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AbstractUsing Veblen's status emulation theory in the background, but essentially engaged in theoretical debates on the transition to capitalism and modernity, this paper attempts to provide a comparative account of different forms of domination in Western European feudal society and the Ottoman Empire. In contrast, an individualistic representation of reality gained prevalence in social conflicts in Western Europe, precisely because forms of exploitation associated with European serfdom were far more severe and un‐tempered than was true for the Ottoman Empire. Due to being short of a legitimate claim to genuine nobility, Western European feudal aristocracy was driven into an insatiable hunger for luxury and waste. In the absence of a powerful central authority, members of this class "turned inward" for their ever‐increasing exploits and waged war against their servants, living and working under their private jurisdictions. The peasants, both free and serf, not only revolted repeatedly, but also ran into the cities to have "fairly secure property rights" so that they would be "the lord" or "dominus" of their own lives and morality. Out of this, a new justice notion had grown, that of natural rights law, which equated all human individuals within one single concern, that of "the right to self‐preservation," eventually dragging the whole social fabric into heightened self‐centeredness. The Ottoman ruling class could not turn inward and wage an open class war against its servants. This was the land of peace,dar‐al Islam. All people, Muslim and non‐Muslim lived, or were supposed to live, in peace and harmony under the supreme order ofHakk. The transition to an individualistic justice notion along the lines of natural rights law was on the whole clogged in Turkey.

Contrary to his theoretical expectations, Veblen provided various reasons as to why a revolutionary overturn by the technicians was a remote possibility in America. In contrast to the American engineers, the engineers of Turkey have constructed an engineering outlook commensurate with Veblen's abstract line of reasoning and participated in a political struggle against business interests. In this paper, using Veblen's cumulative causation methodology, a theoretical answer for the origin, growth, persistence, and variation of the anti-business engineering outlook in Turkey is suggested.

AbstractIn this paper an attempt is made to reassess how and why the laic/Islamic dual opposition has come to be a decisive factor in the politics of Turkish capitalist modernity. The question as to whether this opposition may survive into the twenty‐first century is briefly discussed. It is noted that in the aftermath of the prolonged confrontation between the emergent imagined community of the Gezi Revolt and the Islamist AKP government, a religiously neutral political identity came into sight in public life, which can be considered as the harbinger of a new kind of social individuality, one which is incommensurate with the laic/Islamic dual opposition.

Each major work of Veblen is a theoretical step taken further towards the solution of the problem already posed in The Theory of the Leisure Class: the continuity of the habit of invidious comparison that renders humans self-centric agents. Veblen, by juxtaposing "engineers" to the pecuniary class, sought to illustrate a contingency for the negation of invidious comparison, which may eradicate the legitimacy of business ideology and its reckless and futile end of accumulation of personal wealth.

"The AKP's neoliberal regime created the ideology and conditions for transformative change in Turkey's new upper-middle-class culture, which trickled down to both the laic and Islamic middle-class factions." Fourth in a series on social mobility around the world.

This paper focuses on the underlying motivation behind the participation of individuals in what came to be known as the Gezi Revolt. The Gezi Revolt was the expression of anger in response to a perceived social injustice. Those who participated in the uprising aimed not only to enforce political change but also to restore justice in their society through struggle and moral expression. Gezi represents the weaving together of moral, cognitive, and emotional responses. Anger and fury were the two particular emotions that provided a sense of urgency among a large section of people across the land and led to the building of a social network of individuals through which sharing stories and expressing feelings turned into practices of moral progress. The paper discusses how the participants of "the Gezi Community" were able to put aside their before identities and hold back their unpleasant and dividing emotions to one another.

AbstractCritics of the current national citizenship models argue that, although it rests on claims to be inclusionary and universal, it can never eliminate exclusionary and particularistic practices when challenged by those identities excluded from the historical trajectory of "nation building." Turkish citizenship has been a form of anomalous amalgamation since its conception. On the one hand, the state insisted on the pre‐emptive exclusion of religion and various communal cultural identities from politics, while, on other hand, it promoted a particular religious identity primarily as a means of promoting cultural and social solidarity among its citizens. Contemporary Alevi movements, representing the interests of a large minority in Turkey, provide a new source of energy for the revision of concepts of citizenship. Alevis have suffered from prejudice, and their culture has been arrested and excluded from the nation building process. They were not able to integrate into the form of national identity based on the "secular" principles that the republican state has provided as a means of promoting solidarity among citizens. What Alevis seek is a revised citizenship model in terms of a system of rights assuring the condition of neutrality among culturally diverse individuals.

This paper explores the democratic capacities, demands, and aspirations of citizenship movements in relation to deliberations within a formal political system whose territorial boundaries have become blurred as a result of global political and economic restructuring. The case of the mobilization of a group of people from 17 villages located in the hills of Bergama in the northern Aegean region of Turkey in opposition to Normandy Mining Corporation, an Australian-based multinational consortium operating a gold mine in the region, provides an empirical context for the discussion. Normandy Mining Corporation uses the controversial cyanide-leaching method to extract gold, a method that allegedly has damaged the environment and has resulted in health problems for local residents. For more than a decade, Bergama villagers have been struggling to drive Normandy out of their region, as they are concerned about their own health and the well-being of the land on which they live and work.