This study analyzes the current situation women&rsquo / s NGOs in Ankara in terms of the organizational structure and networks. A total of 28 interviews were realized with active women&rsquo / s NGOs located in Ankara on identification of not only organizational structure such as age, type, focus, target group, ICT infrastructure but also communication and collaboration pattern. Both descriptive analysis and network analysis were performed. The main concern is whether women&rsquo / s NGOs collaborate with each other? Results demonstrate that women&rsquo / s NGOs in Ankara mostly use informal linkages based on friendship but do not work with each other in the same projects or campaign. Main reasons behind reluctance to collaborate with the women&rsquo / s NGOs are loss of autonomy, performing the same activities, lack of trust, and ideological differences.

This thesis will examine the emergence of Albanian national identity. It will analyze this process in two different phases. The first phase includes the period after the League of Prizren until the independence. The second phase starts after the independence. This thesis will try to understand this process by focusing on the intellectual activity of the Albanian intellectuals and mainly on the intellectual thoughts of three Albanian figures: Semsettin Sami, Ismail Kemal, and Fan S. Noli. These intellectuals formulated their ideas on the basis of both the process of modernization and the international context. As such, they enabled the transition from a mere ethnic Albanian identity to an Albanian national identity. The main components of the Albanian national identity analyzed in this thesis are language, territory, and myth.

The aim of the current thesis was to explore the possible link between System Justification Theory (SJT) and Terror Management Theory (TMT) in gender context and from the perspective of intergroup relations in a sample of Turkish university students. Having recently attracted research attention, the relation between the two theories is based on the effect of mortality salience (MS) on the tendency to justify the existing system. Accordingly, three research questions were investigated to see whether (1) ambivalent sexism toward women (hostile and benevolent sexism / HS and BS, respectively) and gender-group favoritism (on both explicit and implicit measures / expGF and impGF, respectively) were related to gender-specific system justification (GSJ), and whether (2) gender and (3) MS moderated the relation of GSJ to ambivalent sexism and gender-group favoritism. Based on the literature, it was hypothesized that (1) GSJ would predict HS, BS, expGF, and impGF, and that these predictions would be stronger (2) among women than among men and (3) when mortality is made salient as compared to when it is not. The hypotheses were tested with 185 participants (86 men, 99 women) who completed a questionnaire package including the demographic information form, GSJ Scale, MS manipulation, Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, and a scale measuring expGF along with a computer-administered task for impGF. The results revealed that higher levels of GSJ predicted higher levels of benevolent and hostile attitudes toward women as well as higher levels of explicit ingroup favoritism and lower levels of favoritism toward women. Only GSJ &ndash / HS and GSJ &ndash / expGF relationships were moderated by gender. The moderating role of MS was not observed in any of the four relationships. However, GSJ scores were found to be unevenly distributed across MS conditions, thereby, casting doubt on the reliability of the results concerning the moderating role of MS. The findings, as well as the contributions and limitations of the study, were discussed.

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.