Faculty Research

Some of the research projects of the CTS faculty:

1. Birol Yeşilada

World Values Survey - Cyprus

P.I. Birol Yeşilada (Portland State University) and co-P.I.s Harry Anastasiou (Portland State University), Craig Webster (University of Nicosia), and Nicos Peristianis (University of Nicosia) conducted the first World Values Survey in Cyprus during February - April 2006. The World Values Survey is a worldwide investigation of sociocultural and political change. It is conducted by a network of social scientist at leading universities all around world. (Partial funding for this survey in Cyprus was provided by the Jubitz Family Foundation of Portland Oregon.) 

Power Transition Theory

Power Transition theory is based on A.F.K. Organski’s (1958) seminal work in world politics. The most basic proposition is that severe war is most likely to occur when the relative power of two competing and dissatisfied nations approaches parity. However, the dynamics of power do not account for the full story. A second fundamental proposition is that nations do not interact in anarchy. Rather, the dominant nation establishes the status quo and persuades satisfied nations to join the existing order. The nations that rank as potential challengers have two options. A dissatisfied challenger whose preferences for the ordering of the international system differ substantially from the dominant order will seek to alter the status quo. Conversely, a satisfied challenger whose preferences for the ordering of the international system are closely aligned with the dominant nation will seek to preserve the status quo or will attempt to alter it by cooperative means. The policy options presented by these two different interactions differ substantially.

Turkish Studies Special Issue: Islamization of Turkey under AKP Rule

Islamization of Turkey under AKP Rule (Edited by Birol Yesilada & Barry Rubin)

This book examines the decade in office of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its efforts to transform the Turkish republic toward a more Islamist-oriented system. If it succeeds, Turkey’s dramatic shift will be the most important change in the Middle East power balance since the 1979 Iranian revolution and will have equally devastating effects on Western interests.

For more than 80 years Turkey has been ruled by the secular democratic structures created by Kemal Ataturk. Now, however, the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its series of electoral victories are creating a new system. Whilst portraying itself as a centre-right reform party, the AKP has been accused of having an Islamist agenda. After almost a decade in power, there is serious evidence that this claim is true. At home, the AKP has been changing basic Turkish attitudes and institutions, from buying up a large portion of the country’s media to revising its laws, and even taking the lead in the writing of a new constitution. Internationally, Turkey has moved away from the West and Israel toward Iran and radical Islamist groups. While its intentions—and ability to fulfil them—are still unclear, the AKP has been leading the most important transformation of Turkey since the formation of the republic after World War I. This book systematically examines the AKP’s ideology, support base, actions in office, and goals.

This book was published as a special issue of the Turkish Studies.

Kıbrıs Görüşmeleri

EU-Turkey Relations

Islam and Turkish Cypriots

Political Attitudes and the Tolerance of Immigrants

Religiosity and Social Values of Cypriots

2. Pelin Başçι

3. Tuğrul Keskin

Sociology of Islam and Social Theory.

This project analyzes Islamic political social and economic structures from the lenses of Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel and compares them with Muhammad Abduh, Hasan Al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb and Mawdudi. This research interest emerges from the intersection of social theory, political economy, religion and the sociology of work. I am interested in an approach to the theoretical study of society, religion and politics that takes into account the broader questions of Muslim Society, Islam, secularism, modernity and the capitalist mode of production, and political sociology. Currently (especially in consideration of the work of Max Weber, Sayyid Qutb, Mawdudi, Maxime Rodinson, and Ernest Gellner), I am concerned with the transformation of what I call domestication of religion through economic routinization and discipline that goes beyond the conventional modes of secularization.

Sociology of Islam and Muslim Societies

The Future of Uyghur Nationalism and Its Impact on US-China Relations

The aim of my study is to provide a historical overview of Uyghur nationalism in China after the occupation of the Eastern Turkistan Republic, and to provide insight into future ramifications for US-China relations. In this research, I will analyze the elements that have caused the rise in the Uyghur nationalist movement. Uyghurs are an indigenous population of Central Asia and the West part of China, called Xinjiang in Chinese. Uyghurs have called their homeland Eastern Turkistan. China has many different ethnic and religious groups, but the Uyghur case is very unique, because Uyghurs are ethnically and religiously very distinctive from the Chinese. There are many other Muslim minorities in China, but the Uyghur is the dominant ethnic group, among Muslims with a population of approximately 15 million people. We have no exact number, because after the Cultural Revolution there has been domestic migration that has taken place within the last thirty years and the demographic structure in Eastern Turkistan has changed to the detriment of the Uyghur population. Within the next ten to fifteen years, Uyghurs will be a minority group in their homeland.

Sociology of Africa: The History of Colonialization in the 20th Century

This project is based on a Post-Colonial approach to African Politics. Four different historical processes will be reviewed within this research, including i). The Berlin Conference and ii). WWI: 1884-1918, Struggle for Freedom and Equality: 1918-1950s, iii). The Cold War Effect in Africa: Socialism versus Imperialism: 1950-1980 and iv). The Neoliberalist Process in Africa: the Collapse of Dreams.

Sociology of Africa

"Behind Closed Doors" in Insight Turkey (June 2005) reprinted with persmission of the Journal

The Sociology of Islam: Secularism, Economy and Politics

4.  Grant Farr

Professor Farr is presently working the role of the Islamic seminaries, or madrassas, in Afghanistan.  This research is funded though a grant by the National Bureau of Asian Research and is a three year project to examine the role Islam and Islamic schools throughout South Asia.  Two articles have been published on this topic.  In addition, he has recently published an article on the Hazara, an ethnic group that lives in the high mountains of Central Afghanistan. 

5.  Ali Çarkoğlu & Ersin Kalaycıoğlu

Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey

6.  Netice Yιldιz

7.  Arnold Reisman

Turkey's Modernization

Emigre Bibliography

TurkishLife News Articles by Arnold Reisman

8. Ziya Öniş & Fikret Şenses

Turkey and the Global Economy: Neo-Liberal Restructuring and Integration in the Post-Crisis Era

9. Evguenia Davidova

Post-1989 Shopping Tourism to Turkey as Prologue of Bulgaria's Return to Europe

New Perspectives on Turkey 43 (Fall 2010): 135-164

The shift to a market economy is a more complex story than the standard transition narrative implies. Shopping tourism is a socio-cultural phenomenon that illuminates the shifting relationship between the state, its citizenry, and the market. Its existence is predetermined by a weak state and incorporation into a global economy.Shopping tourism offers a link between the socialist economy of shortage and the post-socialist informal economy. It has opened a survival niche for unemployed and constitutes a school of entrepreneurship and consumer practices. The discourses surrounding shopping tourism have reflected anxieties about incorporation, social reordering, and blatant consumerism; recreational tourism mirrors their normalization.The Bulgarian suitcase trade to Turkey also elucidates the interplay between new consumerism and old nationalism and their insertion into the debates about Bulgaria's ideological reorientation. Bulgarian Europeanness in the 1990s was constructed against two principal foils:the socialist past and the Ottoman legacy. Ironically, the stereotypical East was constructed as the stereotypical West in a way in which market and ideological categories intermingle and foreshadow a Bulgarian consumerist "Return to Europe".To elaborate these arguments, the article draws on an analysis of newspaper ads, statistical data, travel guides, internet travelogues, and interviews.