Emre Hatipoğlu

Economic Sanctions and Banking Crises in Target Economies

What effect do economic sanctions have on the stability of banking systems in targeted economies? This manuscript advances the hypothesis that economic sanctions increase the likelihood of systematic banking crises by deteriorating the target economy’s macroeconomic conditions and limiting its access to international capital. To test the argument, we gathered data for over 125 emerging economies for the years from 1970 to 2005. The findings indicate that sanctions are likely to raise the probability of banking crises. The results also show that financial sanctions are more detrimental to the stability of banking systems than trade sanctions. Further, we find that the hypothesized effect of sanctions is conditioned by the extent of economic cost inflicted on targeted economies. One major implication of the findings is that sanctions, as external shocks, can potentially destabilize the financial stability of target countries in addition to the well-documented adverse effects on economic growth, political stability, and humanitarian conditions.

Contextualizing change in Turkish foreign policy: the promise of the ‘two-good’ theory

The level of activism in Turkeys foreign policy has reached unprecedented levels during the countrys modern history. This increased activism contrasts starkly with Turkeys characteristically traditional status quo orientation evinced during the Cold War. This study aims to establish a theoretical foundation to explain this multifaceted change in Turkish foreign policy. In doing so, it contends that the ‘two-good’ theory of foreign policy renders considerable analytical leverage for contextualizing recent changes in Turkish foreign policy. The theory posits that change in a countrys foreign policy is contingent upon its willingness and capability to actively promote its interests. Furthermore, the ‘two-good’ theory postulates the method a country might employ to implement its foreign policy is a function of these two factors as well. The theory leads to two testable hypotheses regarding Turkish foreign policy. This study supports these hypotheses with qualitative and quantitative evidence.

Twitter and Politics: Identifying Turkish Opinion Leaders in New Social Media

Abstract Online platforms now provide a valuable medium for political socialization and mobilization. Recent events such as the Gezi Park protests, the Occupy Wall Street, or the anti-government protests in Iran demonstrate how effective social media can be in shaping an individuals political attitudes and actions. Traditional public opinion research does not acknowledge this emerging data source to its fullest extent. In this study, findings from the “Identifying Policy Opinion Shapers and Trends in Turkey” project, which has been collecting and exploring Twitter data to define how the online political debates are shaped in Turkey, are presented. Having identified over ten million active Turkish Twitter users and produced a social network graph of these users, this study identifies public opinion leadership in the Turkish online discussion space. The findings suggest that who these opinion leaders are may not follow the conventional expectations, but these leaders employ various tactics in managing their online presence and disseminating their ideas. This research endeavor as well as the findings suggests that engaging in cross-disciplinary research with scholars from different backgrounds can advance Turkish studies, in terms of both content and methodology. Most importantly, such interdisciplinary research can render significant leverage toward making Turkey more globally salient for scholarly debates.

Determinants of mediation success in post-conflict Bosnia: a focused comparison

The main goal of this study is to look at factors determining mediation success in post-conflict environments. More specifically, the authors focus on the level of involvement of the mediator in a post-conflict setting and argue that relational mediation strategies should fare better in such environments. A most similar systems comparison of the European Union/USA and Turkish mediation efforts in Bosnia–Herzegovina, both of which started in October 2009, renders support for the authors’ argument. Their analysis of these two cases suggests that Turkeys relational mediation strategy delivered concrete outcomes in post-Dayton Bosnia compared to the structural intervention style adopted by the European Union/USA. The authors conclude that a relational mediation strategy facilitates the achievement of constructive solutions by helping third parties to make broader assessments of the conflict situation, and by offering flexible options in issue selection and process design.

Interstate conflict: recent findings and controversies

Two significant changes in the research on international conflict have occurred in the last couple of decades. First, the realist perspective has been challenged by a large body of research that investigates the impacts of domestic institutions and other liberal factors on international conflict. Second, the emphasis on international conflict has moved from a focus on war to lower levels of conflict such as threats, displays, or uses of force by one nation-state against another. This article will review the effect these recent developments have had on the study of democratic peace theory, trade and conflict, and cultural theories of war.

Turkish efforts in peacekeeping and the introduction of the TUBAKOV dataset: an exploratory analysis

ABSTRACT This study introduces the TUBAKOV dataset, which offers extensive data on 57 peacekeeping operations (PKOs) that Turkey has contributed to between the years 1988–2015. TUBAKOV improves existing data in several ways. First, it draws data from governmental resources that have not been previously used. Second, Turkeys contributions for each PKO are presented both at the levels of PKO and PKO-contribution year format. The website of the dataset also allows access to qualitative data such as primary text sources, hence facilitating qualitative and multi-method research on peacekeeping. Preliminary analyses indicate that the frequency, nature and the geographic focus of Turkeys contributions to peacekeeping operations demonstrate a significant shift with the new millennium. Preliminary findings offer interesting insights to the changing characteristics of Turkeys PKO involvements relating to the content, geography and timing of these contributions over the time period covered by this dataset.