This thesis seeks to examine Russian foreign policy in the post-Soviet era and its evolution in terms of Russia&rsquo / s use of soft power in the post-Soviet space. Contrary to the views that consider Russia exclusively as a hard power, this thesis argues that Russia has started to develop its soft power capabilities and how to use its soft power effectively in the post-Soviet space, especially since the beginning of Vladimir Putin&rsquo / s second Presidential term in 2004. In this context, Russia pursues a proactive foreign policy particularly in the spheres of language and education, which are important elements of its soft power. The thesis is composed of three main chapters in addition to the introduction and conclusion chapters. The first main chapter discusses the evolution of the soft power concept in Russian foreign policy by analyzing the period of 1992-2008. The second chapter seeks to analyze the position of Russian language in the CIS countries as lingua franca. The last chapter examines the Russian education system and the attraction of its higher education institutes for students from the CIS countries.

This thesis aims to study the relations between Turkey and Russia in the post-Soviet era by focusing on the nature of economic interdependence between these countries. Focusing on the energy, trade, tourism and investment sectors, the thesis evaluates the interaction between the political and economic factors in the relations between Turkey and the Russian Federation. Contrary to the general view which claims that the historically conflictual relations between these two countries have been replaced by more cooperative economic and political relations, the thesis argues that these relations are characterized by both cooperation and conflict due to the complex nature of their interdependence. In this sense, there is always a potential for tensions in these relations due to the strategic role of economic relations between Turkey and Russia. Following the introduction chapter, the second chapter examines the historical background of Turkish-Russian relations until the end of the Soviet era in 1991. The third and fourth chapters analyze the Yeltsin and Putin periods in Turkish-Russian relations by exploring the limits of economic interdependence in four main sectors of economic transaction / trade, energy, investment and tourism. The last chapter is the conclusion.

This thesis analyses the effect of sectoral and macroeconomic variables on the profitability of the Turkish commercial banks over the period 2005-2009:3 by using multiple regressions. In this study, profitability of Turkish banking system in the mentioned period is discussed and questions such as why some commercial banks are more profitable than others and to what extent discrepancies in banks&rsquo / profitability are due to variation in endogenous factors under the control of bank management and to what extent external factors impact the profitability performance of these banks are sought to answer. Firstly, the empirical results revealed that sectoral characteristics explain a substantial part of the within country variation in bank interest margins and net profitability. High profitability tends to be associated with banks that hold a relatively high amount of equity capital, and with large non interest income. Other important internal determinants of banks&rsquo / profitability are non-interest expenses and fixed assets which have negative and significant impact. Also, equity capital is the internal determinant of net interest margin. Secondly, it is found that inflation is the macroeconomic determinant of net interest margin and profitability.

This thesis analyzes the process of civil wars and political crisis in Lebanon in a historical context, covering the period starting from the civil war of 1860 until the Doha Agreement in 2008. This thesis defines confessional system as a type of democracy implemented in multi-religious societies, which did not change along two centuries in Lebanon. This study aims to establish a different approach on questions such as how far confessionalism can contribute to internal strives and political crisis in Lebanon. The thesis claims that the confessional system that was posed as a solution after civil war periods is the main resource of intercommunal conflicts and this system is open to the manipulation of the foreign actors for their own interests. This thesis also claims that if the national citizenship is applied instead of confessional system, and if Lebanese people unify in terms of national identity, civil wars, political crisis, and foreign intervention could be prevented.

The purpose of the study is to focus on the press discourse in the representation of the non-Muslims in the news reports, editorials and columns based on the case studies of the 1934 Thrace Events, 1942 Wealth Tax and 6/7 September 1955 Riots. The aim is to critically analyse the ideological representation of the non-Muslims in the Turkish press through critical linguistics and discourse analysis.

As an age old virtue, courage has been linked to several characteristics / however, the number of empirical studies discussing these linkages is few. Also, the literature lacks a proper self report measure of courage. With these voids in mind, the aims of the present research are threefold: a) to develop a new scale to measure courage which has been mostly understood in terms of being able to present oneself in a genuine way, perseverance under difficult circumstances, and pursuit of morally right behavior / b) to investigate self related differences in courage within the context of Balanced Integration and Differentiation (BID) Model of self (imamoglu, 2003) and c) to explore the relationship between courage and other proposed related constructs. A set of questionnaires including the Courage Scale, BID Scale (imamoglu, 1998), Battery of Interpersonal Capabilities (Paulhus, &amp / Martin 1988), Moral Courage Scale (Bronstein et al, 2007), Short Form of Authenticity Scale (imamoglu et al, 2009), Hope Scale (Snyder et al, 1991), and Voice Scale (Van Dyne, &amp / LePine, 1998) have been administered to 313 university students (182 female, 127 males and 4 not specified). Results suggested that the newly developed Courage Scale had acceptable levels of internal consistency. Also, it showed converging patterns with Moral Courage Scale which is a more specific measure of the concept throughout different analyses. In congruence with the literature, courage was positively correlated with voice behavior and certain personality characteristics such as self-confidence, assertiveness or honesty. Based on the results, it was concluded that people who have balanced and separated-individuated selves (i.e. who had satisfied both individuational and relational needs and who had satisfied only individuational need, respectively) had higher scores of courage than other self types indicating the importance of intrapersonal developmental orientation for courage. However, both individuation and relatedness were powerful predictors of courage in regression analyses. Results involving a proposed model of courage as a latent variable (predicted by the Courage and Moral Courage Scales) indicated that relatedness, individuation and hope predicted courage indirectly through the mediation of authenticity while the latter two variables also predicted it directly. The study contributed to the literature by exploring the role of self on courage for the first time, by specifying various empirical relationships among concepts that are regarded close to courage and by suggesting a model of courage. The results were discussed in terms of limitations and suggestions as well.

Turkish citizens who went to Germany as migrant workers during 1960s and 1970s attached themselves to the language and music of their home country in order to sustain their local, regional or national belongings. In the 21st century, against the backdrop of globalization, the second and third generation of the Turkish group in Germany has different ties with Turkey and &ldquo / Turkish culture&rdquo / . Are the belongings of the German-Turkish youth still shaped by language, music and cultural artifacts related to Turkey? What do they try to preserve, what do they reassemble or re-arrange? What is the meaning of music in these processes of identity? Considering the literature on the German-Turkish youth, this study aims at giving voice to an &ldquo / invisible&rdquo / group through an unheard genre of music. This study looks at young women, second and third generation of Turkish background, in Germany and the role of Turkish classical music in their everyday lives. A genre with a history of about a millennium, Turkish classical music as a performance entered the German context in late 1970s with the first Turkish classical music choir. v Since then the production of Turkish classical music has been feminized, and the young women singing in these choirs, who are somehow the followers of previous generations, develop ties to the music and the music circles they attend. The ethnographic data, which has been collected through a fieldwork of three months in Germany, mainly in Berlin, among young women in Turkish classical music choirs, shows that multiple belongings play a role in the transnational experience of music making among German-Turkish young women. When considered the Turkishness and Germanness of their identities with religious, linguistic and national aspects, it can be said that the young women experience a contestation of belongings and try to hide themselves in music in an effort to escape the tension of contested belongings. However, Turkish classical music is a source of contested belongings since the young women considered produce a type of music that they do not normally listen to.

From the 1980&rsquo / s onwards a new conceptual framework which will be subsequently called neoliberalism has become hegemonic by transforming and redefining the common sense. In the midst of the world economic crisis in the 1970s which would bring the collapse of Keynesian paradigm, a new political culture promoting the superiority of market-based order has started to emerge. Subsequently during the 1980s, by establishing &lsquo / market-oriented society&rsquo / as the new dominant paradigm, neoliberal hegemony has realized furher seperation of &lsquo / economics&rsquo / from the &lsquo / politics.&rsquo / In this respect, regarding the implementation of neoliberal policies, Great Britain can be considered as a prime example. During the last three decades, political atmosphere of Great Britain has to a large extent been shaped under the influence of neoliberal hegemony that has engendered a significant paradigm shift in the country&rsquo / s political economy. Meanwhile in the rapidly changing political atmosphere of 1980&rsquo / s and 1990&rsquo / s, British Labour Party has also gone through a gradual ideological transformation that culminated in the emergence of New Labour. Despite its initial claim to novelty, since New Labour is itself an actor that is formed during the hegemony of neoliberalism, its possible affiliation with the neoliberal paradigm deserves attention. In this sense, in order to analyse its affiliation with the neoliberal hegemony, this thesis attempts to develop a discursive enquiry into the political economy of New Labour. Consequently, by relying on remarkable findings which indicate the commonalities between New Labour and neoliberalism, this thesis advocates that although being different from the initial neoliberal stance of &lsquo / Thatcherism&rsquo / , New Labour perpetuates neoliberal hegemony insofar it takes neoliberal political economy&rsquo / s basic premises as for granted.

Spain, after successfully joining EC and NATO and consolidating itself as a respected member of the Western bloc, has been seeking to improve its status in the international political arena in the last two decades. However, during its quest to become a major European power like Germany, France and UK, Spain lost the momentum it caught in the early years of its EC membership, after Felipe Gonzalez left the Presidency of Government in 1996. The discord between the two major Parties, the Popular Party (PP) and the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) on the broad lines of the Spanish foreign policy - that yielded to discontinuity - has been one of the reasons for this development. The main aim of this dissertation is to elaborate this discontinuity as a case study, in a middle range European power. For this purpose, the foreign policies followed by the Conservative PP Governments headed by J&oacute / se Mar&iacute / a Aznar during 1996-2004 term is compared with the policies followed by the Socialist PSOE Governments headed by J&oacute / se Luis Rodr&iacute / guez Zapatero since 2004. Given that these policies are associated with the decisions, acts and speeches of the Party leaders, the level of analysis in this dissertation is the individual policy makers.

This thesis deals with the South Ossetian- Georgian conflict and its internationalization especially since the Rose revolution in Georgia in 2003. The main objective of the thesis is to examine the changes in the rivalry between Russia and the United States over the Caucasus and their effects on the relations between Georgia and the South Ossetia. The thesis argues that the development of the conflict between Georgia and the South Ossetia has been shaped by the changes in the level of involvement by Russia and the United States rather than the bilateral relations between Tbilisi and Tskhinvali. Thus, international and systematic factors are more determining than local dynamics of this conflict. The thesis has six chapters, including the introduction and conclusion chapters. After the introduction, the second chapter examines the ethnic origins of the Ossetians and the Georgians as well as historical background of their relations. The third chapter analyzes the sources of the conflict and the 1991-1992 war between Georgia and the South Ossetia. The fourth chapter discusses the 2003 Rose revolution in Georgia and its affects on Georgia&rsquo / s relations with the Western powers, namely the United States and the European Union. The fifth chapter examines the worsening relations between Russia and Georgia after the Rose revolution as well as the Russian-Georgian War in 2008 with its international consequences.