Research on Cultural Studies

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Foreword

This book, Research on Cultural Studies, is a collection of papers on cultural studies written by educators and researchers. The topics include women rights in Turkey, witness statement as evidence in Turkish law, legal regulations about organ or tissue trafficking, the new social movements in Turkey, humorous discourse on social media, the traditional country fairs in Turkey and so on.

The first paper by Selda Caglar discussed the women’s rights in Turkey. The author in her paper talked about negative social perception towards femininity and women’s human rights in Turkey. Hakan Karakehya in his study explored how witness statement could be used as evidence in Turkish criminal procedures. The following study by Nazmiye Ozenbas talked about a new category of crime: organ/tissue trade. She discussed the legal regulations about organ or tissue trafficking with the Turkish Penal Code. Her next study was about the protection of personal data in terms of criminal law. In this study, she talked about how data protection regulations were adopted worldwide to function for the lawful processing of personal data and to prohibit the misuse of it. The study by Ozgur Oguz was about the workers’ right to terminate labor contract for valid reasons in occupational health. In the following study, Sadullah Ozel evaluated the principle of proportionality in the context of requirements of the democratic and social order that complete this principle. The study by Gaye Tug Levent and Gulcan Azimli Cilingir provided information on the scope of implementation of the judicial assistance system in Turkey and the existing legal regulations pertaining conditions with particular emphasis on the applicability of the concept of judicial assistance in the province of Van, based on relevant statistical data. The study by Murat Kayalar, Elif Turkan Arslan, Savas Yildiz, Behic Cetin and Sehriban Aygun was about whistleblowing related legal arrangements in Turkish Law and the decisions made by The Board of Ethics for Public Officials, founded within Prime Ministry. Cigdem Mine Yilmaz in her study discussed the legal type of marital regime between spouses in Turkish law with general survey of marital if an alien element occurs. The study by Oya Acet Ozcan was about new social movements in Turkey and the role of the alternative media in framing contention. She gathered the data through online non-participant observation between January 1, 2013 and May 30, 2013, the preliminary period for the Gezi Movement, among the political conversations and sharings on the group page ‘the Others’ Post’ on Facebook. Mahmut Guler in his study explored “village” neighborhood in the new metropolitan regulation. In the study by Vehbi Kara, In this paper, a new era named Ownership and Liberty was ← 9 | 10 → discussed with an emphasis on the types of governments that lack in freedom. The author in his study also answered how people would be able to be set aside from these negative conditions such as slavery, thrall, and the exploitation of human labour. Nedret Caglar in his study explored the contribution of Turkish Republic citizens living in the European Union to the results of Presidential Elections in 2014. In the following study by Ozlem Cakar Celik, the perceptions of university students about the city concept and the city of Elazıg were examined. Interviews were carried out with 34 students during the 2014/2015 academic year. Aytul Kasapoglu in her study talked about the status and problems of sociology in Turkey. She tried to answer what the essence of the problems of sociology with regard to academic freedom, communication, education, research and public sociology in Turkey was and what academic sociologists advocated to solve the existing sociological problems in Turkey. In the following study, Ugur Gunduz discussed humorous discourse on social media mainly in the opposition and resistance parts of Turkey’s cultural and social context. While analysing humorous social media sharing based on hypotheses, he used the inductive method along with a literature review. Ugur Gunduz and Nilufer Pembecioglu in their study explored the twenty-first century media and film industries’ relationship with games and toys. The study provided an analysis of toys and games and their relationship with the movies and marketing strategies. It also presented an impact analysis, which identifies the negative consequences of these games on youngsters with a literature review. H. Burcin Henden Solt conducted a literature review on child-friendly cities initiative and made suggestions on behalf of applicability in her study. In the following study, M. Funda Afyonoglu and Merve Ertene asked the question of change in the philosophies of Kant and Sartre. They argued that it was necessary to ask first “What is change?” in a philosophical manner, before investigating changes on social and behavioural sciences. I. Okan Akin started his study with a brief introduction of the philosophical roots of the problem of representation, the crisis of which resulted in the search for new models of political expression. Then he provided some striking examples from a direct understanding of participation under the notion of art as an affective experience. He also examined the confrontational theatre as a radical attempt to stir the audience. Finally, he discussed the provocative definition of “the spectator as a voyeur.” H. Nurgul Begic in her art study talked about the traditional felt master, Mustafa Yuneş, in Odemis, Bademli. Andrea Lombardinilo in the following study investigated the role that symbolism gained in McLuhan’s sociological research, pointing out how the study of memory and the examination of the literary tradition was fundamental to understand, specifically, the developments of communication and ← 10 | 11 → of cultural studies in their complexity. Vedat Caliskan, Faize Saris, Muhammed Zeynel Ozturk and Berrin Gultay examined the economic and commercial spatial connections of the traditional country fairs in Turkey. In their study, they found the examples of traditional fairs in a total of 63 settlements in 54 districts located within the boundaries of 21 provinces in Turkey. The study by Gunes Acelya Sipahi and Meltem Onay was about family-owned businesses in Izmir. They tried to answer what the characteristics which the managers with the Level Five Leadership should possess are, and if there were any differences between the two generations of managers of family-owned businesses in terms of the level five leadership cycle. The next study attempted to reveal how powerfully Caryl Churchill’s play Light Shining in Buckinghamshire unearthed the unrecorded and ignored matters and events, providing one with a different perspective in reviewing the history. Ali Serdar and Reyhan Tutumlu Serdar in their study discussed the novel, I Have Killed My Love, by Belkıs Sami. The final study in this book by Emine Yavasgel and Ece Karadogan Doruk presented a quantitative analysis of the religious pluralism model, conducted within the framework of the dynamics of the “sacred,” global ethics and interfaith dialogue.

Finally I would like to thank the authors in this book for their great effort. Also I would like to express my gratitude to Hasan Arslan for his patience and understanding during the publication process.

Mehmet Ali Icbay

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Selda Çağlar

Protection System of Women’s Human Rights in Turkey

Introduction

Women who have been positioned at a secondary level, and even at lower levels, in society merely due to their gender have been made to play the roles given to them by society. The superior position of men stemming from the patriarchal traditions or laws has placed the dominance of men at the very centre of the social life. As a result, women have been considered as the people who were responsible for serving and obeying men instead of being individuals with rights. Social gender, or with a more explicit expression, the duties and responsibilities given to women by society, the impression of women in the society, the expectations from women and the life codes built on them have led to the situation today in which women cannot benefit from basic human rights and freedoms both in private and in public life.

This situation has been carried to the international arena with the contribution of social women movements, and thus, the notion of protecting women in accordance with the international legal system has been brought into the agenda. The ban on discrimination and the issue of equality have been expressed on a gender basis in international documents. The dynamics of the women movements and the sensitivity developed at the international level have been merged and the decade starting with the year 1975 was United Nations’ Decade for Women. In 1979, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which is accepted as one of the basic documents on gender equality and which put the member countries under the responsibility of “ensuring the equality of men-women and taking the specific and temporary precautions for this purpose,” was accepted. With this agreement, the theme of ‘women’ has come into being in the agreements and documents accepted by the European Union (EU) and the European Council (EC), and new responsibilities were incurred for the states for the purpose of protecting and strengthening women. However, although some of the problems of women have been solved under the scope of general human rights, and some under the precautions that are specific for women, most of the problems of women still exist in various societies in varying rates, and the efforts to find solutions for these problems are still continuing. ← 15 | 16 →

As well as the problems encountered both in Turkey and in the world, the governmental bodies and Non Govermental Organisations are still fighting with the problems of women that have been placed in the roots of the society mostly depending on the traditional and cultural structures (Kazemi, 2004). Based on this truth, firstly, we consider it beneficial to give some information on the regulations related with the place and rights of women in the Turkish legal system. In the second place, the merging of the legal battle for the rights of women with corporate structures, and the issue of whether these efforts have given efficient results will be discussed, and new solutions will be developed with the help of universal principles and standards.

1. Legal Regulations on Human Rights of Women