Suchergebnisse

This study aims to reflect on qualitative interviewing with a particular emphasis on semi-structured interviewing (SSI), with the purpose of guiding students and young scholars of International Relations and Political Science who will use this method in their research. This study begs to differ from both radical postpositivist's deep scepticism which makes any scientific inquiry almost impossible as well as from positivism's unreflective, unproblematized, instrumental approach to interviewing. It proposes a reflectivist approach to qualitative interviewing that emphasizes the political nature of the interviewing process with various political, ethical and even social consequences. The reflectivist approach requires researchers to be self-critical at all times, in particular concerning their role and influence on the interview setting and the interviewee. This article proceeds as follows: It first addresses my own research on the nexus between civil society and the Kurdish question in Turkey, where SSI has been operationalized as the main research method. It then addresses the positivist and post-positivist debates on qualitative interviewing as well as the reflectivist approach that this study promotes. The article then engages in SSI in three distinct stages: pre-interview, interview and post-interview phases. Finally, the concluding part introduces some works utilising interviewing in Turkish IR and wraps up the theoretical/ methodological arguments disseminated throughout the study at hand.

Kaliber, Alper/0000-0002-0160-8566 ; WOS:000372846700002 ; This study discusses the dynamics of de-Europeanisation and the changing impact of Europe on the politically mobilised civil society involved in the public debates concerning Turkey's Kurdish question. The article first critically assesses how and in what ways the legal and constitutional reforms on the freedom of assembly required by the European Union (EU) changed the political structure in which civil society organisations (CSOs) operate in Turkey. It then examines the views of CSOs on the potential roles and limitations of the EU in the Kurdish question and the peace process which lasted between March 2013 and July 2015. It also delineates the reasons why the political context of Europeanisation is not seen as instrumental by these CSOs to framing and justifying their arguments. ; European CommissionEuropean CommissionEuropean Commission Joint Research Centre [CIG10-GA-2011-294307EUROCIV] ; This paper is based on my research 'Europeanisation of Public Debates and Civil Society in Turkey' (EUROCIV) funded by the Marie Curie Career Integration Grant under the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission (Contract No.: CIG10-GA-2011-294307EUROCIV).

This article introduces a novel conceptual/analytical framework to Europeanization studies. Its main aims are twofold: first, it problematizes the mainstream usage of the term Europeanization, and the notion of change that it has embraced, and second, it develops a fuller account of the impact of European integration on societies. An analytical distinction is drawn between EU-ization as a formal process of alignment with the EU's body of law and institutions, and Europeanization as a wider sociopolitical and normative context. The impact of Europeanization in a given society is heavily conditioned by the extent and the ways in which Europe is used as a context by domestic actors. To substantiate its arguments, the article focuses on the Turkish case, where Europeanization as a normative–political context has extensively been implicated in its modernization and nation-building processes as well as in recent domestic debates concerning the country's identity and future orientation.

This study argues that the post-Cold War changes in Turkish foreign and security policy (FSP) can best be understood as the regionalization of strategic and security outlook in Turkey. Here regionalization refers to two interrelated processes: first, the process whereby security interest definitions and threat perceptions in Turkey have gained an increasingly regional character, and second the process whereby Turkey has increasingly defined itself as an activist regional power. Yet, the current study takes issue with the widespread assumption that regionalist activism of Turkish FSP can only be appropriated to the recent Justice and Development Party governments. Rather, it argues that the regionalist activism observed in the 2000s should be conceived as the second regionalist turn in Turkish FSP. The first wave of regionalization began soon after the end of the Cold War and developed in parallel to the rise of the 'region' as a new unit of security in global politics. This study compares and contrasts these two regionalist eras with a view to exploring the post-Cold War regionalization of FSP in Turkey.

Particularly since the beginning of the new millennium, the Cyprus issue that had hitherto been successfully securitized and bureaucratized has turned out to be the main 'discursive battlefield' of the polarization among ruling elites in Turkey. Framed within a historical perspective, the present article re-examines Turkey's security discourse on Cyprus with particular reference to its implications for the (re)configuration of political balances and power relations between the conservative state elite - namely, the civilian and military bureaucracy - and the reformist political elite in Turkey. It concludes that the security language devised by the Turkish 'foreign' policy and security establishment has been operational in both inscribing the legitimate boundaries of the political sphere and crippling the manoeuvring ability of governments vis-à-vis the strong bureaucratic establishment in Turkey. The article also aims at encouraging the reader to critically reflect on power politics of 'foreign' policymaking in Turkey and its implications for domestic politics.