Citizenship In Turkey Research Articles

Challenging the boundaries of citizenship: Alevi citizens’ pursuit of equal citizenship in Turkey

ABSTRACT Marking Turkey’s 101st anniversary since the founding of the Republic in 1923, this article explores the enduring demand of Alevi citizens for recognition and equality. Addressing a gap in citizenship literature, this study scrutinizes the century-long struggle for equitable citizenship among Alevi citizens. Grounded in classical and critical perspectives, it delves into citizenship dynamics, specifically the quest for equal citizenship by Alevi citizens. Guided by the Alevi issue, the research examines the interplay between theoretical constructs, lived experiences, and the ongoing pursuit of equitable civic recognition. Drawing insights from in-depth interviews with five Alevi civil society organization representatives, this study provides first-hand perspectives on challenges to conventional citizenship definitions. Emphasizing historical grounding and geographical responsiveness, the article underscores the experiences of marginalized communities, challenging state-centric perspectives. This research contributes to the evolving understanding of citizenship, emphasizing the continued importance of equal citizenship in Turkey and beyond.

Analysis of Demographic Variables Affecting Digital Citizenship in Turkey

Abstract The new technologies generated by the digital age are changing how individuals and societies communicate, learn, work, and manage. Although digital citizenship is defined as the behavioral norms regarding the use of technology in the most general sense, it also includes ethical and appropriate behaviors and being informed about this issue while using technology. However, there is a generational gap in digital information and literacy. In this context, the research analyzes digital citizenship according to gender, age, number of children, job position, and education level. In this analysis, which was structured as exploratory research to examine the digital citizenship status of participants, the descriptive model was preferred over quantitative research models. According to the analysis results, it can be said that the participants’ digital citizenship behavior is in the range of “I am undecided” (at a moderate level). Citizenship behavior with the lowest score was “political activism on the internet.” The groups with a significantly higher level of digital citizenship are women, those between the ages of 22 and 42 working as managers, and those at the graduate level.

Dreaming the active citizenship: a debate on the Roma/Gypsy opening and its news media coverage in Turkey

ABSTRACT The Roma Opening process of the ruling party of Turkey resulted in disappointment for Roma, similar to other opening processes regarding the rights and demands of the Kurdish and Alevite communities and their respective civil society organizations. This paper focuses on the dynamics and results of the Roma opening process within the framework of prospects for developing the notion of active citizenship in Turkey. The article also addresses the news media coverage of the Roma opening process and its aftermath, again investigating the role of the media in enhancing the ideals of active citizenship. Within these considerations, after a theoretical debate on the importance of active citizenship and the role of the media in its development, the Turkish case of the Roma/Gypsy question will be discussed concerning the Roma Opening process and its news media coverage based on a qualitative content analysis. Finally, particular attention will be devoted to the structural limits of active citizenship in Turkey.

Turkish Nationalism, Egalitarianism, and Social Policy: The Compulsory Public Service of Physicians

Abstract This article examines how the Turkish political elites have responded to the uneven geographical distribution of physicians. This has been a chronic problem in health care provision, with physicians concentrated in the urban areas of western Anatolia at the cost of rural areas and the east, especially the Kurdish southeast. Successive Turkish governments have employed compulsory service laws as major policy tools to tackle this distribution problem. Legislative discussions about these laws have revolved around the idea of a unitary Turkey, the Turkish nation, and how to close the gap between the idealized imaginary of these and the defective reality. Drawing on Kojin Karatani’s mode-of-exchange framework, this study examines the legislative process on the distribution problem through the history of the post-Ottoman republic to the present. It identifies Turkish nationalism centered on state and on commodity exchange as two variants giving shape to the response to the problem. This analysis also contributes to our understanding of the weakness of social citizenship in Turkey. It is argued that Turkish nationalism—specifically, its state-centered version—operates by interpellating Turkish citizens as indebted to the nation-state, thereby hindering the development of the notion of the rights-bearing citizen.

Political media use, civic knowledge, civic self-efficacy, and gender: measuring active citizenship in Turkey

Despite many extensive and fruitful studies, assessing and analysing active citizenship behaviours in various cultural contexts remains a topic of research interest. A significant proportion of citizenship studies rely on evidence from adolescents, with their expected participation as the dependent variable rather than the actual civic engagement of adults. Prior research has also neglected to examine the internal civic self-efficacy of adult citizens, particularly concerning gender differences. Based on new data obtained from 731 Turkish citizens over eighteen, this study examines the effects of political media use, civic knowledge, civic self-efficacy, and gender, along with other demographic variables, on civic engagement and participation. We investigate research evidence that women’s tendency to interest in unconventional activities at a higher rate than men would make a difference and enhance their civic self-efficacy. Findings indicate that, at the empirical level, active citizenship is a multidimensional and interrelated concept with dimensions of civic knowledge, civic self-efficacy, engagement, and participation. Civic self-efficacy was found to be a psychological construct that predicts adult citizens’ active citizenship behaviours. Contrary to our hypothesis, gender differences in civic self-efficacy in community engagement closely related to daily life remain present, although women are expected to prefer greater participation than men. Only education indicated some equalising effect. Based on our findings, we suggest that research on citizenship should consider not only whether society values what women do, but also whether it promotes what they value.

Investigation of research trends of graduate theses on global citizenship in Turkey: A meta-synthesis study

21. yüzyılda küresel vatandaşlık konusunun konjoktürel nedenlerle önemi artmış ve gerekli hale gelmiştir. Bu nedenle konuya ilişkin araştırma yapılması önemli görülmüştür. Bu çalışmanın amacı, Türkiye’de küresel vatandaşlık üzerine yapılmış lisansüstü tezlerdeki araştırma eğilimlerini saptamak ve yeni araştırmalar hakkında araştırmacılara fikir verip orijinal çalışmalar üretmelerine katkı sağlamaktır. Çalışma, nitel araştırma yöntemi kapsamında meta-sentez modelinde gerçekleştirilmiştir. Araştırma evreni, YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi veri tabanında yer alan küresel vatandaşlık konusuna yönelik 16 yüksek lisans ve 5 doktora olmak üzere toplam 21 tezden oluşmaktadır. Tezlerin tümüne erişim sağlandığı için örneklem alımı gerçekleşmemiştir. Araştırma kapsamındaki tezlerde yıl ve branş ayrımı yapılmamıştır. Veri tabanı “Küresel vatandaşlık, dünya vatandaşlığı” anahtar kelimeleriyle taranmıştır. Konu ile ilgili tüm tezler; tezin yayınlanma yılı ve tezin türü, anabilim dalı, özgün dili, tema, yöntem, model, çalışma grubu, veri toplama aracı ve veri analizi değişkenlerine göre incelenmiştir. Araştırmacının geliştirdiği tez sınıflama formu veri toplama aracı olarak kullanılmıştır. Elde edilen veriler içerik analizi ile çözümlenmiştir. Araştırmanın güvenirliği/uyuşum yüzdesi .85 olarak bulunmuştur. Araştırma sonucunda, lisansüstü tezlerin en çok 2015 ve 2019 yıllarında tamamlandığı, tezlerde sosyal bilgiler ve sınıf öğretmenliği anabilim dallarının önde çıktığı, yapılan tezlerin en çok yüksek lisans tezi olduğu, tez temalarının bir değişkenle ilişki belirleme, görüş, algı ve tutum belirleme üzerine yoğunlaştığı tespit edilmiştir. Ayrıca tezlerin yöntemsel özelliklerine bakıldığında en çok; nicel araştırma yöntemi, desenin tarama modeli, çalışma grubunun öğretmen ve öğretmen adayları, veri toplama aracının ölçek ve veri analizinin istatistiki analiz olduğu görülmüştür. Bu bulgular ışığında küresel vatandaşlığa yönelik doktora çalışmalarının ve nitel çalışmaların artırılması önerilebilir.

Citizenship education under authoritarian Islamic nationalism: an exploration of teachers’ conceptions of citizenship in Turkey

ABSTRACT This study explores a group of social studies teachers’ conceptions of citizenship by taking into consideration the country’s increasingly authoritarian political culture. It offers an analysis of semi-structured interviews carried out with 20 teachers working at state middle schools in a relatively secular city. The study found that the majority of the teachers are subscribed to a non-democratic conception of citizenship that prioritizes an uncritical loyalty to the nation, inculcates passive compliance, relies on a pro-Muslim notion of human rights, and makes little room for political issues discussion. Despite that, some teachers seem to develop oppositional discourses and seek ways to claim their agencies. The study concludes that the authoritarian Islamic nationalism in power has intensified the ethno-religiously nationalist, statist, and duty-centric aspects of citizenship education (CE). Some teachers’ explicit emphasis on pro-Islamic and anti-western discourses and almost all teachers’ explicit concern to stay away from politics emerge as novel characteristics that are consistent with the dictates of Turkey’s authoritarian regime. It seems authoritarian populist nationalism redresses citizenship as an exclusionary notion grounded in race, ethnicity, religion, and civilizational claims. Insights from this research may help the advocates keep CE supportive of democratic values under authoritarian conditions.

Syrian Migration and Active Citizenship in Turkey: Rethinking the Possibility of Living Together and Social Cohesion

The sudden and intense migration that emerged as a result of the Syrian crisis in 2011 had significant effects on cities and municipalities in our country as well as in the world. Considering that the vast majority of Syrians currently live in urban areas, municipalities that have a significant proportion of Syrian immigrants compared to their resident population faced a challenge of delivering the same quality municipal services to more populations due to unexpected increase in the number of people waiting for service, but with the same budget, personnel, equipment and organizational structure. This situation negatively affects the quality of life in cities and threatens local sustainable development. The main idea of our study is to open the theoretical framework of the “active citizenship” model for discussion. The model is based on the idea that, active citizenship model is the most important resource to be mobilized in increasing the resilience of municipalities at the local level in the face of added urban issues such as mass migration and pandemic, and living together and a sustainable quality of life in cities. After making conceptual fixations in the study, answers will be sought to possible questions on how active citizens are involved in the political and social participation processes; their roles; why it is necessary to be an active citizen; how to establish an enabling environment for this to occur and what the duties of municipalities are in this context.

From millet members to citizens. The Civil Code of Turkey and the formation of the idea of citizenship in Turkey

This paper depicts how the changes taking place in the Ottoman Empire in its last years and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey gave grounds to creation of the notion of the nation-state citizen. This category replaced the category of millet member meaning in those circumstances, the member of a given ethno-religious group. The millet members benefited from law attributed to a given millet and thus, in the field of private law, their rights depended mainly on their personal status. The Turkish codification of the civil law, based on the Swiss Civil Code (i.e. the ZGB) played important role in the process of creation of the category of citizen. The codification brought – in the field of private law – the idea of equality of legal capacity of entities. Consequently, it eliminated legal pluralism and the principle of legal personalism.

Literature Review on Digital Citizenship in Turkey

With as of the start of the 2000s, technology and internet have become almost indispensable in the lives of individuals. Rapid development of technology has increased the interest and dependence of people on the internet and made it compulsory to use the internet. Increased use of the internet has led to the development invention of mobile devices, cloud technologies, and information and communication technologies. Besides facilitating and accelerating their lives, this situation has caused individuals to encounter some risks. Individuals can exchange information in an online environment, share their feelings and thoughts in a comfortable way, easily benefit from public services and be aware of the events that take place in various parts of the world. In addition, they have started to perform some transactions in electronic media such as e-shopping, e-government, e-book, e-library, e-pulse, e-banking. This brought about the concept of digital life. Digital life has changed a large part of our habits as the Internet began to enter our lives. Most of these changes are in the fields of communication and life perception. This phenomenon led researchers to work more intensively on the concept of digital citizenship. While researching the effects of digital citizenship on the one hand, studies were carried out to determine what to do at school and at teachers’ level. The aim of this study is to address the trends and gaps observed in the research studies about on digital citizenship and to focus on which their subject areas in Turkey. As a result of literature review: (1) Most of the researches studies that are conducted as a result of literature review are focused on students and teachers, (2) In these studies many different scales have been developed to determine the levels of digital citizenship according to the focal point and different factors.

Bottom-up nationalism and discrimination on social media: An analysis of the citizenship debate about refugees in Turkey

This study analyzes social media representations of refugees in Turkey and discusses their role in shaping public opinion. The influx of millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey has created heated debates about their presence and future in the country. One of these debates was triggered by President Erdoğan’s statement that Turkey would issue citizenship rights to Syrians in July 2016. Due to a lack of critical voices about refugee issues in Turkey’s mass media sphere, social media has become a key platform for citizens to voice their opinions. Through a discourse analysis of tweets about the issue of refugees’ citizenship, I will map different perceptions of refugees in Turkey. I argue that despite contesting discourses about Syrians, the debate on social media reinforces nationalism and an ethnocentric understanding of citizenship in Turkey. As the number of refugees and migrants increases rapidly worldwide, they become the new ‘others’ of national imagined communities. Social media becomes a key communication space where the nation is discursively constructed in a bottom-up manner through manifestations of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The analysis shows that social media contributes to trivialization and normalization of discrimination and hatred against Syrian refugees through disseminating overt discourses of ‘Othering’. Social media also enables more covert forms of discrimination through ‘rationalized’ arguments that are used to justify discrimination through the basis of false/non-verified information. Thus, Twitter becomes a space for critical, bottom-up, yet nationalistic and discriminatory statements about refugees.

De-Europeanisation and Equal Citizenship in Turkey: The Case of Circassians

ABSTRACTThe Europeanisation process in Turkey that extended roughly from 1999 to 2006 boosted the political and cultural rights of diverse ethnic groups in Turkey, including Circassians, and strengthened their claims for equal citizenship. With the loss or weakening of the EU as an anchor for democratic reform in the post-2007 period, however, the de-Europeanisation process has resulted in the disappearance of the main legal and institutional basis for the democratic integration of ethnocultural minorities. Nevertheless, analysis of the activities of four large Circassian communities in Turkey shows that the same process has enhanced the cultural reification of these groups as their survival strategy.

Religious difference, nationhood and citizenship in Turkey: public reactions to an interreligious marriage in 1962

ABSTRACTThis article explores the relationship between religious difference, nationhood and secular citizenship in Turkey. Turkey is the only country in the Middle East which applies a non-religious and unified law to matters related to the family. The legislation of a secular civil law in 1926 has made interreligious marriages legally possible, removing institutional barriers to religious mixing in the private and intimate sphere of family. At the same time, religious difference remained central to the definition of who is included in, and excluded from, the nation. Against the backdrop of these seemingly competing understandings of religious difference, this article explores the arguments that ordinary citizens made in favor of or opposed to the second marriage in 1962 of Ülkü Adatape, the spiritual daughter of Atatürk, to Yeshua Bensusen, a Jewish citizen of Turkey. Drawing on the notes and proceedings of the Lausanne Peace Conference in 1922/23, parliamentary depositories and newspaper reviews, it demonstrates that a paradox stemming from an ethnoreligious formation of Turkish nationhood, which has denied non-Muslim citizens recognition as full members of the nation, and the secular understanding of the private realm, which has in principle made religious difference inconsequential to the governance of family, simultaneously produced resistance to and justification for interreligious marriages. If the first decades of the republic laid the foundations of this paradox, the period between the transition into electoral democracy in 1946 and the military coup in 1960 intensified it making the link between ethnicity and religion stronger.

The Alevi question and the limits of citizenship in Turkey

ABSTRACTThe Alevi question in Turkey is not only about a manifestation of the demands for religious freedoms and pluralism but also an issue of citizenship at least for the last three decades. This article argues that as a result of the rise of the Alevi identity and collective capacity of the Alevis to formulate demands in the national and international public spheres, the issue has increasingly turned to a matter of struggle for the long-denied equal citizenship rights of the Alevis in Turkey. Expected failure of workshops process, namely Alevi Opening, during the second term of the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) period increasingly brought a sense of the disappointment among the Alevi organizations due to the fact that the issue was not managed with a perspective based on equal citizenship rights but with a discussion on the authenticity and originality of the Alevi demands. Enduring silence for the solution of the Alevi question in the last decade would lead Alevi organizations to the search for the extension of the self-creation of the survival mechanisms without the state support. This paper, within these considerations, is based on the demands of the Alevi society in Turkey and their struggle for the legal recognition, which increasingly challenged the Turkish form of secularism and citizenship regimes today.

WHOSEMISAFIRS?NEGOTIATING DIFFERENCE ALONG THE TURKISH–SYRIAN BORDER

AbstractThis article examines the figure of themisafir(guest) as it personifies the combined domains of everyday and institutional hospitality in Hatay, a contested border province annexed to Turkey from French Mandate Syria in 1939, and home today to over 400,000 displaced Syrians. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2012 in Hatay's administrative capital, Antakya, I focus on the perspectives of the region's bilingual (Turkish-Arabic) Jewish and Christian populations about the officialmisafirstatus of the first Syrian arrivals. I argue that the sudden transformation of Syrians from familialmisafirs to governmentalmisafirs in the early days of the Syrian conflict ruptured the hierarchical domains of reciprocity that have historically shaped the cross-border relations between these communities. In this process, Antakya's religious minorities recognized and negotiated the limits of their own residence, difference, and citizenship in Turkey, and invoked the lived practices of hospitality that exist beside but also transcend ethnoreligious and national identities. By examining how historical articulations of religious and national difference along the Turkish–Syrian border are entwined with the figure of themisafirat the interpersonal level, this article contributes to debates on hospitality in scholarship on the Middle East and in migration literature.

Turkish citizenship: the perils of hegemonic tendencies and the 'shadow of securitization'

The current article delineates the qualified nature of citizenship in the Turkish Republic. Its primary argument is that the content of citizenship in Turkey has been shaped and reshaped since its establishment by a continuous struggle for social and political hegemony. Throughout this struggle the incumbent regimes, Kemalist, populist, and Islamist, subjected the full range of citizenship rights to conceived – internal and external, real and imagined – security threats, which further legitimized restrictions on Turkish citizenship. The recent downturn in Turkish citizenship, which started in 2011 and peaked following the failed coup attempt in summer 2016 and the referendum of April 2017, should be understood in relation to the contemporary turmoil in the Middle East which confronted the Turkish state with a plethora of security challenges and justified further infringement of citizenship rights in Turkish society.

Rethinking Social Studies and Citizenship in Turkey: An Overview to the 6th International Symposium on Social Studies Education

Rethinking Social Studies and Citizenship in Turkey: An Overview to the 6th International Symposium on Social Studies Education

Civic Participation and Citizenship in Turkey: A Comparative Study of Five Cities

This study explores whether and how participation in civil society organisations (CSOs) has transformed citizenship attitudes in different cities in Turkey, and how civic participation and citizenship attitudes are affected by local politico-cultural dynamics. The analysis is based on interviews conducted with representatives of 36 CSOs in five Turkish cities: Konya, Edirne, Diyarbakir, Trabzon, and Izmir. Our comparative analysis of the five cities reveals that civic life is more active in cities marked by high levels of religiosity (Konya) and politicised by conflict (Diyarbakir). On the other hand, politicisation of civic life through party dominance and clientelism, as in Edirne and Trabzon, undermines trust and discourages participation.

Determinants of young people’s civic and political participation in Turkey

This special section provides a timely reflection on current debates that are of extreme relevance in order to gain a better understanding of the concepts of citizenship and active citizenship in Turkey, by looking at the determinants of civic and political participation, at the patterns of political and civic mobilization and at the orientations of political behaviour. Its originality stands on the specific focus on young people in comparison to other age groups. The different papers remark upon the importance that the reframing of the notions of citizenship and active citizenship have in the Turkish context along with the determinants that make this remark more relevant than ever.

Right to public space: social movements and active citizenship in Turkey

AbstractGezi movement was initiated by a group of young people originating from different political and ideological backgrounds, who were in conflict with established elites. These active citizens most often approach problems from the grassroots level. They may belong to a political party, social movement, or some other active association involved in promoting an ideology of change. They are not necessarily left or right, but tend to be in the opposition and the more radical of each political persuasion. They are often social reformers of an established party, grassroots organisers of any political position, or radical revolutionaries with an activist orientation. They believe that many things can be done altruistically for ‘the people’ or for ‘the country’. The Gezi Park Protests announced the formation of new collective movements denouncing the precariousness of individual life and the fragmentation of social life. It also brought about new avenues for the reconstruction of a social life free from the c...