Ethical discussions of divorce have usually taken up the question of whether or when two spouses may divorce and remarry. They have focussed on the dissolution of the marital bond. Almost no attention has been given to the ethical issues involved in negotiating a divorce or maintaining the parental bond in divorce.

Emerging efforts to maintain parental bonds in divorce rest on many diverse considerations. Let us begin with the social changes demanding this concern and then move to some religious, ethical, and legal responses to this challenge.

This paper focuses on two exhibitions of architecture and town planning held by Britain in Turkey in the mid-1940s. The use of these exhibitions for propaganda purposes, as well as their reception in the highly politicized context of World War II, requires the study to emphasize the political as well as the professional perspective of the contemporary architectural context. Analyzing why and how these exhibitions were held, and what they displayed as representative of British architecture and town planning, the paper discusses the characteristics of the contemporary discourses and practices of the profession with reference to the national dynamics of each country and their position in the international scene at the dawn of a new era in world history. The aim is to question the relations of power that are conventionally taken to define discursive and practical hierarchies of binary constructs, such as national/international or traditional/modern. Examining the case of the British exhibitions in Turkey, the paper emphasizes instead the necessity of a comparative analysis to evaluate the architectural products in-between or beyond dichotomies as produced in discrete yet interconnected contexts.

American culture bears a lasting imprint from its Puritan founders. Their ideal of a social and political community based on a religious covenant has provided a sense of mutual obligation and commitment to public purposes in American life that cannot be fully explained by the contractarian notion of “mutually disinterested” persons who join forces to further their individual aims more effectively. Covenant theology, at the beginnings of modern liberal individualism, sustained an older notion of the self fulfilled in community.At the same time, however, the covenantal emphasis on consent, the voluntary creation of new communities of identity, introduced new elements of historicity, initiative, and equality into old political theories. The distinctive covenantal form of some basic democratic norms thus continues to exert an influence on public choice and political ideals, even in a public philosophy which is today dominated by contractarian and utilitarian theories.

In the 1930s, the attention of Turkey’s politicians shifted back from Ankara and Anatolian cities to İstanbul. In 1932, the Governorship-Municipality of İstanbul organized an urban design competition for İstanbul, and four foreign city planners were invited. In the meantime, Martin Wagner came to İstanbul for the preparation of urban reports. In 1937, Henri Prost, the prominent urbanist of Paris, was invited to İstanbul and prepared the first master plan of the city. In Turkey and in İstanbul, town planning processes have been significantly influenced by “Western” planning principles, cultures, and experiences while gaining a local meaning in the context of Turkish politics and the state-formation process. The aim of this study is to describe the urban design competition of 1933 and the first master plan of 1937. Beyond references to Western European cities as in the “city-beautiful” planning approach, this study, based on a series of official documents, plan reports and their rhetoric, investigates in particular the role of foreign planners/urbanists in İstanbul in the context of the construction of a nation-state. The analysis of these foreign planners’ work suggests that urban planning in Republican Turkey was closely linked to the construction of the nation state.

This article aims to explore the conditions and roles of Gypsies in the economy of Turkey through a focus on street flower sellers in two central districts of İstanbul, Şişli and Taksim. It proposes a multidimensional analysis that demonstrates different dynamics of social exclusion, socio-economic and political relations, and agency positions. After first reviewing several approaches to Gypsies’ roles in non-Gypsy economies, Gypsies’ conditions in Turkey are then examined in relation to their roles in the economy. Finally, their positions in the flower-selling sector in the two districts, Şişli and Taksim, are analyzed through working conditions, socioeconomic dynamics, social exclusion, and perceptions of Gypsyness.

This paper investigates the labor and marriage market incorporation of individuals originating from Turkey in comparison to other migrant groups in Sweden. Using high-quality register data from Statistics Sweden, the progress of and challenges facing this group are analyzed in comparison to their European and Middle Eastern counterparts, both over time and over generations. The descriptive results point to the economic progress of individuals from Turkey over time and over generations, especially in the case of native-born females. The results show that native-born individuals with an origin from Turkey are more likely to be employed as compared to their counterparts from the New 10 EU member states, Bulgaria and Romania, and the Middle East. However, those originating from Turkey are less likely to intermarry as compared to other groups. Further analyses indicate that individual characteristics are more important for native-born individuals, as compared to immigrants, in explaining the observed gaps in the labor market as well as the marriage market. However, the role of individual characteristics in explaining differences across groups varies by gender as well as by generation.

Whatever has been achieved in the recent debate regarding religion and politics in America, we have not yet clarified the proper place of religion in our public life. All parties endorse the terse formulation of the first amendment, “congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” but there is persisting disagreement about the public philosophy which is there implied. Some fear a secularized state, that is, a state which is independent of all religious convictions, and insist that disestablishment does not preclude a foundation of religious values in the Republic. Others fear a state that is religiously partial and insist that the “wall of separation” prescribes civil neutrality toward religion as such. Each side asserts that the other misrepresents its position. The “religionists,” as I will call them, deny that they seek to impose any particular religious conviction; the “separationists,” as I will call them, deny that they are hostile to religion.

This paper represents an attempt to reflect on the Turkish identity in the formation period of the Republic, from its constitution in 1923 until 1939. The discussion is focused around two buildings that were constructed in 1939, both of which were built abroad to represent the new state; the Embassy of Turkey in Tehran and the Turkish pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. These buildings were both featured in the same issue of the architectural magazine Mimar, and offer a fruitful starting point for delving into historical and theoretical issues in identity discourse. That said, the paper goes beyond merely analyzing the different formal vocabularies and personalities of the different architects and patrons involved in commissioning these structures. Rather than addressing only the different cultural and architectural responses to the contemporary national identity debate, the paper will also consider the question of whether the host countries and the addressees of these rather symbolic buildings also had a role in their design and evaluation stages. In other words, the study aims to understand how representation in a location in the “West” or in the “East” affects the identity of a nation characterized by its duality of “West” and “East.”

This study is part of a larger project on the Landscapes of the Eastern Question, contextualizing the architecture of diplomacy in İstanbul as a symbolic and material refraction of changing power balances and representational strategies. In Beyoğlu, where most of the main diplomatic residences were located, the embassies were originally Ottoman wooden konak structures, but, in time, the increasing influence of Russia, Great Britain and France fostered their monumentalization and the adoption of European academic classicism. By contrast, the summer embassies on the European shore of the Bosphorus remained largely local in terms of technology, image, materials, and spatial layout until the end of the Ottoman Empire. The paper argues that, for many diplomats, a stately winter residence representing national identity, along with a summer house in the spirit of the local traditions, would be used as a communicative and performative resource in the drama of European-Ottoman relations. It also evaluates foreign settlement on the northern shore of the Bosphorus as conforming to a strategy of surveillance and control in keeping with the strategic relevance and contested status of the straits.

In this paper, I seek to draw out the meanings of both law and religion and to reflect on their relationship to each other. Both law and religion belong to the humanities, and an examination of a few of the ways in which they cut across each other might conceivably contribute to a better understanding of the human predicament in general.

I shall begin by inquiring into the historical roots and development of law and religion. I shall then examine analytically some important issues involving their intersections—questions which cut across history and seem perennial. Obviously, given space limitations, much of the discussion can only suggest.