals influence voter behaviour and have practical implications for policymakers.

ABSTRACT The authoritarian regime has long been a topic of interest for political science scholars in Turkey. While there is substantial literature on the form and formation of the AKP’s authoritarianism, particularly in terms of economic management and clientelism, the existing literature fails to draw a connection between labour management and the type of political regime. This paper aims to address a gap in the existing literature by focusing on the specific politics and labour containment strategies employed by successive AKP governments. Drawing from the current debate and grey literature on the political regime in Turkey, this paper contributes to the theoretical framing of the authoritarianism of the AKP. My theoretical framing asserts indebted financialization, Islamist benevolence, paternalist industrial relations, politicized and corporatist trade unionism, marginalization combined with criminalization, and segregation-based segmentation as the fundamental labour management strategies that reproduce and deepen authoritarianism in Turkey.

ABSTRACT During the 1950s and 1960s, many observers believed that the Arab monarchies would eventually collapse, while republican regimes, particularly those led by military officers, would thrive. The reality turned out to be quite the opposite and thus far none, of the Arab monarchy regimes have ceased to exist. The common explanation for the survival of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) oil monarchies is their huge oil and gas rental revenues. However, this does not apply to the two poorer non-oil Arab monarchies—Jordan and Morocco. What, then, is the secret to their survival? The aim of this paper is to examine this crucial question regarding the poorest Arab Monarchy—Jordan. The main argument is that although Jordan’s Hashemite regime is categorized as an ‘authoritarian regime’, from its outset in the early 1920s, it functioned as a ‘soft authoritarian regime’, which has enabled his its survival thus far.