This paper frames the GM cotton approval debate in Turkey in the context of a socio-political process in which conflicts must be resolved between competing interests and among people who hold different value systems and have different priorities. Four different cotton farming alternatives— business as usual (BAU), ecological farming (ECO), GM farming (GM), and good agricultural practices (GAP)—are assessed and evaluated via a set of environmental, social, and economic criteria chosen on the basis of an extensive review of the cotton production and genetically modified organism (GMO) literatures, and in-depth interviews with several key stakeholders and experts in Turkey. The results show that when economic concerns are considered primary, GM farming is the preferred practice. In contrast, when only the social dimension is prioritised, the ECO alternative performs best. Finally, when the economic and social dimensions are appraised together, GAP emerges as a compromise solution. This study reveals that the decision to approve GM farming is not only complex but also value-laden and interest-based.

This paper explores how the state employs digital technologies in its pacification of dissident political bodies, subjectivities, and communicative capabilities. It explores strategies of resistance to the surveillance practices which come to the fore as a state form, as a means of social control, and as a mechanism for creating manageable and disciplined crowds. Drawing upon ethnographic data, it focuses on the contemporary politics of the Kurdish movement in Turkey. In particular, it analyses the digitized surveillance and resistance of Kurds, both of which function as crucial components of contemporary power regimes in Turkey.

Widely recognized by nationalists, Islamists and conservatives as the heroine of the Turkish Right in the twentieth century, Sâmiha Ayverdi influenced the renaissance of right-wing politics in Turkey as an important leader of the Rifaȋ order, a prolific author, an unyielding anti-communist, and finally as an institution-builder for right-wing causes. This article focuses on the apparent paradoxes in Ayverdi's long career, such as her modernist interpretation of Islam, her relationship with her sufi master, preference for memoirs, and her unabashed elitism. Such characteristics defy clichés associated with the stereotypical conservative/nationalist/Islamist intellectual in Cold War Turkey. Our in-depth study of Ayverdi's works thus reveals the complexity of right-wing identities, and the fact that our protagonist is an outspoken woman intellectual also adds an important twist to the story.

Drawing on the insights of the growing critical literature on urban governance and housing policy, this article seeks to analyze the specific field of social reform in Turkey in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, in which housing shortages for working class families were depicted as constituting a new social and moral question. Housing policy was born in the early 1950s, as links were established between external sanitary and moral conditions and the homes of the poor, and as rival parties competed to attract the votes of the growing laboring masses. However, neither the middle class reformers nor the political elite supported direct state intervention to provide social housing for low-income citizens. T h e chosen solution was encouraging home ownership through minimum public subsidies to workers' cooperatives. Yet, cooperatives continued to build largely middle class housing during the period, which was far too costly for workers, while unauthorized land appropriations and squatting became the primary mechanism through which the working poor could be incorporated into the urban fabric.

Turkey's activism in Africa has been extensively noted. It has been argued that non-state actors like business and civil society organizations take part in Turkeys Africa initiative. Nevertheless, state/non-state interaction in Turkey's foreign policy implementation has not been accounted for in theoretical terms in Turkish foreign policy literature. This paper combines post-international theory and foreign policy implementation in looking at Turkey's foreign policy towards sub-Saharan Africa. We argue that adapting to the multi-centric world, the Turkish government has moved beyond conventional state-to-state dealings in implementing its foreign policy and increasingly relies on the cooperation of non-state actors.