POL 305 – Introduction to Turkish Politics

POL 305 – Introduction to Turkish Politics; Weekly hours: 2+1, ECTS: 6
This course aims to enable the students to understand and analyze better the diversities and vicissitudes of political life, institutions and political processes in Turkey. A significant aim of the course is to provide the comparative political theory background and analytical tools to assess Turkish political development within a comparative framework. Introduction, The Ottoman and Kemalist Political Legacies; Nationalism and Center-Periphery Paradigm; The Modernization Paradigm; Political Culture, Clientelism and Patronage; The Constitutional Framework and Executive-Legislative Relations The Constitutional Framework; Executive, Parliament and Bureaucracy; Political Parties and the Party System; Social Mobilization, Political Participation and Electoral Trends; Interest Groups and the Military; Democratization, Politics of EU membership process; Religiosity and the rising salience of pro-Islamist . Movements; Ethnicity and politics of Kurdish minority; Policy-making, Political Economic Interactions, Patronage; Review