Two frequently discussed issues in Turkish electoral studies concern the instability and geographical cleavages in electoral preferences. Turkish voters are not strongly identified with political parties and frequently vote for different parties due primarily to patronage distribution. Their vote is also strongly influenced by parochial ties. Despite various regulations in electoral laws, such as a minimum 10 percent nationwide support for representation in the Parliament, which makes representation of smaller parties in the legislature difficult, fractionalization of electoral support continuously increased over the last two decades. Consequently, formation of stable governments became more and more difficult.

This paper is an examination of the relationship between the Anglo-Turkish Convention of 1838 and the transformation in Ottoman women's dress which took place during the nineteenth century. Until now, there has been a tendency to assume a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the Anglo-Turkish Convention and other economic treaties of the period, and fashion. The argument has been that the substantial increase in the volume of imported textiles and other goods led to a change in clothing styles, and indeed to changes in Ottoman taste generally, but my study of Ottoman women's dress indicates that the situation was much more complex. It is clear that the transformation in dress was well under way by the time of the Anglo-Turkish Convention, proceeding at its own rate, tied to events other than the treaty. In this context, fashion represents one of a whole complex of components of culture which, although affected by economic developments, are primarily social phenomena. Examining an area such as fashion (or painting or theater, for instance) will lead to a richer understanding of the period of the Anglo-Turkish Convention.

Since the late 1990s, Fener and Balat, two adjacent historic neighborhoods on the shoreline of the Golden Horn (Haliç) in İstanbul, have been the stage of urban regeneration efforts. Following a process of de-industrialization in the mid-1980s, these efforts have aimed to revitalize the area through the promotion of tourism. Today, almost ten years after the initial attempts, regeneration remains incomplete. This essay explores the reasons underlying this “failure.” For this purpose, I focus on the key actors, their interests and power struggles within the context of the project. I argue that one needs to highlight the particularities of the institutional arrangements at the district, city and national levels in order to explain the situation in Fener and Balat. More specifically, due to the absence of relatively autonomous market mechanisms, the lack of the private sector's involvement, the gap between the public sector's interests and the demands of the market, and the effectiveness of electoral politics at the district level, the case of Fener and Balat has been shaped by district mayors and local communities reluctant to implement and participate in the project.

The growth in the numbers of asylum seekers to Western European countries over the past decade (Castles and Loughna, 2002) has underlined the significance of “political” and other non-economic factors in shaping migration flows, drawing attention to the inadequacy of theoretical explanations based on socio-economic differentials. The need to reassess earlier research on labor flows to take into account the existence of migrants obliged to flee from situations involving political persecution has become apparent, whether the migrants be directly or personally a target of persecution or whether they feel threatened by association for reasons of ethnicity, geography, etc. My main aim in this article is to raise the issue of the role of “Kurdish ethnicity” as one instance of such political forces in shaping migration flows from Turkey to Germany. During the 1970s and 1980s, research on patterns of migration between the two countries was almost exclusively concerned with the “incorporation of guest workers” into German labor markets and the contribution of their remittances to the Turkish economy.

This article examines the socio-economic background of the parliamentary deputies serving during the years of the national struggle (1920–1922) and the single-party era (1923–1946) and provides new statistical data collated from recently published, detailed biographical information. I will provide a critical analysis of the socio-economic background of the deputies elected to represent the eastern and southeastern regions of Turkey and offer localism—defined as being born in the and from the constituency one represents—as a key concept to allow a better understanding of the nature of the electoral process at that time. Although localism—which can be regarded as one of the important indicators of authentic representation—was extensive during the years of the national struggle, it was replaced by bureaucratic representation during the single-party era, especially starting with the 1927 elections held right after the Sheikh Sait Rebellion. The article relates the Kurdish rebellions to the problem of representation in parliament and shows that in the rebellions' aftermath the number of the local representatives rapidly decreased. It further documents that, with the introduction of multi-party politics and democratic, free, competitive elections after the World War II, a return to localism can be observed for the eastern and southeastern provinces of Turkey.