This study was aimed to identify the personality traits and individual differences that might predict the attitude toward motor insurance in Turkey. Demographic information, personality traits, self-esteem and locus of control were explored as the predictors of attitude toward motor insurance. Results were obtained from 343 people (201 males, 142 females) who participated an online questionnaire through internet or completed the printed form. Computer administered multi scaled questionnaire and printed form were used for data collection. The questionnaire includes Basic Personality Traits Inventory, Locus of Control Inventory, Self-Esteem Inventory and Motor Insurance Attitude Inventory in addition to demographic information form. The results of the survey indicated that gender, conscientiousness and openness to experience have power of prediction on the level of attitude toward insurance. According to the results, women have more positive attitude toward motor insurance than men. Also high levels of conscientiousness and openness to experience result in higher levels of positive attitude toward motor insurance. The findings of the study were discussed in the light of the literature and in relation to the implications of insurance ownership in Turkey. Limitations of the study and suggestions for future researches were also discussed.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the link between ruminative processes and dysregulated behaviors. Accordingly, the emotional cascade model (Selby et al., 2008 / 2009) was tested in a sample of Turkish university students using structural equation modeling. The emotional cascade model posits that the link between emotional and behavioral dysregulation may be through emotional cascades, which are repetitive cycles of rumination and negative affect that result in an increased attention paid to the emotional stimuli and intensification of emotional distress. Dysregulated behaviors, such as non-suicidal self-injury, are used in order to break this cycle and distract the person from ruminative processes. In the first part of the study, a common measure of cognitive emotion regulation, namely The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ / Garnefski et al., 2001) was adapted into Turkish and its psychometric properties were investigated. Results suggested that the Turkish version of the CERQ is a reliable and valid meausure of cognitive coping. Next, a structural equation model was tested to assess the relationship between emotional cascades (as indicated by rumination, thought suppression, catastrophizing) and behavioral dysregulation (as indicated by binge eating, non-suicidal self-injury, excessive reassurance-seeking, and drinking to cope). The results showed that the emotional cascades are associated to behavioral dysregulation. This relationship, however, did not remain significant when the effect of current psychological distress on behavioral dysregulation was controlled for. The importance and possible implications of the present study was discussed.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the development of normative understanding and its relation to emotional states. Two samples of late 3- and 5-year-old Turkish pre-school children were studied. We adopted a peer conflict paradigm in which we taught two children conflicting rules for playing a game and asked them to play the game together, later (incompatible condition). Since children had learned different rules we expected them to protest when their partners played the game with a different rule. Results revealed that both 3- and 5-year-old children were competent at understanding the normative force of the rules. Yet, they did this in a context-sensitive manner. While they protested their partner in the incompatible condition, they did not protest when their partner performed the same action in a different game context where both rules had been taught to children as two alternative ways of playing (compatible condition). Moreover, we investigated children&rsquo / s emotional states &ndash / especially annoyance and anger &ndash / throughout their interactions. We found a different pattern between 3- and 5-year-olds: 3-year-olds were more annoyed and angry in the incompatible condition than compatible condition. On the other hand, 5-year-olds&rsquo / emotional state of being annoyed/angry was not found to be different in the compatible and incompatible condition. Summing up the evidence from normative and emotional responses, even though 5-year-olds protested significantly more in the incompatible than compatible condition, they were not more &lsquo / annoyed and angry&rsquo / . Furthermore, to investigate the possible related mechanisms of normative understanding, we conducted theory of mind and executive functioning tests and collected temperamental and emotion regulation characteristics by questionnaires completed by mothers. Yet, none of these variables were found to be related with normative responses of children when age was factored out in a linear regression model.

This study aims to investigate elementary models of social relations in Turkish cultural context and to link these models with horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism and personal value priorities. Fiske (1992) suggested that four elementary relationship models: communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, and market pricing motivate, organize, generate, coordinate, and evaluate almost all social relations. First, the Modes of Relationship Questionnaire (MORQ) asessing the four relational models was adopted to Turkish. Second, systematical associations of relational models with horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism and personal value priorities were examined. It was expected that horizontal cultural dimensions would predict equality matching and vertical dimensions would predict authority ranking, individualism would be linked to market pricing and collectivism would be linked to communal sharing. For personal value priorities, self-trancendence values would be associatedwith communal sharing, self-enhancement with authority ranking and market pricing, and conservation with authority ranking. Participants (N = 214) completed the MORQ, the Individualism and Collectivism Scale (INDCOL), and the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ). The four factor-structure of the relational models was supported in comfirmatory factor analyses. The hypothesized associations between relaitonal models, cultural orientations, and personal priorities were mostly supported. The results indicated that collectivism predicted communal sharing, vertical dimensions predicted authority ranking, horizontal collectivism predicted equality matching, and vertical individualism predicted market pricing. It was also found that self-trancendence predicted communal sharing and equality matching, self-enhancement predicted authority ranking and market pricing, and conservation predicted authority ranking.Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of the findings were discussed considering previous work and cultural context.

The 20th century can be characterized by the triumph of human rights / however, it also witnessed most atrocious events in history. After two world wars, genocides, and countless human rights violations, the burden of this crude fact is still weighing down. Nevertheless, human rights become the intellectual moral currency of our age. The aim of this thesis is to argue that, contrary to what it appears to be, human rights are not moral promises to be fulfilled but a specific way of doing politics which would be meaningful within the broad framework of power relations. The thesis focuses on the analysis of the emergence and development of human rights which provide a ground for the shift from the international order based on conceptualization of sovereign power of individual states to the new world order based on the moral conceptualization of human rights.

This thesis studies two novels: The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. There are characters with hybrid qualities in each novel and they tend to use or encouraged to use mimicry to find their identities and establish themselves in the cultures they live. Hence, the result of mimicry is ambivalence on both sides, the colonizer and the colonized. The first chapter is dedicated to explaining the theory of hybridity based on the ideas of leading theoreticians like, Homi Bhabha, Robert Young and others. The situation, problems and the coping strategies of character are studied in detail, in individual sections. The final chapter is dedicated to the comparison of the hybrid situations of the second generation male and female characters. Eventually it is seen that all hybrid characters, especially the second generation immigrants use mimicry to create their own &lsquo / Third Space&rsquo / and find their own voices to exist in their environment.

This thesis aims at critically examining the specific place of the &quot / critical&quot / and &quot / radical&quot / theories within both the theory of public administration and political theory, particularly in terms of the discursive participatory framework they offer. The fundamental question dealt with is whether or not the power and dependence analyses of these approaches (which are treated as &#039 / marginal&#039 / in the field) is convincing for an egalitarian, comprehensive and socially transformative democratic governance. Since a discussion of this sort essentially problematizes the reduction of political equality to a proceduralist and abstract philosophical equality, not to commit a similar fallacy of &quot / apriorism&quot / , the study incorporates the observations on LA-21 Turkey processes as a local governance program, in terms of a concrete contribution to theoretical discussion. In the light of direct observations, interviews and data obtained from secondary resources regarding the participatory practices, the level of organization and current capacity of political representation are inferred to be also decisive on the capacity to participate, owing this decisiveness substantially to the economic and social resources in the real social formation, hence the conditions of production of local knowledge are consequently identified as far from reflecting a democratic environment purified from power relations. Highlighting the risk for the notion of self-governance to gain a hegemonic functionality for bourgeoisie democracy concealing and perpetuating social inequalities, the thesis argues for shifting the inquire for the dominant class, from solely political-administrative sphere to civil society, and the maintainable and reproductive conditions and mechanisms of dominance between these two spheres.

This dissertation consists of three papers revolving around economics of R&amp / D. The first paper analyzes the determinants of R&amp / D expenditures with specific focus on foreign ownership and spillovers / the second paper studies the impact of R&amp / D on productivity and the third paper analyzes whether conducting R&amp / D enables Turkish manufacturing firms to catch up with sector leaders as far as their productivity levels are concerned. The first contribution of the thesis is the use of newly available data from Turkish Institute of Statistics (Turkstat). Two different surveys are matched at the firm level for the years 2003-2007. The second contribution is the employment of a new methodology: Heckman two-stage procedure with instrumental variables for panel data. The third contribution is collection of qualitative data via interviews with R&amp / D performing firms. Foreign ownership has no statistically significant effect on R&amp / D intensity. Foreign knowledge spillovers exert a negative effect on R&amp / D, but in time their effect becomes positive. R&amp / D subsidies and skill affect R&amp / D intensity positively while size influences it negatively. The effect of R&amp / D and skill on productivity is positive and significant. The effect of R&amp / D on technical efficiency is negative but knowledge spillovers exert a positive effect on technical efficiency.

During the recent years in Turkey, the word &ldquo / apache&rdquo / had taken its place in Turkish popular culture as a pejorative word that is used to label a group of slum-dweller, working class youth. Those young people are distinguished through their visual styles, music consumption, and everyday activities that form a subculture. This thesis, firstly, is an attempt to understand the material, social and cultural circumstances which produce this subculture. Secondly, the thesis seeks to analyze the cultural reflections of these circumstances into the subculture that is emerging. As an attempt to understand that process, a four months media survey and a ten months field research with in-depth interviews and participant observation was conducted with the members of this subculture in Ankara-Turkey. As a result of the media survey and the field research it was observed that the most dominant factor that leads to/produces this subculture is the precarious working conditions that these youths are embedded. The members of that subculture are composed of the young members of the working class who enter into labor market under the &lsquo / internalized&rsquo / conditions of precarity. They consistently, experience employment under the precarious working conditions and unemployment. Therefore, they occupy a liminal and marginalized position in which they neither articulate to their class position nor depart from it. Their ambiguous position in the relations of production redounds on their cultural practices. They create a subculture both through the mediation of their socio-economically obscure position and as a cultural response to it. They seek to construct a new position through the survival strategies and daily tactics in the realm of cultural practices / through a subculture in which they can define and situate themselves within the bounds of possibilities of their material conditions. However, this subculture also constitutes a continuum with their material conditions and consolidates their liminality. They are labeled as Apaches in that subculture and experience a similar kind of a marginalization with their counterpart precarious youth in all around the world. This thesis examines that subculture in which the cultural reflections of young people to precarity became concrete.

This thesis attempts to examine the relationship between liberal intellectuals and the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) in Turkish politics. The Justice and Development Party was elected to power in the 2002 general elections, and has been continually in power since. The rise of the AKP was interpreted as a real historical break in Turkish politics since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, and sparked the emergence of new public discussions and academic debates on the significance of the party to Turkish politics. The rise and rule of the AKP was also prepared by the formation of a group of intellectuals who classified themselves as liberals or democrats, those focused on in this study comprising mainly columnists in Turkish newspapers. This intellectual stratum showed an exceptional sympathy and support towards the AKP, especially between the years 2002-2011, which also corresponded to the establishment of hegemony of the AKP in Turkish politics and the AKP&#039 / s furthering of neo-liberalization. This study analyzes the nature and multiple dimensions of the relationship between liberal intellectuals and the AKP in Turkish politics and within the larger context of neo-liberalism. The study employs concepts of hegemony and passive revolution and intellectuals developed by Antonio Gramsci, as a theoretical framework, and argues that this intellectual stratum provided the AKP with an ideological leadership during the establishment of the hegemony of the party in Turkish politics and contributed to the perpetuation of neo-liberalism in Turkey by the agency of the AKP.