This book gives a sheer framework for the Turkish story of transition in politics, society, and foreign affairs during the Justice and Development Party era. This book expands upon transitions in political and societal fabric of the country together with its eventual reorientation of foreign policy in broader regional and global contexts. The themes covered in this book are not only placed in a historical context but also provide an analytical insight into the 2000s. The individual chapters may be read in isolation. Readers who are interested in Turkish politics and foreign policy can find this book an easy read and gain a detailed understanding of the current state of art. This book serves as a supplementary course book at undergraduate and graduate levels in the fields of political science and international relations, and Turkish politics.
This book, the fourth volume of Studies on Balkan and Near Eastern Social Sciences, is a collection of empirical and theoretical research papers in the social sciences regarding the Balkans and the Near East written by researchers from several different universities and institutions. The book addresses economic, financial, political, historical, sociological, and international relations and health, cultural, and feminist issues in the region of the Balkan and the Near East. The book is aimed at educators, researchers, and students interested in the Balkan and Near Eastern countries.
The chapters reconstruct the values, norms, experiences, material manifestations, and power structures underlying the understandings of the holy and the sacred in early modern Christian contexts. They intend to gain a characteristic profile of the associated concepts and ideas, persons and social groups, objects and texts, times and spaces, and behaviours and performances, in order to provide insights into the identities and hegemonic structures developed around them. They trace the interdependence of religion and society, highlighting the constructiveness, transformability, and diversity of the sacred culture from the 15th to the 17th century.
The lively, informative and incisive collection of essays sheds fascinating new light on the literary interrelations between Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic. It charts a hitherto under-explored history of the reception of modern Irish culture in Central and Eastern Europe and also investigates how key authors have been translated, performed, and adapted. The work of Jonathan Swift, John Millington Synge, Flann O'Brien, Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Martin McDonagh, it is indicated, has particularly inspired writers, directors, and translators. The searching analyses presented here illuminatingly reflect on the far-reaching political and social import of multicultural exchange. It is shown to be a process that is at best mutually defining and that raises questions about received forms of identity, the semiotics of genre and the possibilities and limits of linguistic translation. In addition, the histories compiled here of critical commentary on Irish literature in Hungary or of the staging of contemporary Irish plays in Hungary and in the Czech Republic, for example, uncover the haphazardness of intercultural exchange and the extent to which it is vulnerable to political ideology, social fashion, and the vagaries of state funding. The revealing explorations undertaken in this volume of a wide array of Irish dramatic and literary texts, ranging from Gulliver's Travels to Translations and The Pillowman, tease out the subtly altered nuances that they acquire in a Central European context. By the same token, it is demonstrated that Ireland has been changed by the recent migration of workers from Eastern Europe and that consequently projections of the figure of the emigrant or asylum seeker in current drama warrant scrutiny. This original and combative collection demonstrates, not only that literary exchange between Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Ireland has been prolonged, multifaceted and, above all, enriching, but also that it exposes blind-spots, and forces confrontation with issues of racism, failure of empathy and cultural misprision.
Shocks and Rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa is the first book to examine issue-driven antagonisms within groups of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) states and their impact on relations within the region. The volume also considers how shock events, such as internal revolts and regional wars, can alter interstate tensions and the trajectory of conflict.MENA has experienced more internal rivalries than any other region, making a detailed analysis vital to understanding the region’s complex political, cultural, and economic history. The state groupings studied in this volume include Israel and Iran; Iran and Saudi Arabia; Iran and Turkey; Iran, Iraq, and Syria; Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and Algeria and Morocco. Essays are theoretically driven, breaking the MENA region down into a collection of systems that exemplify how state and nonstate actors interact around certain issues. Through this approach, contributors shed rare light on the origins, persistence, escalation, and resolution of MENA rivalries and trace significant patterns of regional change. Shocks and Rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa makes a major contribution to scholarship on MENA antagonisms. It not only addresses an understudied phenomenon in the international relations of the MENA region, it also expands our knowledge of rivalry dynamics in global politics.