The present research evaluated the generality of urban social behaviour findings in a new cultural setting - in Turkey. The nature of four types of social behaviour was examined. A field study was carried out in Turkey in order to compare the level of helpfulness shown towards strangers in towns, cities and squatter settlements within the city, while a survey study examined the nature of various aspects of kin, friends' and neighbours' social, behaviours across these Turkish environments. The results showed differences in social behaviour between the two environments depending on the type of relationship involved. First, urban residents held less trusting and helping attitudes and were significantly less helpful towards strangers requiring assistance. Second, social relationships between neighbours were also significantly less frequent amongst urban residents. The degree of social behaviour occurring between kin and friends did not differ between the two environments, although certain aspects of kin and friendship in the city were different: kin members in the city were found to be geographically dispersed, and friends of urban residents were drawn from a larger social pool. These results from Turkey suggest that urban social behaviour relationships may indeed be a general phenomenon. These results offer a perspective from which to evaluate the nature of the impact of urban living: urban living influences only the social relationships of a less important, less familiar and intimate nature; in other words, relatively situationally dependent kinds of behaviours are affected by urban living. Examination of social behaviour within the Turkish city environments showed the existence of local environments which differed considerably in their social behaviour. Most interesting in this regard are the squatter settlements of Turkish cities whose residents showed attitudes and a level of pro-social behaviour equal to that found in towns and significantly greater than that found amongst the rest of the city residents. This supports the view that the city squatters may be in a psychological and social sense "urban villagers". Consistent and considerable differences in social behaviour were also found between other types of city districts. Some of these districts came close to the towns and squatter settlements in their levels of pro-social behaviour, suggesting, first, that the city environments are not homogeneous in terms of social behaviour and there is a complex interplay between a multitude of influential factors, so urbanisation alone is not an explanation of social behaviour; second, drawing distinctions between environments in terms of their behavioural characteristics is best done with the concept of a social-environmental continuum rather than an urban/non-urban dichotomy. Altogether, the present research suggests that the overall urban environment influences only certain kinds of pro-social behaviours which are more situationally dependent such as those involving strangers and neighbours. This influence does not occur in a homogeneous way, but is mediated by social characteristics of environments and residents. Environmental input level was, overall, found to influence the level of helpfulness: the higher the environmental input level, the lower the level of helpfulness for female subjects but not for male subjects in Turkey. Analysis of the input level across environments studied did not always correspond to the observed level of helpfulness in these environments. It was argued that the input level, as suggested by Milgram (1970), is not the only explanation for social behaviour; there must be other variables mediating this effect, ie socio-cultural factors. As an additional concern, the present study investigated sex differences in helpfulness. There were sex differences in helping toward strangers in Turkey: males were significantly more helpful than females towards strangers in helping contexts (free from high cost, threat, and required no masculine orientation) that the earlier researches reported no sex differences'. This showed empirically the influence of the culture on sex roles in Turkey. Finally, a theoretical question; the nature of the relationship between the source of help and the type of helpfulness was evaluated empirically. An association was found between the type of helping act and the source of help an individual sought: costly types of assistance were associated with kin, friends were a source of help for assistance requiring intimacy, while neighbours were associated negatively with cost and intimacy in assistance.

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The issue raised in this thesis is the importance of dealing with the security of Ottoman women--from the 16th century to the Tanzimat (Reform) Era (1839--1876)--and the significance of this subject in understanding the Ottoman society in general. The thesis raises the point that if sources such as court records, fetvas (religious verdicts), and travelers' reports draw a somewhat different picture of the Ottoman woman from the popular image of the "oppressed woman," then it is important to know how this picture differs. Examination of these sources shows that they actually confirm one another from different perspectives. The thesis also explores how the metaphysical underpinnings of Ottoman society provided an atmosphere conducive to women's security. It attempts to find an answer to the underlying question, 'What motivated these women to take action?' by examining their physical, financial, and marital related security.

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Call number: LD2668 .T4 1984 T46 / Master of Arts

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This research emerged from the belief that merely economic explanations of rent seeking were too narrow and an interdisciplinary approach was needed to understand historical structural factors that contribute to particularistic exchanges. Rent-seeking and particularistic ties are almost always explained from a strictly neoclassical perspective which tend to be reductionist approaches that fail to explain why some states will be rent-seeking while others will not. Moreover, other frameworks that analyze state-civil society interaction do so without taking into account particularistic state-civil society interaction. Thus, there is a need to explain such particularistic ties in a comparative institutional framework. My dissertation research was undertaken on two associations in Turkey, namely the Turkish Red Crescent (Kizilay) and AKUT (a search and rescue team), in order to understand the dynamics of the relationship between a particularistic state and civil society associations. The TRC was chosen because it was involved in particularistic exchanges and functioned as an institution of the state, which meant that it partook in the state failure the state in Turkey faced in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in 1999. The Marmara earthquake was devastating not only physically in terms of the damage it caused, but also socially in terms of the extent of the failure of state institutions it exposed and the extent of criticisms it unleashed. The immediate chaos that ensued in the aftermath of the earthquake was marked by the "absence of the state". The failure of the state provoked an unprecedented civil reaction and mobilization. AKUT, the second case of the research, also became the focus of public attention, albeit for completely the opposite reason. It was revered for the successful rescue work it carried out in the earthquake while the TRC was severely criticized for its failure to deliver services. / My dissertation research has shown that in cases of state failure, the state can only establish particularistic ties creating a multilevel chain system of particularized exchanges and fails to deliver public goods and services universally. Thus, the state co-opts a civil society organization into this chain system, demonstrated both by the TRC and AKUT. Furthermore, in cases of state failure, a civil society organization that has developed independently of the state becomes over-missionized with filling the gap created by state failure (AKUT), with public expectations and demands from AKUT far exceeding their self-defined goals and capabilities. Thus, ineffectiveness of the state does not translate into well-working civil society organizations. The absence of a capable state affects the nature of civil society organizations adversely. This finding is a direct contribution to the more general debate on the effectiveness of state institutions and the voluntary sector. More importantly, my research effectively shows that much of the dichotomous discussion of the state on the one hand, and civil society on the other, needs to be discarded. Such dichotomous thinking does not capture the complex interactions between the state and civil society organizations, as I have shown in the case of Turkey.

The main objective of this study is to provide an in-depth analysis the association between a set of social structural factors and the certain types of social movement events in Turkey. The changing nature and significance of social movements over time and space makes this study necessary to understand and explain new trends related to the parameters that constitute a backdrop for social movements. Social movements are a very common mechanism used by groups of people who decide to take action against an unfair socio-political system, usually an authoritarian government or dictatorship. This kind of reactions, seen in history before, gives birth to a more multidimensional understanding of the relationship between society and state policies. Understanding social movements depends on understanding our own societies, and the social environment in which they are developed. An effective way of understanding this type of social movements is to recognize the perceived concerns of discontented groups in relation to cultural, ideological, economic, and political institutions and values. Social movement events included in the study refers to collective activities organized by two or more people with the purpose of protesting public policies or of increasing public awareness about certain social issues related to human rights and freedoms, environment, feminism, etc. All these types of events are chased by police forces, and their concerns, statements, and activities are recorded.

The primary focus of this study is to explore the relationship between structural factors of a specific society and occurrence of terror related crimes. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to examine how or to what extent social disorganization theory, which is the basic theoretical foundation of this study, can explain terrorism related crimes in Turkey. Although several previous studies investigated the social and structural dimensions of terrorism in a country, many of those studies did not go beyond investigating the impacts of traditional structural factors such as poverty, inequality, and education on terrorism. This study goes a step further by adding the mediating factors between those primary social disorganization variables and terror related crimes. Direct, indirect and, total effects of structural variables on terrorism through the mediating variables, that is prevalence of voluntary associations and religious institutions, are examined. Findings obtained from multivariate and mediation analyses show that while some structural variables such as education and poverty are directly related to distribution of terror related crimes, this relationship became indirect through the mediating variables for other structural variables such as residential mobility and unemployment. Results suggest that rather than overreliance on traditional antiterrorism strategies which are mostly depending on the public level control such as law enforcement process, programs supported by other levels of social control, that is, parochial and private levels must be encouraged.