Author Archives: alperyagci

Academic publications

The Great Recession, Inequality, and Occupy Protests Around the World

Free link: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0017257X16000038

Yagci, Alper H. 2016. “The Great Recession, Inequality, and Occupy Protests Around the World,” Government and Opposition, published online 23 March.

The article undertakes regression analyses estimating the economic and political correlates of more than thousand Occupy protests around the world. It confirms that countries with higher income inequality and those which experienced greater economic downturn during the financial crisis saw higher numbers of protest events subsequently, controlled for factors such as regime type, government orientation, or level of corruption.

 

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Writings in English

“Occupy Istanbul,” the “Turkish Spring,” or Something Else? Understanding the June 2013 Protests in Turkey

Istanbul, 7 June 2013

Turkey was no democratic paradise before Erdogan’s JDP came to office. But the balance of power was such that no single actor (be it a party, civil association, or the military itself) was able to impose its will on the society, even if they wanted to. Now that JDP has amassed great power and remains without serious rivals, the country cannot afford anything other than becoming truly democratic so as to safeguard liberties against a tyranny of the majority, and that has not been happening. The result is greater polarization, which erupted in this week’s protests.

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Writings in English

The perils of ‘too successful’ marketing, or why Turks don’t like Orhan Pamuk

October 2011

A foreign friend of mine has recently asked me the question and I am writing this essay as an attempt at an answer: Why is it so difficult to find a fan of Orhan Pamuk in Turkey? We have a veritable puzzle: The man is a Nobel laureate, considered worldwide as one of the major writers of his generation and, for that matter, he is a best-seller in the country in question. Yet, when you ask a literate Turk about Pamuk, the answer you are likely to hear is, “I gave up his book after fifty pages or so.” Who is buying all those books, and why don’t we like our only Nobel laureate?

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Writings in Turkish

Petrol, Sınıf Çatışması ve Uluslararası Siyaset: Hugo Chávez döneminde Latin Amerika ve Venezuela

São Paulo, 28 Mart 2013

Chávez dönemini siyasal-iktisadi bir perspektiften inceleyip mevcut veriler ışığında değerlendirdiğimiz vakit nasıl bir tabloyla karşılaşıyoruz? Chávez’in uluslararası sermayeyi ve ABD’yi bu derece karşısına alabilmesini sağlayan hükmettiği petrol kaynağı. Başta yüksek kamu harcamaları olmak üzere uygulanan bir dizi heterodoks politikayı ve uluslararası sahada aynı ölçüde otokratik bir çizgiyi bu tarz doğal kaynaklara sahip olmayan bir ülkede tekrarlamak çok daha zor olacaktır. Chavizm deneyiminden sol için dersler çıkarmaya çalışan gözlemcilerin, bu hareketi ortaya çıkaran ve ona sıradışı özerklikte bir eyleyicilik kazandıran tarihsel-coğafi koşulları iyi çözümlemesi elzem. Bu yazıda bunu yapmaya çalışıyorum.

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Academic publications

Murad Efendi’den Türkiye Manzaraları

Yağcı, Alper. 2009. “Murad Efendi’den Türkiye Manzaraları,” Tarih ve Toplum: Yeni Yaklaşımlar 8: 133-155.

(Scroll down for Turkish)

Murad Efendi aka Franz von Werner was a mysterious figure who was born to an aristocratic Austrian family and chose to emigrate to Turkey at a young age to live as an Ottoman diplomat. His two-volume “Turkish Sketches” provides one of the most comprehensive and insightful accounts of life in 19th century Turkey. In this article, which was published in a peer-reviewed Turkish journal of historiography, I provide the first detailed review of Murad Efendi’s work.

Murad Efendi nam-ı diğer Franz von Werner, Avusturyalı bir aristokrat iken genç bir yaşta Türkiye’ye sığınıp yaşamını Osmanlı hariciyesinin bir memuru olarak geçirmeyi tercih eden gizemli bir kişilik. İki ciltlik eseri “Türkiye Manzaraları” (çev. Alev Sunata Kırım) on dokuzuncu yüzyıl Türkiyesinin en kapsamlı tasvirlerinden birini yapmakta. Bu makalede eserin ilk ayrıntılı incelemesini sunuyorum.

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