The left-wing Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) began its violent insurgency campaign against the Turkish state in 1984, claiming that an independent Kurdistan should exist. However, the origins of this conflict can be traced back even further – to the inception of the Turkish Republic in 1923. This thesis begins by investigating the history of how the conflict between the Kurdish and Turkish political frameworks escalated, exploring the concept of “Turkishness” as an element of a homogeneous nation-state. The paper then assesses the effects of a range of exclusionary measures adopted by the Turkish state (beyond punitive military responses in southeastern Turkey and cultural discrimination policies). Ultimately, I argue that the ruling Justice and Development Party’s recent push for a more authoritarian style of leadership under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ostracized the Kurdish population and has created a climate for Kurdish terrorist organizations, such as the PKK and TAK, to prosper and expand recruitment.

abstract: The Arab Spring revolutions of 2010-11 raised important questions about how social-movement actors use new communication technologies, such as social media, for communication and organizing during episodes of contentious politics. This dissertation examines how organizers of and participants in Tunisia’s Arab Spring revolution used communication technologies such as Facebook, blogs, news websites, email, television, radio, newspapers, telephones, and interpersonal communication. The dissertation approaches the topic through the communication paradigm of framing, which the author uses to tie together theories of social movements, neo-patrimonialism, and revolution. The author traveled to Tunisia and conducted 44 interviews with organizers and participants about their uses of communication media, the frames they constructed and deployed, their framing strategies, their organizing activities, and their experiences of the revolution. The most common frames were those of the regime’s corruption, economic issues, and the security forces’ brutality. Interviewees deployed a hybrid network of media to disseminate these frames; Facebook represented a single node in the network, though many interviewees used it more than any other node. To explain the framing process and the resonance of the frames deployed by revolutionaries, the dissertation creates the concept of the alternative narrative, which describes how revolutionaries used a hybrid network to successfully construct an alternative to the narrative constructed by the regime. The dissertation also creates the concept of authoritarian weakening, to explain how citizens can potentially weaken neo-patrimonial regimes under conditions concerning corruption, poverty, and the introduction of civil society and of new communication technologies. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Journalism and Mass Communication 2018

abstract: This dissertation research examines the impact of migration on the emotional well-being of temporary, low-wage workers who migrate from the Global South to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Unlike previous research in the UAE, this study’s sample reflects a far broader diversity of nationalities and occupations, and focuses on those earning in the lowest wage bracket. Their experiences revealed the systemic attributes of precarity and the violent structures that perpetuate them. My research addresses several substantive debates. I found that rather than emigrating for rational reasons—as neoclassical theory of migration posits—the migrants in my study tended to rationalize their reasons for emigrating through processes of cognitive dissonance. Further, where previous scholarship has tended to conflate issues of national, ethnic, and racial discrimination, I disentangle the processes that motivate discriminatory behavior by showing how seemingly innocuous references to “nationality” can be driven by a desire to hide racial prejudices, while at the same time, conflating all as “racism” can reflect a simplistic analysis of the contributing factors. I show how past historical structures of colonialism and slavery are manifest in current forms of structural violence and how this violence is differentially experienced on the basis of nationality, perceived racial differences, and/or ethnicity. Additionally, my research expands theories related to the spatial dimension of discrimination. It examines how zones of marginalization shape the experiences of low-wage migrant workers as they move through or occupy these spaces. Marginalizing zones limit workers’ access to the sociality of the city and its institutional resources, which consequently increase their vulnerability. Individual well-being is determined by stressful events that one encounters, by personal and external sources of resilience, and by perceptions of oneself and the stressful events. For the migrants in my study, their stressors were chronic, cumulative, and ambiguous, and while they brought with them a sufficient amount of personal resilience, it was often mitigated by non-compliance and lack of enforcement of UAE laws. The result was a state of well-being defined by isolation, fear, and despair. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2018

Book Summary: This work is the fourth Small Wars Journal anthology focusing on radical Sunni Islamic terrorists and insurgent groups. It covers this professional journals writings for 2016 and is a compliment to the earlier Global Radical Islamist Insurgency anthologies that were produced as Vol. I: 2007-2011 (published in 2015) and Vol. II: 2012-2014 (published in 2016) and Jihadi Terrorism, Insurgency, and the Islamic State spanning 2015 (published in 2017). This anthology, which offers well over 900 pages of focused analysis, follows the same general conceptual breakdown as the earlier works and is divided into two major thematic sectionsone focusing on Al Qaeda and Islamic state activities in 2016 and the other focusing on US-Allied policies and counterinsurgent strategies.

Jewish Israeli Women Soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are marked as the feminine "other" and work to reify the institution's power in Israeli nation-making. As subjects of the militarized Israeli state, women operate as legitimizers of Israel's masculinist authority. They soften the aggressive actions of the IDF through their demarcation in the feminine category, but they are also capable of furthering Israel's arguments regarding its egalitarian modernity through narratives of female "empowerment." As the subjugated "other" within ideas of Jewish Israeli national belonging, Jewish Israeli women soldiers operate for the means of the state's re/production of the nation and therefore of the state's power.

In this survey, women's roles (jobs) and their participation in the workforce in the Muslim Middle-Eastern countries will be discussed generally; moreover, some of the Middle-Eastern countries, such as Egypt and Iran, will be studied a little more specifically as a sample. The status of women, their education, skills, and profession, will be explained historically from the date of the Islamic period until today. The problems and factors that prohibited women from having outside jobs, social life, and equal rights in past and present times (from 610 A.D. to 1982) will be analyzed. On the other hand, the attempt is to make a general picture of women's conditions in the society to which they belong from the time of Muslim's Prophet until today.

This thesis was designed to describe family change in Oman as it undergoes urbanization and modernization. A survey questionnaire to measure these changes was developed. Some questions were developed in two forms for a comparison of family change across two generations. Respondents were asked to answer the questions as they applied to their current family situation. They were then asked to consider, according to their best recollections, what the situation was in their parents' generation.

The sweeping changes in the Middle East, so-called the “Arab Spring”, necessitate revisiting constitutionalism in the region. This task entails a fresh look at the idea of rule of law and constitutionalism amongst the people of the Middle East. One of the widely misconceived and yet understudied constitutional movements in the Middle East belongs to Iran. A new perspective on the trajectory of constitutionalism in Iran would better equip us to comprehend rule of law in the Middle East. From the 1905 Constitutional movement to the 1979 Revolution, Iran has undergone major changes. Each transformation created a rupture with the preceding order fostering a fresh look at rule of law in Iran. The current studies have mainly concentrated on the political and social aspects of these groundbreaking events. The legal aspect of each of event has remained largely unnoticed and under-researched. It is important to fill the gap by focusing on the role of constitutions, despite its shortcomings, and international commitments of states using Iran as an example. The objective is to bring to the fore the role constitutionalism plays in incentivizing states to enter into international commitments and to comply with their international commitments. More than before, the mutual relationship between constitutionalism and international relations is intertwined because of two main developments: a. for better or worse, international relations have become increasingly judicialized, meaning all aspects of inter-state interactions are now subject to some normative regimes; b. more than ever, states feel the need to structure their domestic and inter-state relationship by resorting to a normative structure which is best materialized in constitutions. Using Iran as an example, this dissertation aims to fulfill the following: First, it is critical to understand whether a state is a constitutional state and whether its domestic power relations are subject to any checks and balances (broadly speaking). By reviewing Iran’s recent history through this lens, the dissertation shows that Iranian’s legal culture presents (a version of) constitutionalism. Second, it is critical to understand whether constitutionalism leads to any differences in the international behavior of such a state. Based on its constitutionalism, Iran’s international behavior has been premised on legalistic and juridical grounds.

Under what conditions do Islamists accept the principles of democracy and perceive democracy as "the only game in town"? Current literature which emphasizes institutions, political learning and repression fail to give a satisfying answer to this question. This thesis argues that it is important to study the internal divisions within the Islamist movements and the balance of power among them if we are to understand why and when they embrace ideological moderation. Along these lines, I suggest that factors which disturb the balance of power to the favor of the moderate Islamists are critical to understand the causes of moderation. The support that different factions garner from the constituency is a determining factor in the course of political Islam. This support for moderates or hardliners in return depends on the interests of different groups that make up the Islamist coalition. Studying the empirical puzzle posed by the experiences of Turkish and Egyptian Islamists I argue that economic reform programs in these countries redefine the interests of the components of the Islamist coalition while redistributing power among them. As a result of this process a devout bourgeoisie ready to ally with the moderates emerge in Turkey while lower middle classes with ideological dispositions dominate the Islamist constituency in Egypt and support the hardliners. That is why Turkish Islamists succeeded in carrying out a large-scale moderation which led to the marginalization of the radicals while their Egyptian counterparts failed and became marginalized themselves.

<p> The Kingdom of Jordan is one of the world's most water poor countries suffering from physical water scarcity, a growing population, regional instability, poor water infrastructure, inefficient water sector management and high water misuse. Through conducting a content analysis of 73 USAID reports, focusing on water demand management, this paper aims to understand how water demand is managed in the Kingdom, in addition to understanding the role of international aid in transforming Jordan's water sector. A greater understanding of the crisis and actions taken to mitigate the impacts were revealed by examining specific water polices and laws, the role of government structures and water sectors, and implemented projects. It was found that Jordan has taken significant efforts to sustainably manage water resources and to address growing water demand. Reallocating water among various sectors, reducing non-revenue water, and decentralizing water provision are key priorities outlined in the Kingdom's water strategy.</p>