Regime In Turkey Research Articles

Currency substitution, policy rule and pass-through: evidence from Turkey

In this article we analyse empirically currency substitution and exchange rate pass-through in the Turkish Economy, where their ongoing presence could undermine the implementation of a successful monetary policy, especially in a flexible exchange rate regime. Even though a considerable time has passed after the implementation of a flexible exchange rate regime in Turkey, by using Vector Error Correction model for the period from 1987 to 2004, we find that the currency substitution and exchange rate pass-through still have importance in the Turkish Economy and the monetary policy stance has been considerably strong, possibly, as a response of ongoing presence of them. If this is the case, to avoid the undesired consequences of this strong monetary policy, Turkey should consider some policy measures to reduce the degree of pass-through and currency substitution.

Advance Pricing Agreements in Turkey

The introduction of new legislation on transfer pricing paved the way for taxpayers to enter into binding agreements with the Turkish Ministry of Finance (MoF) for the first time. This article will give a brief description of legislative changes and then provide a snapshot of Advance Pricing Agreement (APA) regime in Turkey.

Differentiated Modes of Interest Representation and the Politics of Transitional Regimes in Turkey and Egypt

It has been claimed that Turkey and Egypt possess a similar pattern of interest representation in which the earlier state-corporatism has been giving way to a more variegated form of corporatism. However, the seemingly similar structure of post state-corporatist system in both countries displays explicit differences given the distinguished and disaggregated stages of their transitional regime types. Namely, the representational dualism in which preexisting corporatism coexists with resurgent pluralism in post-Kemalist Turkey and post-Nasserist Egypt, does not share much similarity. Although both Turkey and Egypt have not reached the stage of liberal democracy or consolidated democracy, the former is classified as ambiguous regime moving toward electoral democracy while the latter is distinctively categorized as electoral authoritarian regime, typical pseudo democracy.

A tail index tour across foreign exchange rate regimes in Turkey

This article uses daily foreign exchange data in the USD/TRL foreign exchange market to test for structural breaks due to exchange rate regime switches. The analysis focus on extreme movements of exchange rate returns across different regimes using tail index indicators. Sequential and rolling tests, developed by Quintos et al (2001) are used to identify the dates of breaks in the Turkish exchange rate for the period 28 January 1980 to 11 October 2004 and for the sub-periods which cover the fixed exchange rate regime from 28 January 1980 to 22 February 2001 and the flexible exchange rate regime from 23 February 2001 to 11 October 2004. Compelling evidence for breaks in the tail index is found not only across but also within different exchange rate regimes – especially within the fixed regime. Moreover, breakpoint dates are clustered right before the crisis in 2001. This makes the tail index indicator a fairly good candidate for a variable to be used in early warning systems for currency crises.

Assessing gender inequality in the Turkish pension system

Abstract Since the 1990s, the welfare regime in Turkey has become more market‐oriented. The introduction of the Individual Pension System (IPS), a privately managed defined contribution scheme, is part of this process. This paper uses an autoregressive stochastic model in order to show the total effect of specific disadvantages, such as a shorter working life, less earnings, longer life expectancy, real wage growth, administrative cost and risk aversion, on the retirement benefits of women in Turkey. Using an actuarial model, the article aims to contribute to the literature by investigating the gender gap in the Turkish defined contribution scheme.

Turkey makes major investment in earthquake research

Following the devastating Mw 7.4 İzmit earthquake on 17 August 1999, major state‐of‐the‐art earthquake studies were conducted in the Marmara region of northwestern Turkey. However, other faults with the potential to generate big and potentially devastating earthquakes occur in a variety of different tectonic regimes in Turkey, and these faults and regions have not received similar attention.For example, the East Anatolian Fault (EAF) is influenced by the convergence of the Arabian and Anatolian plates along the Zagros‐Bitlis suture zone. Faults in the Aegean Extensional Province (AEP) are purely normal faults. The main faults in the Marmara region occur within both transtensional and transpressional domains (locations are shown in Figure I). All of these regions pose seismic hazards and also require focused study.

A Panorama of the International Migration Regime in Turkey

Panorama du régime des migrations internationales en Turquie. La Turquie est l’un des principaux acteurs sur la scène des migrations Eurasiennes, d’abord en tant que pays d’origine, ensuite en tant que pays de destination et de transit. Elle attache donc beaucoup d’importance à des questions migratoires qui se sont diversifiées depuis peu, ainsi qu’à leur mode de traitement. L’intérêt pour ces questions s’est rapidement accru grâce u désir de la Turquie de rejoindre l’Union Européenne, ainsi que par les transformations récentes des migrations auxquelles elle a dû faire face, et qui ont alimenté la création et la mise en œuvre d’une série de politiques liées aux migrations. Après avoir assimilé cet arrière-plan, les quelques dernières années ont vu, en Turquie, de profondes transformations dans les façons d’affronter les défis posés par le droit d’asile. Le présent papier passe en revue le panorama des problèmes liés aux migrations internationales et au droit d’asile en Turquie dans la période la plus récente. Il présente quelques données statistiques de base concernant le flux et le stock des migrants, des demandeurs d’asile et des réfugiés dans le pays. Il en donne une rapide interprétation, afin de nous offrir les principaux thèmes des problématiques concernant les migrations internationales vers le pays et vers l’extérieur.

Parliament Membership during the Single-Party System in Turkey (1925-1945)

The official legitimization of the single-party regime in Turkey lay with Parliament, which, as a representative of the people, controlled the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. However, the parliamentary period after 1925 was highlighted by a lack of freedom of speech, with scope for political discussion limited. This paper aims to establish the role of MPs during this period. At the head of the single-party system, the President was free to choose every party member for Parliament. This meant competition was very restricted, be it in the form of short-lived opposition parties or independent candidates. During the selection process, some social classes, for example high-ranking officer and bureaucrats were privileged. These two groups were the most common in Parliament. On the other hand, local ties were sometimes respected by the regime: rural notables with close relations with party headquarters were easily elected, and remained in Parliament. A MPs’ chance of re-election was significant if he performed his duty with loyalty to the party. The author underlines a stabilization of political personnel throughout this period.

Semi‐Authoritarian Incorporation and Autocratic Militarism in Turkey

AbstractThis article argues that, since the early 1980s, there have been two regimes in Turkey. The first, which is broadly akin to Michael Mann's characterization of Semi‐Authoritarian Incorporation, has predominated in areas of the country not administered through emergency legislation. In keeping with his model, it has been most fully asserted in areas of key economic value — particularly the Marmara region and the environs of the capital, Ankara. In the thirteen predominantly Kurdish provinces of the south‐east of the country, on the other hand, a second of Mann's regime types, Autocratic Militarism, is discernible. This was institutionalized under a new constitutional structure introduced following the 1980 coup as a means of dealing with a rise in pro‐Kurdish insurgency.

A Tail Index Tour Across Foreign Exchange Regimes in Turkey

There are several econometric studies in the literature discussing the empirics of the foreign exchange rate movements and the volatility of the foreign exchange and its association with some fundamentals under different exchange rate regimes in Turkey. However,all these concentrate on the volatility aspect of the foreign exchange and not on the tail behavior of the foreign exchange returns. It is by now generally accepted that foreign exchange returns exhibit heavy tails as measured by the so called tail index. Applications of extreme value analysis typically assume the tail index to be constant. However, the many switches in foreign exchange regimes in recent history - especially within emerging markets - raises doubts over this constancy assumption. In this study, the tests developed by Quintos, Fan and Phillips (2001) are applied to both full sample covering all regimes and separately to subsamples representing pegged and float regime periods for testing and dating the breaks in tail index. The null of the constancy of the tail index is rejected both for the full sample and subsamples separately, indicating time varying behavior not only accross but also within the fixed and float periods. The break dates detected indicate no association with any foreign exchange regime change and the major breakpoint may be stemming from the overshooting of the exchange rate which also coincides with the abandonment of the pegged in favor of the float regime.

“People’s Houses” as a nationwide project for ideological mobilization in early Republican Turkey1

The republican regime of Turkey started a comprehensive program in its early years for civic training and ideological mobilization in the country. Institutions such as the Turkish Language Society, the Turkish Historical Society and People’s Houses were created in order to undertake this program. These institutions were basically engaged in building a new political culture in order to support the ideals of the new regime. Of these institutions, the People’s Houses are of special interest due to their nationwide popularity and multi‐purpose character. People’s Houses were intended as a means of political communication between state and society, the intelligentsia and ordinary people in the absence of mass media and other intermediary elements.

From nation‐building to globalization: an account of the past and present in recent urban studies in Turkey

Sema Erder Istanbul'a Bir Kent Kondu, Ümraniye [A City Disembarked to Istanbul, Ümraniye].Yildiz Sey (ed.) 75 Yilda Degisen Kent ve Mimarlik [Changing city and architecture in 75 years].Caglar Keyder (ed.) Istanbul, between the global and the localSibel Bozdogan Modernism and nation building: Turkish architectural culture in the early RepublicOguz Isik and Melih Pinarcioglu Nöbetlese yoksulluk, gecekondulasma ve kent yoksullari: Sultanbeyli örnegi [Poverty in turn: squatter housing and urban poor: the example of Sultanbeyli]Ayse Bugra and Caglar Keyder New poverty and the changing welfare regime of Turkey

Art and Power in Turkey: Culture, Aesthetics and Nationalism During the Single Party Era

One prominent intellectual of the early Turkish Republic, İsmail Hakkı Baltacıoğlu, argued that the new Republic should be “a Republic of fine arts.” Indeed, the early Republican project in Turkey perceived culture and art as media through which the Republic could not only represent its achievements but also “create” itself. The present study focuses on the cultural policies and elite perceptions of culture during the single-party regime in Turkey. More specifically, it looks into the developments that took place in the plastic arts and in elite approaches towards aesthetics. This is done in order to shed light on young Turkey's cultural modernization. Examining the interaction between aesthetics and power, this discussion stands at the intersection of political studies and cultural history.

Limits to Alternative Forms of Capitalization: The Case of Anatolian Holding Companies

Since the late 1960s, alternative forms of capitalization have emerged in the absence of an effective capital markets regime in Turkey. We can see these alternative forms in the failed attempts to create Anatolian holding companies through the direct investment of small savings. This article shows how Anatolian holding companies became victims of poor institutional and regulatory regimes, and how the lack of institutions to promote impersonal trust in the economy in turn, permitted widespread abuses. We identify populist politics, lax oversight, and social norms that incorporated gambling as three interlinked reasons which hindered the genesis and development of viable capital market reform and regulatory institutions in Turkey.

Elite perceptions of land reform in early republican Turkey

This article focuses on the land reform attempts of the single‐party regime in Turkey of the mid‐1930s through the mid‐1940s, culminating in the reform Law of 1945. Why the Turkish ruling elite wanted a land reform is still not adequately understood, and there are a number of controversial and often contradictory interpretations. The thesis here is that despite mainstream approaches to the issue in Turkish historiography, the land reform attempts during the single‐party era should be seen as part of the Kemalist project of conservative modernisation. The article argues that a variety of concerns were important in shaping the Turkish elite's thinking on land reform, including an ideology of peasantism combined with a fear of rural unrest (from sharecroppers, agricultural laborers and landless and land‐poor peasants); a fear also of urbanisation, proletarianisation and socialist ideas; a desire to strengthen Republican nationalist ideology in the countryside as a basis of regime support (with a particular emphasis on the Kurdish issue). The conclusion presents an interpretation of the Turkish land reform that connects the long‐and short‐term causes of the land reform Law of 1945.

Civilizing Islam, Islamist Civilizing? Turkey's Islamist Movement and the Problem of Ethnic Difference

The Islamist critique of the post-1923 regime in Turkey centres around the deconstruction of the Republic's civilizing mission. Here the modernization of the rump of the Ottoman Empire undertaken in the name of the universality of western civilization (with the consequent attributing of backwardness to Islam) is problematized: Islamist discourse converges with other postmodern critiques in proclaiming the exhaustion of modernity as a project of emancipation. Islamist politics celebrate the return of the Muslim actor and identity. And yet the making of an Islamist movement is threatened by the mobilization of other political identities similarly suppressed by the Turkish state's modernizing project. This includes in particular Kurdish subjectivity, long a target of assimilation in the name of the universality of the greater Turkish nation. This paper examines the fragmenting of the Islamist movement in Turkey, as well as Islamist attempts to head off Kurdish nationalism. The Islamist suppression of difference within its own ranks in the name of an Islamic universalism betrays it too as a descendant of Enlightenment discourses and a modernizing movement in its own right.

Islamic terrorist activities in turkey in the 1990s

This article focuses on Islamic terrorism in the framework of overall Islamic activity in Turkey. It argues that Islamic terrorist organizations active in Turkey during the 1990s strived to establish an Islamic shari ’a‐based state on the Iranian example, profited from deeper social and political trends in Turkish society and, at the same time, strengthened those trends by their violence. These groups enjoyed wide Iranian support and often acted on behalf of Iranian local and regional, political and strategic interests. The reaction of Turkish authorities in the past to Islamic terrorist activity was limited, and thus encouraged leaders of these groups and their sponsors to continue escalating violence, hoping it would bring down the secular democratic regime in Turkey.

Peaceful Coexistence: Turkey and the Near East in Soviet Foreign Policy

This article focuses on Soviet interests in the Near East, Soviet policy toward Turkey, Soviet-Greek relations, and the Cyprus conflict. The Near East is important to the Soviet Union for geographic, strategic-security, and ideological reasons. Soviet policy can be characterized as one of continuity, stability, and peaceful coexistence—resourceful and responsive at the same time. Moscow has been tolerant of a range of political regimes in Turkey, to which it has offered extensive economic aid, and it has welcomed Greece's new independent foreign policy.

The Eastern Piedmont Fault System and Its Relationship to Alleghanian Tectonics in the Southern Appalachians

Alleghanian continental collision across the Southern Appalachians resulted in northwestward over-thrusting in the Blue Ridge and Valley and Ridge and emplacement of a large crystalline nappe in the Piedmont. However, fault patterns in the Eastern Piedmont fault system are consistent with the geometry expected in a strike-slip fault network. Formation of the Eastern Piedmont fault system mainly postdates the last regional metamorphism in the Piedmont and is interpreted to be an Alleghanian structure penecontemporaneous with thrusting in the western part of the Appalachian orogen. This discrepancy in tectonic style across the orogen is attributed to lateral movement of parts of the Raleigh and Kiokee belts and of the Precambrian (?)-Paleozoic basement of northern Florida out of the principal collision zone during latter stages of the Alleghanian collision. A modern analogy for such lateral movement is the present strike-slip regime in Turkey, which represents post-collisional lateral escape of the Anatolian plate from the intracontinental zone of convergence between Arabia and Eurasia.

Political developments in Turkey, 1950–70

The elections of May 14, 1950, which brought the Democratic Party (Demokrat Parti) of Celal Bayar and Adnan Menderes, President and Premier in 1950-60 respectively, to power and sent the Republican Party (Cumhurriyet Halk Partisi) of Ismet Inonii into opposition (it is still there) was the turning point in Turkish political and social life. It set into motion a new process of leadership selection, social mobilization and broader popular participation. Now, twenty years after this memorable political event, one may rightly ask whether the Turkish efforts to adopt first the classical mechanism of European parliamentarianism and then the ideas of social democracy were successful at all. The answer is positive, despite the brief interlude of a military takeover in 1960-61. Instead of restoring a strong regime under one party government, as demanded by some intellectual and bureaucratic groups, the military ended their rule formally in 1961, by adopting a broadly based social and political order and a new constitution. The success of the Turkish experiment in parliamentary democracy stands in sharp contrast not only to the political regimes in the neighbouring countries but also to most of the Third World. It is true that the present regime in Turkey has been challenged by a variety of leftist and rightist groups, either because it supposedly retards modernization and does not achieve social justice, or because the economic development and the social change it promotes undermine the basic values and the established order in the society. But the regime seems to maintain its vitality. The purpose of this article is not to provide broad generalizations about Turkish politics but a general and factual analysis of some of the major internal and international developments occurring between 1950 and 1970. Nevertheless, in order to place these developments in proper perspective it is necessary to point out some basic historical and social factors which conditioned, at least in part, the emergence of the current parliamentary regime. The first factor is a historical one. The Turkish Republic inherited from the Ottoman Empire not only a strong bureaucratic organization but also a sophisticated political understanding of conflicts and experience in solving them. One may say that throughout the nineteenth century the Ottoman bureaucracy, despite its internal weaknesses, sought to reconcile the social and ethnic conflicts rising from the encounter with, as well as the pressure of Europe, its own traditions of authority and social organization. This tradition was based on the principle that the role of the government was to achieve balance among various forces and interests within the framework of a political system. The social and cultural system on one hand, and the political system on the other, were manipulated in practice as separate entities subject to their own exigencies. The ability of the Ottoman bureaucracy to separate in practice-the theory was rather ambiguous-