Patriarchal and medical discourses: shaping the experience and management of HIV-related stigma in Turkey

The stigma attached to HIV/AIDS remains a pervasive problem, despite the progress that has been achieved in the global response and the expectations that universal access to treatment will reduce it. This thesis explores how HIV-related discourses are shaped and how people living with HIV (PLHIV) experience and manage stigmatization in Turkey, where HIV prevalence is low and the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS is powerful and widespread. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of the social construction and management of stigma, by offering an empirically informed discussion of the management of the biological body and social identity in relation to broader discursive power relations. Self-management of HIV and its stigma is considered in this thesis as a process of identity construction in which actors are constantly negotiating with the discursive power relations that exercise control over them. The roles of patriarchal and medical discourses are discussed as the main components of the power structure underlying HIV-related stigma in Turkey. Exploring the ways in which PLHIV manage physical health, social relationships and social identity, the thesis focuses on the potential of PLHIV as active agents, who react to, resist or challenge HIV-related stigma. Primary data were generated through biographical narrative interviews with PLHIV. Participant observation in the networking activities of PLHIV and non-governmental organisations provided additional data. Semi-structured interviews with key informants were conducted, to explore the power structure underlying stigma further. Additionally, HIV-related policy documents and statements were reviewed. The research provides data to contribute to the development of HIV-related stigmareduction policies in Turkey. Considering criticisms of the dominant conceptualisation of stigma addressed in the existing literature, the main theoretical contribution to the overall literature on chronic illness and stigma management is the investigation of the link between social identity and discursive power relations, with a specific focus on the active role of the individuals in negotiating and challenging stigma

Property tax shifting under imperfect competition: Theory and application

The objectives of this dissertation are to examine, using hedonic methods, whether site-specific environmental amenities can become sources of market power for property management firms that control them and the extent to which such market power, if present, affects property tax shifting from property owners to property renters. The specific market examined in this dissertation is the vacation rentals market. The key participants in this market are the property owners, the renters and a few property management firms that manage the rental units in return for a fixed percentage commission paid by the owner each time the unit is rented out. In this dissertation, a proposition is derived by theoretically extending hedonic methods to accommodate both market structure and the local public sector. This proposition is then used to empirically examine the role of environmental amenities in creating firm-specific market power and assess the extent to which such market power facilitates property tax shifting. The results of this dissertation indicate that most of the market power exercised by the property management firms is derived from the environmental amenity, namely the lake, and a firm\u27s ability to shift property taxes may be greatly affected by the magnitude of market power it possesses

Architectures of Domination? The Sacralisation of Modernity and the Limits of Ottoman Islamism

Debates on Neo-Ottomanism and the ‘new Turkey’ of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Justice and Development Party) have mostly focused on social, cultural, and political transformations and on the country’s changing place in the world. The transformation of Turkey’s representative architecture and its political implications, however, have been less examined and mostly limited to architectural history and critical architectural and memory studies (cf. Batuman 2013, 2016, 2018; Çeler 2019; Çınar 2020). Yet representative architecture is a field wherein politics, ideology, and society intersect in variegated and insightful ways that merit closer study. In this chapter, I engage with how the AKP has sought to dominate and ‘Islamicise’ the urban landscapes of Turkey through major ‘grand projects’—that is, large, government funded or supported structures—the changes these projects have brought about, and the constraints and challenges they have faced. I also examine the conflict-laden relationship between neoliberal urban development and state- and municipality-led ‘grand projects’—such as mosques, government buildings, and infrastructure projects—which stand at the core of the attempt by AKP elites to leave their mark in space and time. I further argue that the space within which these elites have sought to project their power is not only curtailed, but in most cases structured by the purposes of rent-creation. While I trace attempts to destroy, belittle, or discursively redraw the heritage of the early republic and to attach an Islamic aura to the bland visual repertoire of modern Turkish cities with ‘Ottoman-Seljuk’-style buildings, I also discuss notions of an understated ‘republicanism’—or, rather, a notion of the ‘common good’—present in some of the grand projects, where one would not necessarily expect them. The empirical basis of this chapter comprises photographic evidence, interviews, and observations collected during several fieldwork trips in the winter of 2017 and the summer and autumn of 2020 in Ankara and Istanbul, accompanied by a critical reading of speeches by President Erdoğan at the opening ceremonies of a number of structures. Most of the projects discussed here—and, thanks to neoliberal preferences to turn complex processes of transformation into easily recognisable and marketable products, all of these are indeed projects—are based in Ankara. Unlike Istanbul, where a more enduring cosmopolitanism seems to persevere (Fisher Onar et. al. 2018), Ankara was the showcase of the modern republic, with several iconic buildings and urban ensembles manifesting the early republic’s values of secular modernity (Bozdoğan 2001; Kezer 2015; Batuman 2018). Much of Ankara, extra muros, was built from the 1920s to the 1940s and, until recently, parts of the city centre were dominated by architecture of the late Ottoman and early republican eras. Under the leadership of AKP mayor, Melih Gökçek, from the late 1990s to 2019, the city turned into a battle ground over which symbols should stand for the Turkish nation, and once again attained prominence as the showcase for a ‘new Turkey’, this time represented by the Ottoman Islamist nation-building project. Attempts at spatial domination and transformation through architecture are, hence, most legible in the urban space of Ankara. The analysis of this chapter is driven by individual architectural projects and megastructures which have larger political significance, and which have been discussed controversially in public. I engage with them in two distinct but overlapping analytical exercises, discussing the specific details of each project and exploring its functions in the larger context of the AKP’s identity politics

Lossless image compression by LMS adaptive filter banks

Cataloged from PDF version of article.A lossless image compression algorithm based on adaptive subband decomposition is proposed. The subband decomposition is achieved by a two-channel LMS adaptive filter bank. The resulting coefficients are lossy coded first, and then the residual error between the lossy and error-free coefficients is compressed. The locations and the magnitudes of the nonzero coefficients are encoded separately by an hierarchical enumerative coding method. The locations of the nonzero coefficients in children bands are predicted from those in the parent band. The proposed compression algorithm, on the average, provides higher compression ratios than the state-of-the-art methods. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

Being in limbo: Digital Habitus and Contemporary Colonialism in the Case of Syrian Refugees in Turkey, Greece, and Germany

This study discusses Syrian refugees’ migration trajectories and narratives, based on the fieldwork conducted among Syrian refugees in Turkey, Greece, and Germany as three major geo-political countries particularly concerning Syrian refugee communities. The research adopts a qualitative research map, using the Grounded Theory research approach, ethnography and semi-structured interview methods, in six cities and eight refugee protection centres and camps. The research findings obtained and generated during the field studies are evaluated and analysed using theoretical toolboxes derived from sociology and political science. Especially important are three theoretical frameworks: Power Relations, Digital Habitus, and Political and Social Subjectivities, through which I analysed the Syrian refugees’ practices of mobilities, migration routes, and perception of targeted countries in detail. These theoretical frameworks assist in understanding the implications and limitations of power relations in refugees’ lives, as well as refugees’ use of the internet and media and the influence of these uses on their refugee’s perceptions and desires while being in limbo in refugee camps. Also, the importance of varying capital forms and women refugee’s gender experiences in forced migration and displacement are foregrounded and evaluated. The research proposes a new methodological system that helps to understand contemporary colonialism while addressing current colonial and exploitation relations - Semi-Autonomous Colonialism. This system considers three mechanisms as (co)-operating drivers: Power relations as pushing and formative forces, Subjectivity as individuals’ agencies, actions, and representations within the scope of their own capacity and capital, and Digital Habitus as a new connecting interface, that assist in understanding refugees’ use of the internet and media and its influence of on the refugee's perception and desires. In the research, in which the active participation of individuals by consenting to the changing and digitalising systems is discussed, semi-autonomy stands out as a unique character. Contemporary colonialism appears in peoples' agenda even in the daily practices and decisions, particularly when they immigrate, establish a new life and become unseen actors in economic and social relationships. Consequently, Semi-Autonomous Colonialism is a model of modern colonialism in which the strategies and mechanisms of exploitation become invisible. Keywords: Migration, Forced Displacement, Syrian Refugees, Colonialism, Habitus, Power Relations, Subjectivit

Exact Relation Between Continuous and Discrete Linear Canonical Transforms

Abstract—Linear canonical transforms (LCTs) are a family of integral transforms with wide application in optical, acoustical, electromagnetic, and other wave propagation problems. The Fourier and fractional Fourier transforms are special cases of LCTs. We present the exact relation between continuous and discrete LCTs (which generalizes the corresponding relation for Fourier transforms), and also express it in terms of a new definition of the discrete LCT (DLCT), which is independent of the sampling interval. This provides the foundation for approximately computing the samples of the LCT of a continuous signal with the DLCT. The DLCT in this letter is analogous to the DFT and approximates the continuous LCT in the same sense that the DFT approximates the continuous Fourier transform. We also define the bicanonical width product which is a generalization of the time-bandwidth product. Index Terms—Bicanonical width product, fractional Fourier transform, linear canonical series, linear canonical transform