Birol A. Yeşilada

Changing Values in Turkey: Religiosity and Tolerance in Comparative Perspective

Abstract Using data from the World Values Surveys, this study examines changing values in Turkey and shows that rising religiosity and intolerance can be traced back to 1995 and have become more visible during the AKPs rule. Moreover, Turks are found to be the most religious of all the societies compared in the study. Findings suggest that Turkish voters are likely to continue being attracted to political parties like the AKP in the future, which would have important implications for Turkeys relations with its traditional friends in the West.

Negotiating a Resolution to the Cyprus Problem: Is Potential European Union Membership a Blessing or a Curse?

This article provides a game theoretic analysis of how the candidacy of Cyprus for European Union (EU) membership presents an important challenge for both the Unions eastern enlargement plans and current international efforts aimed at resolving the Cyprus problem. The conclusions indicate that the Cypriot conflict has entered a very delicate period in its protracted and troublesome history characterized by a deadlock game. Strong domestic and international factors have created the conditions for each side to follow a non-cooperative strategy aimed at unilateral victory rather than a compromise. In this regard, the EUs promise to the Greek Cypriots of membership in the Union, regardless of the settlement of the Cyprus problem, serves as a side payment that enforces non-cooperative strategy. Likewise, Turkeys overwhelming military superiority in the region and its unconditional support for the Turkish Cypriots strengthens the Turkish sides rigid position in the Cyprus negotiations. Under these circumstances, it is argued that an influential third party like the United States is needed to coordinate the efforts of the UN and EU to move the two parties away form a deadlock game. This effort requires a package approach to the issues surrounding the Cyprus problem, the islands membership in the EU, and EU-Turkey relations.

Human Development Dynamics: An Agent Based Simulation of Macro Social Systems and Individual Heterogeneous Evolutionary Games

PurposeIn the context of modernization and development, a complex adaptive systems framework can help address the coupling of macro social constraint and opportunity with individual agency. Combining system dynamics and agent based modeling, we formalize a simulation approach of the Human Development (HD) perspective to explore the interactive effects of economics, culture, society and politics across multiple human scales.MethodsBased on a system of asymmetric, coupled nonlinear equations, we first capture the core qualitative logic of HD theory, empirically validated from World Values Survey (WVS) data. Using a simple evolutionary game approach, second we fuse endogenously derived individual socio-economic attribute changes with Prisoner’s Dilemma in an agent based model of the interactive political-cultural effects of heterogeneous, spatial intra-societal economic transactions. We then explore a new human development dynamics (HDD) model behavior via quasi-global simulation methods to identify paths and pitfalls towards economic development, cultural plasticity, social and political change behavior.ResultsOur preliminary results suggest strong nonlinear path dependence and complexity in three areas: adaptive development processes, co-evolutionary societal transactions and near equilibrium development trajectories, with significant implications for anticipating and managing positive development outcomes. Strong local epistatic interactions characterized by adaptive co-evolution, shape higher order global conditions and ultimately societal outcomes.ConclusionsTechno-social simulations such as this can provide scholars and policymakers alike insights into the nonlinear, complex adaptive effects of societal co-evolution. We believe complex adaptive or evolutionary systems approaches are necessary to understand both near and potentially catastrophic, far-from-equilibrium behavior and societal outcomes across all human scales of modernization.

The future of Erdoğan and the AKP

ABSTRACT Turkish politics is complex and, at times, comes close to being bizarre. When the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi [AKP]) came to power it embarked on ambitious economic and political reforms that at last promised to bring embedded democracy to Turkey. Yet, since 2007, most of the initial reforms have regressed, deepening societal cleavages that threaten the stability of the country, and a popularly elected president threatens to change the parliamentary democratic system with an autocratic presidential order. While the AKP can celebrate in its unprecedented four election victories since 2002, its recent actions should give concern to anyone who cares about the future of Turkey.

The Political Future of Afghanistan and Its Implications for US Policy

This paper provides a forecast of the likely consequences of ongoing US military activity in Afghanistan, and assesses the implications of a change in the current US policy toward that nation. We use a game theoretic, bounded rationality model, called the Expected Utility model, to analyze the stability of the political and economic systems in Afghanistan, given both the domestic and international context. We undertook two analyses, one in December 2001 and a second in June 2002. Thus far all forecasts appear to be in line with our observations on the current sequence of events. Furthermore, we found that a continued, robust US military presence in Afghanistan is necessary to assure political and economic stability. Without continued, substantial US support for the current regime, it is likely that an Islamic dictatorship, with the potential to support terrorist activities, will replace the current semi-democratic system.

New Political Parties and the Problems of Development in Turkey

Since the beginning of liberal pluralist politics in 1950, Turkey has experienced three military coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980. Of these military incursions the ones in 1960 and 1980 were the most serious in scope. Each time the armed forces remained in power for a short time, 1960–1961 and 1980–1983, and completely revised the existing constitutional framework. These were unlike the 1971 intervention which did not result in a complete revision of the political system, but only in an amendment of the constitution to provide the state with more powers in dealing with domestic violence. In this respect, the 1960 coup marks the end of the First Republic. The subsequent period, 1961–1980 is the Second Republic.