This thesis discusses the politics of conscientious objection in Turkey within a framework of citizenship. In this study citizenship is identified with being political and conceived as a process comprised of acts and practices. According to this conception, while practices reproduce the discourse of citizenship in a given context, acts are the deeds that challenge this discourse. Conscription, within this framework, is defined as a citizenship practice which re/produces the militaristic, nationalistic and gendered content of the Turkish citizenship. Conscientious objection is approached as an act of citizenship that contests and challenges the established citizenship regime in the country. This challenge and contestation is presented through the interviews with the conscientious objectors and activists as well as a review of the already published material by and on them. Conscientious objection challenges the citizenship regime in Turkey on three inter-related grounds: 1. It challenges and exposes the militaristic content of the discourse of citizenship in Turkey. 2. It challenges the political content of &lsquo / Turkishness&rsquo / &ndash / that is the nationalistic content of Turkish citizenship- with particular reference to Kurdish issue / and 3. It challenges the prevailing gender roles and the values of hegemonic masculinity in Turkey.

Parents remain to be effective in adolescents&rsquo / emotional development. However, emotion socialization research is fundamentally based on studies conducted in infancy through middle childhood, but late childhood and adolescence have been largely ignored. Therefore, the current study aimed to make contribution to the current literature investigating factors associated with adolescents&rsquo / emotion regulation difficulties. As the first part of the study psychometric properties of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) were examined among Turkish adolescent sample. A total of 312 high school students (161 females and 141 males) whose ages ranged between 14 and 17 years participated in the study and findings indicated strong evidence for the utility of the DERS as a measure of emotion regulation difficulties in adolescents. The main study consists of three different purposes. First, discrepancies between mothers&rsquo / and adolescents&rsquo / reports on adolescents&rsquo / emotion regulation difficulties were examined. Second, factors associated with adolescents&rsquo / emotion regulation difficulties such as mothers&rsquo / emotion regulation, psychopathology, and personality traits, maternal rearing behaviors, and adolescents&rsquo / personality traits were explored. Lastly, mediating roles of emotion regulation difficulties on the relationship between adolescents&rsquo / perception of their mothers&rsquo / maternal rearing behaviors and their psychological problems were examined. Participants of this research were 595 first-grade high school students aged between 14 and 16 years, and 365 mothers from eight different high schools in Ankara. Data was collected from both adolescents and their mothers through questionnaire packets. Adolescents&rsquo / questionnaire set consisted of scales measuring emotion regulation difficulties (DERS), positive and negative affect scale (PANAS), maternal rearing behaviors (EMBU), basic personality traits (Big Five), and adolescents&rsquo / externalizing (SDQ) and internalizing symptoms (CDI). Similarly, mothers&rsquo / questionnaire set consisted of scales measuring emotion regulation difficulties (DERS), children&rsquo / s emotion regulation (DERS), Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), maternal rearing behaviors (EMBU), and basic personality traits (Big-Five). The results indicated that adolescents, both boys and girls, reported higher levels of difficulties in emotion regulation for themselves as compared to reports of mothers for their children. As expected, adolescents&rsquo / basic personality traits were significantly associated with their emotion regulation difficulties even after controlling the effects of socio-demographic variables, mothers&rsquo / emotion regulation, psychological symptoms and their maternal rearing behaviors. Finally, mediation analyses indicated that the link between perceived maternal rearing behaviors and adolescents&rsquo / psychological problems occurs through emotion regulation difficulties of adolescents. Findings were discussed within the relevant literature.

Brazil was confronted with high inflation while implementing neoliberal economic policies which were imposed as a panacea to the debt crisis during the process of transition to democracy since 1985. In this context, implementation of structural adjustment and stabilization programs further deteriorated its already unequal distribution of income and exposed the poor to devastating effects of the intermittent crises which were in turn the result of macro-economic policies pursued. Conditional cash transfers which were started to be made in 1995 to extremely poor people against the effects of crises by a few local governments were subsequently expanded in terms of its scope and geography. From 2004 onwards, it was begun to be implemented in the whole country under the title of Bolsa Familia, by President Lula, PT (Labor Party) leader who came to power after the 2002 elections. The program had two objectives: 1. Immediate relief of poverty through the transfer of income, 2. To get people out of poverty and to prevent intergenerational transmission of poverty through conditionalities based on education and health services. Positive impacts were observed in relation to the achievement of the first goal / but the outcomes of the studies on the second goal are not promising. So, the aim of this thesis is to investigate whether the second goal is realizable by examining these studies and their outcomes with reference to the causes of poverty / and to determine the relationship between our results and structural limitations of the program.

In this thesis, it is aimed to make a study on Primary Schools of Rum Minority in Istanbul, and in light of this study, to define general principles for conservation studies on these schools. Rum Minority had an important part in social and cultural life in Istanbul and in late 19th Century, their impact in the city increased with their financial power, especially in Beyoglu. Increase in number of schools they built also occurred in the same timeline. Schools built in and after this term by Rum Minority were built as important public buildings of a minority group and possess strong authenticity, technical-artistic, socio-cultural and economical values. In order to decide which values, problems and potentials these buildings bear, a site survey study is done for this thesis. Primary Schools of Rum Minority in Istanbul are among strongest solid evidences of cultural diversity in Istanbul, and Turkey. While conserving these cultural assets, considering all their values, problems, and potentialities is vital. In addition to conservation studies, interpretation and presentation are also necessary steps for reintegration of these buildings to the city. This thesis performs as an effort made to document features and current state of these schools, decide their value, problems, and potentials / and defining general conservation principles for them.

This thesis analyses the relationship between identity and language by evaluating Poland&rsquo / s accession to the European Union. It suggests that at the national level, language is a constructer and transporter of identity, which is created and recreated as part of a political programme. Thus, it questions the role of language as an identity transporter/ marker at the EU level. Within this framework, arguing that the European identity is created by the European elites, establishment of the European identity in Poland will be discussed and the role of language in the European identity formation process in Poland will be examined. The thesis will also evaluate the results of the language policies and multilingualism that aim to establish the European identity in Poland, and will draw attention to the results such as the dominance of Anglo-Saxon culture and English. Finally, by making use of Poland&rsquo / s EU accession, the thesis will point out the limits of language as an identity transporter/ marker at the EU level.

Energy security has become an important part of national security policies in the last decades. Policies concerning energy security are designed and implemented in different ways by countries based on their geographical, political and economic imperatives. This thesis analyzes the securitization of energy resources in Central Asia and the roles of the US, China, India and Russia as major actors of the Central Asian energy politics in the post-Soviet period. The conditions shaping Central Asian countries decision making process&rsquo / as well as the policies and priorities of the US, China, India and Russia are analyzed in the light of latest energy policy developments and related pipeline projects in the region. While doing so, this thesis aims to compare and contrast the practices and policies of the US, China, India and Russia in securing access to energy resources of Central Asia.

This study explores how the European Union Enlargement policy of Germany as represented by her main political parties, being the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party-SPD) and the Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (Christian Democratic Union-CDU), has evolved after 1990 towards the case of Turkey. These two parties have been analysed because they have clear and different stances towards Turkey&rsquo / s EU Accession process and they have witnessed and shaped watershed events of this process. The study does focus on the incumbencies of Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schr&ouml / der and Angela Merkel. Thereby it relies on both a thorough literature review and also on the screening of plenty of official documents. This study attempts to scrutinize the differences between the stance of the SPD and CDU towards Turkey&rsquo / s EU Accession process. In this vein, it explores the interplay of political reforms and concepts of common culture, identity and history as variables in the altering attitudes of SPD and CDU. Further, this study rests on the ground that there have been breaking points in German support for EU Enlargement first emerged by the end of the Cold War and the concomitant new political climax and second with Turkey&rsquo / s EU Accession process. Ultimately, this study sets on the ground that there has been a shift in Germany&rsquo / s overt support for EU Enlargement which has been triggered by Turkey&rsquo / s entrenched and problematic EU Accession Process.

The impact of the World Depression of 1929 and the 2nd World War on many developing countries has been significant in terms of economic and political changes. Among the important transformations, changes in accumulation models, political discourses, balance of class forces and/or political regimes can be mentioned. The main objective of this thesis is to undertake a critical review of the debates centring on the concept of populism in Latin America as well as in Turkey so as to account for these changes. The predominant tendency in these debates has been to establish a correlation between populist policies and/or import substitution industrialisation strategy. In this study it is argued that, the line of thought which tried to analyse the developments in Argentina and Brazil as well as in Turkey from 1929 until the 1980s on the basis of such a correlation does not provide an adequate explanation. Instead, it is proposed that the concept of populism can enhance our understanding to the extent that it is conceived as a hegemonic project.

This thesis analyzes variations in office rents in Ankara. The theoretical background of this study is related to the hedonic methodology, which is extensively applied for explaining price or rental price variations of the real property. Given this theoretical framework, hedonic regression model is utilized for the estimation of hedonic price indices by using the cross sectional data of the office market in Ankara for the year 2002. Hedonic price function is specified in the log linear functional form and is estimated with the Ordinary Least Squares technique for two models. The models include the same variables / however, Model 1 differs from Model 2 in including the location variables. The estimation results obtained from the models suggest that height and construction quality of the building act as proxies for the locational characteristics. Also, it is found from Model 1 that locational characteristics have the greatest effect on the rental prices of the office units. In order to verify this fact, Model 1 is tested against Model 2 and vice versa based on alternative tests for non-nested models. The results of non-nested tests indicate that Model 1 is preferred to Model 2. This result is important in the sense that locational characteristics are found to be significant in explaining the rental price variations. Besides location variables, the other variables related to physical attributes and lease characteristics of the office property are also evaluated from the estimation results of Model 1. From the empirical results, it is finally concluded that locational characteristics explain the spatial rent variations of the office property in Ankara to a large extent.

In traditional trade theories, foreign trade plays the role of filling the gap of products not produced within the country. However, in the early 1960s increasing exchange of similar products, intra-industry trade, in the world trade have been observed by trade theorists. After the realization of the fact that intra-industry trade has become a very important part of world trade, more comprehensive studies on intra-industry trade have been conducted. At the end of the 1970s, trade theorists started to analyze intra-industry trade between developed countries (horizontal intra-industry trade) and intra-industry trade between developed and developing countries (vertical intra-industry trade) separately, because their characteristics were different. Horizontal intra-industry models were characterized by attribute variation between products while vertical intra-industry models were characterized by quality variation. This study investigates the issue of measurement of horizontal and vertical intra-industry trade for Turkish manufacturing industry. We address the questions of whether the intra-industry trade in Turkish manufacturing sector is more of the horizontal or the vertical type and whether the vertical industries dominates horizontal industries in number at the 3- digit industry level. Empirical analyses shows that the majority of intra-industry trade in Turkish manufacturing sector is of the vertical nature / Turkish manufacturing sector exports lower quality varieties in exchange for higher quality varieties. Also, our empirical analyses indicate that a large percent of 3- digit industries considered as primarily involved in intra-industry trade are vertical industries.