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Thesis advisor: Jonathan Laurence / What explains the rise of religious nationalism in established and ostensibly secular democracies? The resurgence of religion in the public sphere has transformed the political landscape of dozens of countries over the last half century, including authoritarian and democratic regimes and developed and developing states. This dissertation seeks to explain how and why religious nationalists came to power in two large democracies in the developing world, Turkey and India, despite the unwavering commitment of those countries’ modern founders to secularism. In both cases, religious nationalists struggled for decades to unseat entrenched political parties and win national elections. They were often persecuted, banned and jailed for their political activism. However, by the 1990s, they began to challenge their secular opponents and win power. Based on in-depth interviews with political elites and activists from the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey and the Bharata Janata Party (BJP) in India, I argue that party activists in both countries were able to build tightly controlled, hierarchical political organizations that benefited from the dense networks of religious associations. Crucially, they used these networks to create a robust local presence and active, year-round grassroots organizations and develop what I refer to as “personalistic membership parties.” This new party type, I argue, is different from both elite (cadre) and mass parties, and explains the continuing electoral achievements and political resilience of the BJP and the AKP even in the face of numerous crises. In addition, I explore how secular actors instrumentalized religion for their own electoral purposes and, in doing so, counter-intuitively strengthened the religious movements they sought to oppose. More broadly, the comparison of India and Turkey helps to illuminate the problems and future of the secular state in the non-Western world, as both countries are now governed by right-wing populist, religious majoritarianism that challenges the secular nature of the state and its democratic character. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

This thesis deals with the discussions on the ‘Normative Power Europe’ thesis, EU enlargement, conditionality and compliance, and the extent to which rational and ideational forces are mutually exclusive in this context. Through a qualitative case study of Turkey, it will investigate to what extent the EU can be seen as possessing and exercising normative power through its enlargement policy. The findings, based on fieldwork conducted in Istanbul during April 2013, suggest that rather than being mutually exclusive, rational and normative processes occur simultaneously and independently, sometimes even reinforcing each other.

In this project, I suggest a Deleuzian ontological perspective to address the interconnected and relational constitution of Muslim women‘s experiences and practices to illuminate the multiple-layers of their lives. Namely, I call into question the category ―Islamist,‖ used for contemporary headscarf-wearing women in Turkey, and examine how this categorization erases contingency, specificity, and relationality of women‘s experiences. For this purpose, I articulate the conception of body as a relational and affective multiplicity based on a Deleuzian ontology. According to this ontology, bodies are composed of an infinite number of smaller bodies through the confluence of relations and the creative capacity of affects, which are produced by this relational flux. Since the body is a relational and affective aggregate and a multiplicity within an assemblage, it is not a stable ontological essence or determined by overarching structures, but it is instead dynamic, continually changing, and always in a process of becoming. Since this Deleuzian approach problematizes the stability and singularity of identities, it offers a radical change for the framing of the question of Muslim women. This approach provides useful means to illuminate the experiences, desires, and practices of women in their contexts and through the particular characters of their relations and affects. Therefore, this project stresses the idea that we need analytical tools which allow us to attend to dynamic configurations of Muslim women without reducing them to existing categories or marginalities. / Religion

Education is a crucial factor for nations to advance their social, cultural and economic well being. Gender equality in education is in direct proportion to gender equality in the labor force, in equal power in household and decision making. Educating females lower mother and baby mortality rates, generates higher educational attainment and achievement for next generations, and improves economic conditions of nations. Gender inequality in educational attainment and dropout rates is an agelong problem for Turkey since it was established in 1923. Girls are still have lower enrollment rates and higher drop out rates than their male counterparts in Turkey, even though education is free at all levels, there is a compulsory education law, financial aid is provided by government for parents to send their daughters to school, and there are boarding schools and free school services for girls living in rural areas. This thesis reviews a diverse literature on female education and the barriers to female education in the Turkish education system. In this thesis the background of the Turkish education system and the place of female education in that system are explored and the main barriers to female education in Turkey are analyzed through a review of the literature on gender gap, female education, and education policies. Some social and political strategies are suggested for Turkish policy makers, teacher educators, social workers, and teachers in order to promote female education and gender equity in the Turkish education system. / Urban Education

After the Second Vatican Council, which took place in 1962-1965, the Catholic Church reached out to both co-religionists and non-Christians. As the second largest religion in the world (after Christianity), the Muslim world began to react to this call for dialogue. Without a worldwide religious authority, Muslim scholars and communities have tried to understand and respond to this call for dialogue in their own way. Turkey, as one of the most influential and modern Muslim majority states, joined the discussion about interreligious dialogue, especially with Christians. Very diverse in culture, religion, and thought, Turkish scholars' discussions and critiques of the dialogue requested by the Christian world have clearly contributed to interreligious dialogue on a global scale in the last decades. This dissertation examines the development of interreligious dialogue in Turkey and the works of prominent and widely recognized Turkish theologians as a response to the Christian call for dialogue. It explores the problems, challenges, and future of the perception of interreligious dialogue in the Turkish context, in particular, the views of three influential Turkish scholars: Abdurrahman Küçük, Mahmut Aydin, and Davut Aydüz. The conclusion proposes the Turkish Model for interreligious dialogue. / Religion

Financial literacy is commonly defined as the knowledge, skills, and ability to navigate the increasingly complex financial markets, and is considered to empower consumers to make responsible financial decisions. Financial literacy is increasingly promoted as a crucial life skill in the aftermath of global financial crisis by numerous global initiatives and became part and parcel of national strategies of financial inclusion. By utilizing theoretical insights from Michel Foucault’s late work on governmentality, this dissertation analyzes financial literacy education initiatives in Turkey with ethnographic research. Cultural political economy perspective articulated in this dissertation underlines the importance of theorizing the financialized capital accumulation dynamics together with the reshaping of culture and the constitution of financialized subjectivities. It is argued that financial literacy is a “technique of the self” seeking to govern the everyday conduct of subjects in line with the long-term interests of financial capital. Financial literacy curricula provide not only the basic knowledge of finance but also instruct subjects ways to conduct oneself on financial planning, budgeting, debt management, creditworthiness, saving and investment. Financial literacy agenda deepens neo-liberal governmentality with the promotion of entrepreneurial subjectivity and responsibilization of individuals for social risks such as unemployment, economic downturn, and pensions. By problematizing the constitution of financially literate subjectivity and providing an everyday and cultural perspective on financialization, this dissertation contributes to the discipline of International Political Economy. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In many countries, including Turkey, agriculture is a major component of the rural population income, and in these rural areas women are the cornerstones of the agricultural production. Resources, especially water, land, livestock, crops, and knowledge about agricultural production are crucial for preserving the livelihoods of most of the world's rural families. Access to, control over, and management of these resources determines which farming activities are pursued, what goods may be produced, and whether the lives of rural households are enhanced or diminished. Yet, gender influences who has access to these resources and what level of access they have. Although women work in the fields, the homes, outside the farm, and at the markets, their male counterparts often maintain control of the decision making over the household and its economy. Thus, women, more than men, bear the burdens - physical, psychological, social, moral, economic, and legal- of these gender inequalities. Previous studies focused on the women farmers' unpaid work in agriculture and household duties, their access to technical information, credit, extension services, critical inputs such as fertilizers and water, and marketing around the world including Turkey. However, there are not many studies addressing the Turkish women farmers' gender inequality positions from a feminist standpoint lens. Drawing on the feminist standpoint theory, the purpose of this study was to explore the gender inequality experiences of women farmers on small farm practices in Turkey. Utilizing qualitative methods through the lens of feminist inquiry as a methodological approach, this study explored several aspects addressed by research questions associated with social positions: gender division labor; women's work in agriculture and household; decision making dynamics of rural families; accessing resources and knowledge; agrarian change; and effect of gender on small farm practices from Turkish women farmers' standpoints. Feminist standpoint data were collected through 23 individual in-depth interviews, and five focus group sessions with women farmers in their villages, located in southern region of Konya province, in Turkey. Data were analyzed thoroughly following the constant comparative method by using the computer software, Atlas.ti. Initial codes used in data analysis were based on concepts and themes drawn from both the literature and theoretical framework. The results demonstrated that there are gendered roles and responsibilities on small farm practices; women participants carry out both farm and household tasks, and in this sense bearing a heavier workload burden than men. Moreover, women's work in agricultural production, subsistence production, providing care for family members, or work in the extended family house, is invisible. The results also highlighted that these rural women's formal education level is low and they lack access to extension education services. Further, they lacked decision making power, compared to their husbands, on household resources and income on these small farm practices. Additionally, this study pointed out that there is an ongoing depeasantization in these rural villages and the migrating rural women hold unemployable positions in the cities due to their limited skills and poor education background. This study concludes with recommendations for individuals, community organizations, Turkish government agricultural policy makers, and extension education systems to better assist these women in their work. / Ph. D.

Wild turkey mortality rates, habitat use patterns, and recruitment were investigated on intensively managed pine forest of the Central Piedmont. Thirty-two adults and poults were captured with adult dosages of alpha-chloralose. Poults were easily sedated and usually recovered 1 day sooner than adults. The annual mortality rate for marked turkeys was 85%; September-February mortality was 65% (N=17), and March-August mortality was 57% (N=21). Turkeys that died during hunting seasons were recovered significantly (p < 0.05) closer to roads than those that died out of hunting seasons. High mortality during the hunting seasons and the association of hunting season mortality with roads suggests a crippling loss to legal harvest ratio as high as 4:1. Use of young pine plantations, hardwood leave strips, large stands of mixed hardwoods, mature pine stands, and fields was not significantly different (p > 0.1) from availability. Turkeys were associated with edges while on their winter and prenesting ranges. Nests were located in a variety of stand types, near edges, and in heavier cover than generally available. Nesting success was 48%. Post critical period brood survival was 90%. These data indicate that wild turkeys can adapt to the early stages of forest conversion for intensive pine management. / Master of Science