Lying at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, Turkey is a predominantly Muslim and officially democratic and secular country, as well as a current European Union (EU) candidate state. Yet, many European politicians, publics, and others believe that Turkey is culturally different from Europe--and different enough to preclude its EU entry. One reason why people perceive Turkey as different is because of a belief in the incompatibility of Islam and liberal democracy, popularized by Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations (1996), which also characterizes Islam as having a monolithic and unchanging influence on liberal democracy and its values. Some may argue that the electoral success of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) in 2002 and 2007 in Turkey seemingly supports Huntington's (1996) "clash of civilizations" thesis because of the party's strong Islamic base of support. On the other hand, the EU has now enlarged to 27 member states, with others waiting in the wings, which is important for "EU socialization theories" that suggest EU candidacy and membership may shape liberal-democratic policies and values, including in Turkey. Moreover, EU countries have been mired in the global economic crisis, which may potentially impede liberal-democratic values based on modernization and human development theories as well as previous research. In the wake of these debates and developments, this study asks three major research questions: First, to what extent have liberal democratic values-- democracy, separation of religion and state, anti-authoritarianism, and tolerance of racial/ethnic minorities--changed in Turkey and the EU member and candidate states between 2001 and 2008, if at alld Second, what factors explain these valuesl Finally, has the impact of factors explaining liberal-democratic values changed during this time To answer these questions, the paper employs descriptive, factor, and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses on two waves of the World and European Values Survey (as late as 2008), supplemented with ordinal logistic models on these and other public opinion data. The results undermine Huntington's (1996) characterizations as they apply to Turkey: While people's values in Turkey have not significantly shifted in some regards, that is also the case in EU member and other candidate states. In Turkey, too, people's values have changed with respect to tolerance of racial/ethnic minorities. The sources of these values are uncovered and discussed. Beyond theoretical debates about the sources of liberal democracy and its values, the results also speak to contemporary political debates over Turkey's EU entry.

This paper explores the impact of the US military assistance on the Turkish military during the early Cold War years. Military transformation and international security assistance have become popular subjects for study due to new threats to international security and changing nature of warfare after 9/11. My paper focuses on an earlier experience of military transformation that was set off by the US military assistance to Turkey under the Truman Doctrine in 1947. Although Turkey was one of the first two countries that hosted American military missions in the wake of the Second World War, the transformative impact of the American military assistance there has merited little, if any, attention from military historians or security studies scholars. After 1947, massive influx of US military hardware into Turkey required fielding of a sizeable number of American advisors/trainers. They were subsequently drawn into the task of re-casting the Turkish military along the American way of war. The task proved to be difficult, formidable and not without clashes between the two military cultures. Formerly shaped under the Prussian/German influence, some senior officers attempted to resist the transformation, while majority in junior ranks felt empowered as a result of their newly acquired mastery of the American methods, techniques and language. This paper attempts to assess the impact of this transformation experience in terms of change and contunity in military training/education, organization, conceptualization of war, interservice and civil-military relations in Turkey. It concludes that the US military assistance also played a catalyst role in the generational change of the Turkish military, as the 27 May coup resulted in a large scale purge of the "Prussians" from the ranks. My research mainly draws on the papers of the Joint United States Mission for Military Aid to Turkey (JUSMMAT) at NARA, which are complemented with official publications, memoirs of military officers and author's interviews.

The Military Take-Over in Turkish Film Post-1980 The military and its interventions in politics occupy a significant place in the Turkish literary and artistic imagination. The coups of 1960 and 1971 have been depicted in works of literature and TV dramas, and a few analytical studies of their impact exist. Yet the silence around the 1980 military takeover, which arguably left the biggest impression on Turkish society, has only lifted in the past several years. My paper looks at a set of films and television programs which have joined a growing wave of artistic commentary that has broken long-held taboos about the events of 1980. Artistic treatments of 1980 used to be rare. Perhaps the earliest depiction is Yilmaz Guney's award-winning Yol [The Road], which won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982. It took another twenty years for other renderings of the coup to follow. My paper will examine several of them which, though less famous, are no less significant for Turkish culture. These include three feature films: Babam ve Oglum [My Father and My Son, 2005] by Cagan Irmak; Eve Donus [Home Coming, 2006] by Omer Ugur; and Beynelmilel [The Internationale, 2006] by Sureyya Sirri Onder and Muharrem Gulmez. In addition, my talk will analyze episodes from a popular TV series, Bu Kalp Seni Unutur Mu? [Could The Heart Forget You?, 2009-10] conceptualized by Tomris Giritlioglu and directed by Aydin Bulut. With a renewed interest in recent history and a willingness to break the silence about 1980, these visual narratives tackle the social trauma inflicted by the coup, eradicated from national memory through fear and ambivalence towards national history. My talk will primarily explore gender as a metaphor for the country and the human cost exacted under the coup regime. In bringing the past to account, film articulates what others have not been willing to say or admit; it records the experience for posterity from the viewpoint of complex human agency. Artistic expression can thus become an arbiter of justice for victims of state terror. This social function of art is neither new nor outmoded, especially in the lively debate which has erupted in Turkey on the possibility of redefining the modern nation and her history.