The role and treatment of political parties in liberal democracies with reference to the United Kingdom, Turkey and the European Convention on Human Rights

This thesis analyses current situations of political parties in the UK and Turkey with reference to liberal democracy in general and the European Convention on Human Rights in particular. Political parties are essential elements of liberal democracies. In order to function properly, political parties must operate under the rights to freedoms of expression and association, and right to free elections guaranteed by the Convention. However, political parties cannot be left completely unregulated. There must be some rules in order to prevent them from becoming involved in terrorism and political corruption. A balance must be struck according to the Convention. There is a significant difference between the UK and Turkey regarding the treatment of political parties. Political parties in the UK have always been regarded as purely private organisations and left unregulated. However, due to rising public concerns about political corruption, the current government has taken the initiative to regulate funding and party emblems and names. Even with these changes, the UK still preserves its liberal approach to political parties, and the state does not interfere with the substantive aims and activities of political parties. In contrast with the UK, political parties in Turkey have been strictly regulated in terms of their organisation, aim and activities. The statist nature of Turkish democracy has left no space for political parties to represent private interests and implement their party policies when they are in government. They are not trusted by the state elite (civil and military bureaucracy), and therefore they have been restricted by Turkish law to protect state's interest against individuals' interests. If Turkey wants to join to the EU, she must change her law according to the principles set out by the EU and particularly by the Convention. Changing the law which regulates political parties might be a good start to achieve a fully working liberal democracy

Time-Frequency Warped Waveforms

The forthcoming communication systems are advancing towards improved flexibility in various aspects. Improved flexibility is crucial to cater diverse service requirements. This letter proposes a novel waveform design scheme that exploits axis warping to enable peaceful coexistence of different pulse shapes. A warping transform manipulates the lattice samples non-uniformly and provides flexibility to handle the time-frequency occupancy of a signal. The proposed approach enables the utilization of flexible pulse shapes in a quasi-orthogonal manner and increases the spectral efficiency. In addition, the rectangular resource block structure, which assists an efficient resource allocation, is preserved with the warped waveform design as well.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures; accepted version (The URL for the final version: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8540914&isnumber=8605392

Bio-Inspired Filter Banks for SSVEP-based Brain-Computer Interfaces

Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) have the potential to play a vital role in future healthcare technologies by providing an alternative way of communication and control. More specifically, steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) based BCIs have the advantage of higher accuracy and higher information transfer rate (ITR). In order to fully exploit the capabilities of such devices, it is necessary to understand the features of SSVEP and design the system considering its biological characteristics. This paper introduces bio-inspired filter banks (BIFB) for a novel SSVEP frequency detection method. It is known that SSVEP response to a flickering visual stimulus is frequency selective and gets weaker as the frequency of the stimuli increases. In the proposed approach, the gain and bandwidth of the filters are designed and tuned based on these characteristics while also incorporating harmonic SSVEP responses. This method not only improves the accuracy but also increases the available number of commands by allowing the use of stimuli frequencies elicit weak SSVEP responses. The BIFB method achieved reliable performance when tested on datasets available online and compared with two well-known SSVEP frequency detection methods, power spectral density analysis (PSDA) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA). The results show the potential of bio-inspired design which will be extended to include further SSVEP characteristic (e.g. time-domain waveform) for future SSVEP based BCIs.Comment: 2016 IEEE International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics (BHI

Three Essays on Natural Rates

Chapter 1. Non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment and Non-accelerating inflation rate of output We followed Ball and Mankiw (2002) to estimate the natural rates of output and unemployment. The primary purposes of this paper are to provide more accurate estimates of a varying non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) than currently exist and to nd a new measure for the nonaccelerating inflation rate of output so we can estimate the output gap more accurately. Our contributions are adding time-varying coefficients estimated with a break test and finding more accurate measurements for the natural rate of unemployment. We also estimated the time-varying natural rate of output and the output gap because of Okun\u27s law, which shows proportionality and a negative relationship between the output gap and unemployment. We showed that our measure of the output gap predicts all the loss criteria and all periods better than the CBO output gap and the Mankiw output gap. We also showed that our measure of the unemployment gap predicted all the loss criteria and all periods better than the CBO unemployment gap and the Mankiw unemployment gap. Chapter 2. Inflation Dynamics Unemployment, output, labor share (and other measures of slack), and inflation have been disconnected in recent years, especially after the global crisis. Some argued that the Phillips curve had disappeared. Estimating the output gap and the unemployment gap might not give accurate results because they are unobservable natural rates. We developed a structural model of inflation that allows for a fraction of firms that use a backward-looking rule to set prices, as Gali and Gertler (2000) did. The most crucial difference between their paper and ours is that they used measures of marginal cost as the relevant determinant of inflation, and we used the output gap, which we calculated with the new methodology we explained in Chapter 1. Gali and Gertler considered real marginal costs to be a significant and quantitatively important determinant of inflation, while they considered the output gap to be negative and insignificant. We have shown that an accurate measure of the output gap is significant and positive. We also used the CBO output gap as a check for robustness, but the coefficient is negative and insignificant, as the literature shows. Thus, we have concluded that the New Keynesian Phillips curve provides a good first approximation of the dynamics of inflation. Our results suggest that the hybrid new Keynesian Phillips curve may explain inflation dynamics. Chapter 3. Economics fundamentals and exchange rates, can machine learning help? Joint with Andi Cupallari For the final essay, we studied the relationship between economic fundamentals and nominal bilateral exchange rates. We built on previous studies and evaluated machine learning models to forecast exchange rates using economic fundamentals. The last chapter is part of a growing body of literature that, in recent years, has evaluated and called into question the ability of economic fundamentals to forecast exchange rates. We followed precisely the methodology used by Li et al. (2014) to extend the data. Moreover, we introduce a new method to estimate the output gap based on the Nonaccelerating inflation Rate of Output method we introduced in Chapter 1 as an alternative to the HP-filter approach used by Li et al. (2014). We confirm their finding that machine learning outperforms all the other models out of sample. However, unlike Li et al. (2014), our results show that there is no absolute winner among the elastic let, Lasso, and ridge regressions. We find that Lasso performs better than elastic net and ridge, resulting in positive R2OOS for more currencies compared to the other two methods. We find that calculating the output gap using a different approach than Li et al. (2014) improves the out of sample performance of the model

Generating Employment For Turkey: Policy Alternatives In Comparison With Selected Countries

The main purpose of this paper is to provide some lessons for Turkey from the experiences of some selected countries that gained success in their fight against unemployment. In this respect, the experiences of selected countries; Ireland, Netherlands, United Kingdom and South Korea will be analyzed and the policy options for Turkey will be formed up. It is expected that the detailed analysis and comparison of the reforms in labor markets of these countries will put forward essential and applicable results. It is also supposed that our results will greatly contribute to the decrease in the unemployment level in Turkey, when applied. By doing so, this paper endeavors to get some meaningful policy findings for Turkey. In addition, it is believed that the comparison of the labor markets of these countries, the economic structures and labor markets of which are fairly different from each other will result in interesting findings

Pre-Service Teachers' Readiness Levels for Mobile Learning

The purpose of this research is to determine how active the students are participating in the mobile learning process, as well as how active the distance education mobile learning and technological tools are in education due to the Covid-19 epidemic in today's world. determination. With this, the Mobile Learning Readiness Scale adapted by Şata, Çorbacı and Koyuncu (2019) was used in this study. The scale consists of three dimensions: optimism towards mobile learning, self-directed learning and self-efficacy. The participants of the study, on the other hand, consist of 25 Primary Education students and 42 Special Education students who are continuing their education life in the Northern Cyprus. It was concluded that their readiness for mobile learning was high.</em

The Attitudes of Teacher Candidates towards the Gamification Process in Education

In this study, pre-service teachers' attitudes towards the gamification process were discussed. Descriptive scanning method, one of the quantitative methods, was used in the study, and the data were analyzed and tabulated. The Gamification process scale developed by Baydaş and Çiçek was used to collect the data to be used. A total of 67 teacher candidates, including 42 special education and 25 classroom teachers, participated in the study. The data obtained from the pre-service teachers were taken online via Google Form due to the Covid 19 pandemic. The teacher candidates gave answers to the 6 dimensions of the scale regarding Competition, Fun, Busy, Outcome Expectation, Effect on Learning and Intention to Use in the Future.</p