The Determinants of Tourism Demand in Turkey

Using data of the inbound tourist arrivals to Turkey from France, Germany, UK, US, and Netherlands over the period 1986-2012, we applied autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to test for cointegration, and we estimated long run model and error correction model for tourism demand. The results referred that the most significant factor determines inbound tourist flows are the real per capita income and real effective exchange. We found weak effects for price and financial crisis, but the political events played a strong role differed from country to other. The added value of this article is the estimation of international tourism demand in Turkey using new approach and the newest data for Turke

Host Community Attitudes Towards Internally Displaced Persons: Evidence from Al-Bab, Syria

Considering the unique context of the Al-Bab area in Syria hosting Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), we tested the role of economic individual self-interest in shaping a host community’s attitude towards IDPs. The findings from analyzing data collected from 496 households indicated that self-interest had a significant effect on their attitudes. Interestingly, when positive and negative attitudes were isolated from each other, the findings revealed that the factors shaping the former may not always be the same for the latter. The particular value of this study is in exploring the host community’s attitude towards IDPs, something which has not been studied and thus contributes to enhancing our knowledge about the attitude towards newcomers

The Factors of Residents' Support for Sustainable Tourism Development

In this paper we examined the factors of residents’ support for sustainable tourism development in Mardin city-Turkey, in the context of gender as social structure. We found that people are sensitive about positive and negative effects of tourism, in association with society attachment and involvement, with bigger role for the later. And the perceptions of positive effects reduce their evaluation of the negative effects. Also we found that women are less active in transforming their attitude toward the effects of tourism to behavior toward sustainable tourism. But they are ready, more than men, to support sustainable tourism and ignore its negative effects, in spite of their higher sensitivity for the negative effects. So we recommend raising the role of local community and giving women more chances in the different levels of tourism activities

Top-Down Naturalization: Turkish Government Propensity and Syrian Refugee Attitudes

Naturalization takes place at the intersection between a host government's propensity to give citizenship and refugees' attitudes towards it. However, the naturalization of Syrian refugees, with its top-down approach, shows the possibility of a divergence between a government’s propensity and refugees’ attitudes, and that divergence may spoil the expected benefits. This study questions the factors that determine government propensity and refugees' attitude, besides the convergence and divergence between them. The regressions have been estimated using data collected from a sample of 296 Syrian students at Mardin University, Turkey. The findings of this study revealed a contradiction between attitude and propensity, although they share factors of education and the hosting context. While the indications of social and cultural integration have a positive effect on attitudes, they do not affect propensity. Besides the contextual factors of hosting province shape attitude and propensity. Moreover, the most important factor in deciding attitude is the perception of the costs and benefits of naturalization

'We are still here': The stories of Syrian academics in exile

Purpose The purposes of this paper are twofold: to generate insight into the experiences of Syrian academics in exile in Turkey, and to explore approaches to collaboration and community building among academics in exile and with counterparts in the international academic community. Design/methodology/approach The study employs a hybrid visual-autobiographical narrative methodology, embedded within a Large Group Process (LGP) design Findings Findings are presented in two phases: The first phase presents a thematic analysis of narrative data, revealing the common and divergent experiences of twelve exiled academics. The second phase presents a reflective evaluation of undertaking the LGP and its implications for community building and sustaining Syrian academia in exile. Research limitations While this is a qualitative study with a small participant group, and therefore does not provide a basis for statistical generalisation, it offers rich insight into Syrian academics’ lived experiences of exile, and into strategies implemented to support the Syrian academic community in exile. Practical implications The study has practical implications for academic development in the contexts of conflict and exile; community building among dispersed academic communities; educational interventions by international NGOs and the international academic community; and group process design. Originality/value The study makes an original contribution to the limited literature on post-2011 Syrian higher education by giving voice to a community of exiled academics, and by critically evaluating a strategic initiative for supporting and sustaining Syrian academia. This represents significant, transferable insight for comparable contexts

Conflict, insecurity and the political economies of higher education: The case of Syria post-2011

This paper stems from a 12-month collaborative enquiry between a group of Syrian academics in exile in Turkey and academics from the University of Cambridge into the state of Syrian Higher Education after the onset of the conflict in 2011. The purpose of this paper is to draw on 19 open-ended interviews with exiled Syrian academics; two focus groups; mapping and timeline exercises; and 117 interviews collected remotely by collaborating Syrian academics with former colleagues and students who were still living inside Syria at the time of data collection. The findings of the research suggest that Syrian HE after 2011 was fragmented across regions; in some cases non-existent, and in others deemed to be in a state of reform in order to meet student needs. Key issues that emerged from this work are human rights’ abuses directed against academics and students including the detainment, purging and kidnapping of academics, an increased militarisation of university life and a substantive loss of academic and human capital. Design/methodology/approach – The overall design involved two workshops held in Turkey (in June and July, 2017) at which the Cambridge team explained the stages of undertaking qualitative research and planned the collaborative enquiry with Syrian co-researchers. The first workshop addressed the nature of qualitative research and explored the proposed methods of interviewing, using timelines and mapping. The instruments for interviewing were constructed in groups together and mapping was undertaken with the 21 Syrian academics in exile who attended the workshop. Syrian academics also built their own research plans as a way of expanding the consultation dimension of this project inside Syria, engaged in survey and interview protocol planning and discussed ways to access needed documentation which could be drawn upon to enrich the project. The Syrian coresearchers interviewed remotely HE staff and students who had remained in, or recently left, Syria; the key criterion for group or participant selection was that they had recent and relevant experience of Syrian HE. The second workshop focused on data analysis and writing up. There was also wide consultation with participants inside and outside Syria. As part of the research, the Cambridge team conducted open-ended interviews with 19 Syrian academics and students living in exile in Turkey. This involved interviewing Syrian scholars about their experiences of HE, policy changes over time and their experiences of displacement. The researchers developed this protocol prior to the capacity-building workshops based on previous research experience on academic and student displacement, alongside extensive preparation on the conditions of Syrian HE, conflict and displacement. In addition to interviewing, a pivotal element of methodological rigour was that the authors sought to member check what participants were learning through mapping and timeline exercises and extensive note-taking throughout both workshops. The major issues that the authors confronted were ethical concerns around confidentiality, the need to ensure rigourously the protection of all participants’ anonymity and to be extremely mindful of the political sensitivity of issues when interviewing participants who may not feel able to fully trust “outsider” researchers. Issues of social trust have been reported in the literature as one of the most significant drawbacks in conducting research in “conflict environments” (see Cohen and Arieli, 2011) where academics and students have been working and/or studying in autocratic regimes or were operating within political contexts where being open or critical of any form of institutional life such as university work or the nation could cost them their jobs or their lives. Findings – The accounts of Syrian academics and students emerging from this work point to some of the state-building expressions of HE manifested in the shaping of professional and personal experiences, the condition and status of HE, its spatial arrangements and their associated power formations, and resulting infeelings of intense personal and professional insecurity among Syrian scholars and students since 2011. While acknowledging that the Syrian situation is deemed one of the worst humanitarian crises in the region in recent decades, these accounts resonate, if in different ways, with other studies of academics and students who have experienced highly centralised and autocratic states and tightly regulated HE governance regimes (Barakat and Milton, 2015; Mazawi, 2011). Originality/value – Currently, there is virtually no research on the status and conditions of higher education in Syria as a consequence of the war, which commenced in 2011. This work presents a first-person perspective from Syrian academics and students on the state of HE since the onset of the conflict. The major contribution of this work is the identification of key factors shaping conflict and division in HE, alongside the political economies of HE destruction which are unique to the Syrian war and longstanding forms of authoritarian state governanc

Tourism and Economic Growth in Turkey: Disaggregated Approach

To enhance our understand of the relationship between tourism and economic growth, we used quarterly data ofTurkey between 2003q1-2014q4, disaggregated tourism variable into many segments according to tourismmotivation and tested the hypothesis that different segments of tourism have different effects on economic growth.We used Johansen co-integration test, estimated Error Correction Model ECM, and found a long rung causationfrom tourism segments to economic growth, but we did not find short term causation. By estimating the long runmodel, we found that different segments of tourism have different effects on economic growth. The most importantsegment was leisure tourism followed by business tourism. Visiting relatives has insignificant effect, while shoppingtourism has negative and insignificant effect. The results affirmed our hypothesis. The added value of our article ismixing microeconomic and macroeconomic approach in studying TLG

Syrian Higher Education post 2011:

This report details a collaborative enquiry, carried out by Syrian academics in exile in Turkey and academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, into the state of Syrian higher education (HE) post-2011. It was designed as a learning activity and a collaborative study and included two capacity-building workshops on data collection, research ethics and qualitative research methodologies run by the Cambridge research team members for their Syrian colleagues. Each contributed their unique knowledge, understanding and expertise to the undertaking, critical to which was the Syrian coresearchers’ reach back to former university colleagues and students still active in HE inside Syria. The Syrian and Cambridge team members jointly conducted the enquiry over a 12-month period, between 2017 and 2018. The nature, complexities and characteristics of undertaking research in conflict settings, particularly where people are dislocated and fearful, constituted a challenging learning experience for Syrian and Cambridge researchers alike. Due to the absence of reliable data on the state of Syrian HE post-2011, the literature review made use of grey literature1 reports on Syrian HE and where possible, some first person accounts that were reported through media outlets as well as in research reports. We have endeavoured to choose reports that are from reputable sources but are fully cognisant of the limitations of such an approach and have sought where possible to corroborate these

PRO POOR TOURISM IN MARDIN

We did our best to meet the benefits of pro poor tourism based on a series of aspects. On the one hand, the theoretical studies which try to explore pro poor tourism as a concept, to define it, find its theoretical roots in the specialized literature referring to growth and development, and to evaluate the ability of tourism to be pro poor by using its own characteristics. On the other hand, the empirical studies, which are very scarce, tried to measure the role of tourism in poverty alleviation both at a macro and micro level. At the micro level, they studied the activities which had the formal task of being pro poor. However, no one tried to measure the extent to which tourism activities are pro poor by themselves, without any formal task or plan

دور العوامل الديمغرافية في تحديد الموقف السياسي للطلبة السوريين في جامعة ماردين من الحدث السوري

The Syrian event formed a social laboratory that can test various theories of social sciences. Given the intensity of the conflict and the depth of the fluctuations and changes created, there are clear horizontal and vertical divisions and overlapping of the Syrian society's political attitudes towards what is happening. The importance of demographic factors in this regard was remarkable, which is an opportunity to study the factors that determine the political attitude and highlight the demographic factors. Due to the special circumstances of Syria and the difficulty of reaching all segments of society, we chose to study the political attitude of the Syrian students at Mardin Artuklu University. We distributed a questionnaire on a random sample and 212 could be accepted. After carrying out the statistical analysis of the data it was found that the most important demographic factors contributing to determining the age of political attitude, Where the older segments of the youth tended to opposition mood, and the ethnic factor, where it was found that Arabs have an attitude closer to the opposition mood compared to Kurds. While there was no significant effect on the factors such as religion, financial situation and gender