Distributive politics and regional development: assessing the territorial distribution of Turkey’s public investment

Turkey is often perceived as a country with low bureaucratic capacity and prone to political manipulation and ‘pork-barrel’. This article tests whether this is the case, by analysing the extent to which politics, rather than equity and efficiency criteria, have determined the geographical allocation of public investment across the 81 provinces of Turkey between 2005 and 2012. The results show that although the Turkish government has indeed channelled public expenditures to reward its core constituencies, socioeconomic factors remained the most relevant predictors of investment. Moreover, in contrast to official regional development policy principles, we uncover the concentration of public investment in areas with comparatively higher levels of development. We interpret this as the state bureaucracy’s intentional strategy of focussing on efficiency by concentrating resources on ‘the better off among the most in need’

Challenges of triangular relations: The US, the EU, and Turkish accession

The US government became deeply involved in European Union (EU)-Turkey relations from the mid-1990s and has provided extensive diplomatic support for full Turkish membership in the EU since then. Washington's strategic considerations have been paramount in the US government's approach to Turkey's full integration into the EU. The US policy on this issue has played a constructive role in Turkish-US relations. However, it has also created strains in transatlantic ties, since the pressure the US has put on the EU has angered many European officials, who resent what they view as interference in the EU's internal affairs. The US has become more sensitive to the complaints voiced by European leaders and EU officials, and it has adopted a more subtle approach to the issue of Turkish membership. While Washington continues to support Turkey's European integration, it has also recognised that the accession process is likely to be lengthy

Boon or bane for development? Turkey’s central state bureaucracy and the management of public investment

While Turkey’s use of public monies has been frequently marred by waste and short-term electoral rewarding, recent research suggests that the allocation of public investment across Turkish provinces between 2004 and 2012 was more responsive to socioeconomic needs than electoral politics. The current paper aims to understand this empirical puzzle by exploring whether the ‘relatively sound’ management of public investment can be explained by the characteristics of the central economic bureaucracy. It draws on process-tracing analysis and in-depth elite interviews. In line with the developmental state literature, the analysis argues that authoritative and insulated public administrations are essential for policy effectiveness, particularly in institutional contexts prone to a high politicisation of the public purse. Yet, in order to prevent bureaucratic capture, bureaus must also be accountable. The analysis in particular shows how increasing the transparency of the state and allowing a stronger oversight of policy performance by the public and the media are extremely important. Conversely, transformations which simply reduce the powers of strong, top-down bureaucracies to increase the indiscriminate control by governments – such as the ones which have occurred in Turkey in recent years – will not lead to stronger institutions, but merely produce different ineffective and unsustainable structures.</jats:p

Funerals and elections: the effects of terrorism on voting behavior in Turkey

This article empirically analyzes the effects of terrorism on the electoral choices of the Turkish voters in the 1991 and 1995 general elections. It relies on a unique data set that includes the date and the place of burial of Turkish soldiers and police officers who died in the fight against the terrorist organization PKK. These young men are very highly regarded in the Turkish culture, and are known as "terror martyrs". Moreover, for the most part of the Turkish people, they constitute the most tangible and important loss to terrorism. I employ the number of these security force terror casualties at the district level as a measure of the level of terrorism that the people of that district have been exposed to, and analyze whether and how exposure to terrorism affects people's electoral choices. The results indicate that Turkish voters are highly sensitive to terrorism, and that they blame the government for their losses. Moreover, exposure to terrorism leads to an increase in the vote share of the right-wing parties who are less concessionist towards the terrorist organizations cause compared to their left-wing counterpart

Worldviews and discursive construction of GMO-related risk perceptions in Turkey

This paper analyses the discursive construction of the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) issue in the Turkish political arena following the public debate on the pending legislation on biosecurity. The study proposes an operational approach to semiotic/actor network theory (Latour) applied to public representations of a new technology within the theoretical frameworks of social representation theory and cultural theory of risks. It aims to highlight how different worldviews produce different risk discourses of GMOs in Turkey. Using cluster analysis to inductively extract evaluative categories, we use these to identify themes by human coding. Lastly, we apply formal concept analysis to link themes to actors and their worldviews, establishing their semantic networks. Formal concept analysis revealed four discourse networks reflecting nationalist, Islamist, progressive (left) and neo-liberal worldviews. Finally, these structures will be grounded back in the articles for a richer interpretive analysis