This study addresses the question of the mental representation and processing of language by investigating &ldquo / structural priming&rdquo / in Turkish Genitive-Possessive (GEN-POSS) constructions. Structural priming is the facilitating effect of having already experienced a structural form on its subsequent processing. We investigate this phenomenon on a construction pair in Turkish, which shares the same external GEN-POSS morpho-syntactic template despite having distinct grammatical categories. The structures under scrutiny are possessive noun phrases (e.g. &ldquo / Korsan, [prenses-in(GEN) &ouml / yk&uuml / -s&uuml / n(POSS.3SG)]-&uuml / hatirladi.&rdquo / which means: The pirate remembered [the princess&rsquo / s story].) and embedded noun clauses with nominalized verbs as predicates (e.g. &ldquo / Korsan, [prenses-in(GEN) g&uuml / l-d&uuml / g(VN)-&uuml / n(POSS.3SG)]-&uuml / hatirladi.&rdquo / which means: The pirate remembered [that the princess (had) laughed/was laughing].) The results of the study which consists of a series of production and comprehension experiments with various methodologies (written sentence completion, self-paced reading and eye-tracking) indicate that structural priming might access the morphosyntactic level of representation in Turkish. Priming seems sensitive to the distinction between the phrasal vs. clausal nature of structures. During the processing of GEN-POSS constructions, the grammatical information regarding the constituents is accessed. Complex forms are further decomposed if processing resources are available. Overall, language production and comprehension seem to operate on the same structural representations but through different mechanisms. In addition, the study also contributes to the understanding of structural priming as a methodological paradigm and to the establishment of a bridge between the processing and theoretical linguistic analysis of Turkish nominalized verbs. To conclude, this study pioneers in exploring structural priming in Turkish and opens way to future research in this line.

In thesis, the way wended by European Union immigration policy is addressed under the light of historical background. Essentially, the arguments regarding immigration and free movement aroused and gained momentum in EU in 1980s. During 1990s, the justice and home affairs subjects obtained a central point among EU policies abruptly. However, despite all the efforts since then, it is still early to say that there emerges a uniform European immigration policy. In fact, it is quite hard to reach such a common policy, due to the unique structural requirements, different priorities and expectations of the Member States. It is examined in dissertation then why the Member States&rsquo / policymakers still insist on a common EU immigration policy in spite of this. The researcher asserts that some aspects of the common EU immigration policy serve as a new migration control mechanism in order to be able to take additional measures limiting third country nationals&rsquo / access to the rights of EU citizens by transferring restrictive national approaches and legislation into a supranational venue. It is also scrutinized in thesis in what ways Turkish citizens composing considerable population within Community borders and Turkey as a candidate state conducting negotiations on the membership process are affected from these efforts for a common EU immigration policy. It is examined whether this process generate any new breaking point in Turkish-EU relations or not.

This research aimed to put forth changes and continuities in the formation of the official history and its dissemination through education, with particular emphasis to history courses in high schools during the Early Republican Era with reference to the ministerial decisions, parliamentary discussions, history textbooks and also history and educational congresses held during Atat&uuml / rk and In&ouml / n&uuml / eras. 1930s for the Turkish Republic was a time span when the core principles of the regime were formulized to ensure that they were publicly comprehended and posesed. Correspondingly, formal and informal educational institutions were established for the dissemination of these principles, i. e. official ideology. Among them, Turkish History Association played an important role in formulation of official history which was one of the major means to install Turkish identity and a collective memory to the nation. In this respect, history courses and especially textbooks served instilling Republican understanding of history. The presidency of Ismet In&ouml / n&uuml / were the years when the regime was consolidated and intoleration to the opposing views was decreased. This also affected the official perception of history, by dissolving the clear break from the recent past and reconciling it with the modernization process of Ottoman-Turkish history while paying attention to the ccontinuities.

Languages differ in the means they avail themselves of for the structural realization of information structure, where available options are word order, prosody and morphology. Turkish has long been characterized as predominantly using word order and its variation in realizing information structure, where certain positions in a sentence are associated with certain pragmatic functions related to information structure. Prosody has been proposed to play only a secondary role interacting with word order. Contrary to this widely established view, the thesis argues that the notion that sentential positions have pragmatic functions and word order variation is a syntactic means to realize these functions can be abandoned, without any loss of explanatory power, in favor of a tune-based perspective where prosody is the sole structural determinant of information structure. In this setting word order variations are argued to be prosodically motivated, in that Turkish phonology imposes some precedence constraints on intonational contours. Word order variation then turns out to be just a consequence as opposed to being a determinant in attaining the right information structure required by the discourse context. To substantiate these claims a tune-based account, based on Steedman&#039 / s account of English information structure, is proposed for the structural realization of information structure in Turkish, whereby information structural units are directly associated with prosodic phrases intonationally marked in certain ways. Validity of the account is tried to be established by intonational analysis of recorded speech data. As for the explanatory value, the information structure phenomena that has received positional explanation in the relevant literature, are tried to be captured only in prosodic terms, without committing to positions, syntactic strategies and such.

This thesis aims to analyze the Turkish policy of being an energy hub. Within this context Turkey, as it is geographically very close to the two thirds of the world&#039 / s proven oil and natural gas reserves, has a very big advantage to manage its location and the purpose of this study is to discuss the measures taken to utilize this advantage. Therefore relative weakness of Turkey in comparison to the other actors like Russia, the USA or the EU and the strengths of the Turkish policy like the geopolitical advantage, the ethnic link between Turkey and the newly independent states of the Caspian and the already existing infrastructure for the transportation of oil and natural gas like Kirkuk-Yumurtalik Pipeline, Baku Tblisi Ceyhan Oil Pipeline, Ceyhan Terminal, and Baku Tblisi Erzurum Natural Gas Pipeline are discussed. With this respect, this study argues that, as a result of the existing and planned projects, Ceyhan&#039 / s claim to become a hub is a realistic objective and in addition to BTC and Kirkuk-Yumurtalik Pipeline, the realization of Samsun-Ceyhan Pipeline will increase Ceyhan&#039 / s potential as an energy hub.

This thesis analyzes Bulgaria&amp / #8217 / s minority policy followed by various governments during the Principality, the Kingdom, Peoples Republic and post-Communist Bulgaria. General discussion and assessment of minority rights standards within major international organizations is followed by analysis of minorities&amp / #8217 / status and treatment in Bulgaria since 1878. The thesis seeks answers to what have been the main features of minority policies in modern Bulgarian history, what has constituted its continuity and change.

The term business as an economical activity brings along many issues related to / managerial activities, competition, marketing, finance, risk, etc. which all of them include a high level of decision making that need to be supported by trust able knowledge. Due to the unique specifications of the construction industry and the high sensitivity regarding the decisions made accompanied with the business, knowledge and knowledge management have been considered essential for the industry. As a fundamental step of a well structured knowledge management system, classification of the knowledge plays an important role in organizing and representing a domain. Among the many aspects of decision making, decisions regarding the business development of a company play a crucial role in the survival and growth of an available business. However up to now, the literature has a shortage on a comprehensive work which attempts to classify the knowledge in this specific domain of the construction industry. In an effort to cover this gap in the literature, this study focuses on developing a knowledge taxonomy for business development management in a construction company based on semi-structured interviews with Turkish construction professionals. The taxonomy designed by referring to expert opinion is comprised of five major concepts: Business environment, Clients, Partners, Related parties, and own Company. The presented taxonomy is tested on real cases and believed to be used for representing, storing, sharing, retrieving and in general, managing knowledge related to business development management of a construction organizations for decision supporting purposes. More over in order to demonstrate how the presented taxonomy can be used in a company a knowledge management tool has been designed.

This thesis aims to examine the development of inter-communal fighting in Cyprus between 1948 and 1974. It focuses on the domestic factors of inter-communal fighting by analyzing the gradual evolution of Greek and Turkish Cypriot stances. The thesis argues that the inter-communal fighting of Cyprus is rooted in the historical and domestic factors. This thesis analyzes the continuities and changes in Cyprus politics. This work accordingly will examine the articulation of various political and social factors in Cyprus. Contrary to the prevailing dominant perspective, this thesis mentions that the inter-communal fighting was not the product of only external forces but their articulation with domestic factors as they evolved historically. Therefore, the issue of &bdquo / &bdquo / ethnic polarization

This thesis examines the history of Turks migrated from Turkey to Rochester and their changing constructions of identities. In the early 1960&rsquo / s, there was only a small group of Turkish immigrants in Rochester, who were well educated professionals. After 1967, Turkish tailors and their families, who were seeking better employment in Western countries started to migrate to Rochester. Different than the common aspect of homeland based Turkish labor migration to West, Turkish tailors in Rochester came from different cities of Turkey. As a result of the communication between high skilled Turks and the tailor-migrants, Turkish Society of Rochester was founded as a distinctive immigrant association. This study focuses on Turkish Society of Rochester and the other Turkish organizations in Rochester which were established after 1990&rsquo / s, in order to investigate the role of ethnic, cultural and political identities on the formation of collective behavior of Turks in Rochester. The thesis considers the concept of integration as a bidirectional phenomenon, whereby Turks can integrate with the larger American society and/or with the Turkish community within the US as well. This study has concluded that the religious identity is becoming more prominent within the changing social context of Rochester.

This study investigated the cinematic representations of women in ‘Climates’ ‘Three Monkeys’ and ‘Once upon a time in Anatolia’ created by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. It explored the image of women and the ideologies that affects them in the aforementioned films. For the analysis, semiotics is used and feminist film theory is applied. The findings indicated that the women images are affected by patriarchal ideology. Female characters were portrayed as weak or weakened by men regardless of their representative social group. The results showed similarities to Mulvey’s argument and to Friedan’s definition of feminine mystique. Male gaze dominates the visual pleasures and the female characters showed similar features as described by Mulvey and Friedan.