Increasing Role of Services in Competitive Power and Innovativeness of Firms and Industrial Clusters

The aim of this paper is to discuss the importance of different types of global services for industrial firms and clusters in terms of their economic competitiveness and innovative performance. The theoretical debates argue that globalization, deregulation and the new production organization make it necessary to use global services that are supplied easily with the help of new telecommunication technologies. The existing empirical studies provide some supporting evidence. However, they also indicate that global service firms can be attained by only smaller numbers of industrial firms and clusters. Still, in-house services besides temporal and informal mechanisms are important to meet the needs of the specialized services, even for the firms that try to become a part of the global production system. The paper focuses on three main questions: “What types of global services are becoming crucial for manufacturing firms and what type of services are still local and national? Is there a significant difference between the characteristics of firms that use the same type of services? To what extent is having access to global services important for the innovativeness of industrial firms and clusters? This paper looks for the answers to these questions based on existing case studies as well as this study of three industrial clusters in Turkey. The findings indicate that there is not a perfect match between theory and empirical evidence and there is a need for more refined theoretical discourses on industry–service relations.     

Hub Location Problem with Allowed Routing between Nonhub Nodes

In this study, we relax one of the general assumptions in the hub location literature by allowing routed flows between nonhub nodes. In hub networks, different flows are consolidated and routed via collection, interhub, and distribution arcs. Due to consolidation, some flows travel long paths despite closeness of their origin and destination. In this study, we allow direct flows by penalizing by a scalar factor of original cost of transshipment between these arcs. We present mathematical models for median, center, and set covering versions of the problem for single‐ and multi‐allocation cases. We test the models with the CAB and TR data sets. We discuss the properties of established direct connections for different models by using another mathematical model where the number of direct flows is bounded and interpret the effect of changes in problem parameters.     

Turkish nationalism and the evolutionary idea (1923–1938)

This paper sheds light on the role of evolutionary ideas in the making of Turkish nationalism during the Kemalist era (1923–1938). By so doing, it aims to challenge some of the dominant historiographical viewpoints as to the nature of Turkish nationalism. One is related to the Kemalist elites' predisposition towards the so‐called “scientism” seen as one of the bases for nationalism. We intend to turn upside–down the relation between the Kemalists' use of science and Turkish nationalism. Second, we problematize the “culturalist” origins of Turkish nationalism arguing that the seemingly “culturalist” reflections of the time were, indeed, materialist formulations based on the science of the times. We discuss in this respect the Kemalist elites' use of evolutionary ideas. By synthesizing the ways in which these elites employed evolutionary ideas in the fields of history, language, geography, anthropology, biology, eugenics, and pedagogy, we aim to understand the specific nature of Turkish nationalism before 1945. This secular nationalism conceived culture as having materialist bases and differed fundamentally from the culturalist varieties of Turkish nationalism coloured by Islam in the post‐1945 era. Furthermore, the paper empirically enriches the complex and entangled story of evolutionary ideas in the early Turkish Republic.     

The Father's Success and the Son's Failure: Explaining the Growth of Lebanon's Resistance to Syria's Invisible Occupation

In the 15‐year period since the Syrian military entry into Lebanon on June 1, 1976, allegedly to put an end to the civil war that broke out there a year earlier, Syria firmly solidified its control of the country, as evidenced by the signing of the “Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation and Coordination between Syria and Lebanon,” on May 22, 1991, which granted Syria a special status. Yet, 14 years later, on April 24, 2005, the Syrian forces withdrew from Lebanon. This article seeks to explain this relatively rapid decline in Syria's standing in Lebanon by examining the strategies of the two Syrian rulers who indirectly controlled this country during those years. It examines what was right in Hafiz al‐Asad's strategy in Lebanon, and what did not work in Bashar's policy. In 2000, the year of Hafiz al‐Asad's death, Syria's status in Lebanon seemed unshakable: 1) Lebanon's president (Emile Lahoud) acted as Damascus's puppet; 2) Hezbollah, the Shi‘a militia Hezbollah largely accepted Syria's authority while it simultaneously tightened its control over southern Lebanon and also began gaining popularity in the rest of the country; and 3) finally the politics of the noble families, which had characterized Lebanon since its establishment, began to gradually give way to a politics where a political figure is measured by the level of his connections to the country's power base in Damascus. Yet, merely five years later, Syria was under immense pressure to withdraw its forces from Lebanon. This suggests that we must look at the difference between the strategies of Hafiz al‐Asad and his son Bashar for controlling Lebanon to better understand the rapid deterioration in Syria's standing in the country. We argue that the difference in the degree of anti‐Syrian pressures from Lebanon's society and political elements between the two tenures is largely rooted in the different strategies that the two Syrian presidents adopted for informally ruling Lebanon. We identify three main areas where Bashar al‐Asad made mistakes due to his failure to continue his father's methods. First, Bashar put all his cards on Hezbollah, thus antagonizing all the other groups which resented that Shi‘a dominance. Second, in stark contrast to his father, Bashar distanced himself from the regular management of Lebanon's ethnic politics. Hafiz al‐Asad made sure that all the leaders of the different ethnic groups would visit Damascus and update him on their inter‐ethnic conflicts, and then he would be the one who would either arbitrate between them or, for expediency reasons, exacerbate these feuds. Once the ethnic leaders had to manage without Damascus, they learned to get along, making him far less indispensable for the running of the country. Finally, Bashar, unlike his father, did not make a real effort to gain international and regional legitimacy (or at least de‐facto acceptance) for Syria's continued control over Lebanon. Most conspicuously, while Hafiz participated in the First Gulf War against Iraq, his son supported Sunni rebels who fought against the United States‐led coalition forces there. This foreign acquiescence was significant since the Lebanese felt they had a backing when they demanded Syria's withdrawal in 2005. These different strategic approaches of the two rulers meant that the father's policies wisely laid the ground for some of the most controversial measures which were needed as part of any attempt to monopolize control over another country, such as Lebanon (assassinating popular but too independent‐minded Lebanese presidents/prime ministers or extending tenures of loyalist ones), whereas the son's policies myopically failed to do so properly. Indeed, the article will show that while both the father and the son took these same controversial measures, the responses of the Lebanese were completely different. Admittedly, some historical developments increased the Lebanese propensity to rise up against Syria, and these meant that Bashar did in fact face a harder task than his father in maintaining Syria's informal occupation. The Israeli withdrawal from its so‐called “security zone” in south Lebanon meant that one justification for the Syrian presence was gone. More importantly, the risk of renewed eruption of the civil war (which in turn had meant for many years a greater willingness by the locals to tolerate the Syrian presence which prevented the war's resumption) declined significantly due to a variety of processes that could not have been halted even with better “management” of the interethnic strife from Damascus (i.e., making sure that the ethnic groups remained in deep conflict with each other). Nevertheless, as we will show, Bashar's mistakes played a crucial role in bringing the rival ethnic groups together by making Damascus their joint enemy.     

Israel: Divided by Religion and Education

Israel is a democracy splintered by religion and education. Two of its fastest growing religious groups, ultra‐Orthodox and Muslim Israeli Arabs, are not learning democratic principles or marketable skills that enable them to assist in the economic development of the country. Even Israelis who are attending secular and religious Israeli government schools are academically behind in mathematics as measured on 2011 international achievement tests of PISA and TIMSS. The history of religion and education from 1928 to 1955 built the foundation for the current divisions. The impact of the Ottoman and British occupation on citizens is particularized thorough the experiences of Elias Tuma, who lived under British and Israeli government systems. Today's educational system in Israel reinforces religious and sectarian conflict among its citizens. Educational and religious structural suggestions are provided for readers to consider. The implications of this work for future research are provided.     

Architectural Discourse and Social Transformation During the Early Neolithic of Southeast Anatolia

Within the Near Eastern research canon, the transition to more sedentary lifestyles during the Neolithic is often framed as an economic necessity, linked to plant and animal domestication, climatic change and population stress. In such a framework, an increasingly complex social structure, arising in response to the increasingly complex relations of agricultural production, is presumed. For example, some researchers would argue that feasting-based rituals became an arena of social control and an increasingly complex society began to emerge around ritual leadership and monumental ritual architecture. Yet the research projects conducted at many Near Eastern sites indicate neither that sedentism can be directly linked to the requirements of agriculture, nor that the presence of monumental architecture can be successfully associated with social control based on unequal redistribution of agricultural surplus. While ritual activity appears to be central during the Neolithic, two important questions remain to be explored: (1) what exactly did the rituals control, given that the societies under consideration are commonly perceived to have an ‘egalitarian’ ethos?; and (2) what happened to the ritual control in the second half of the PPNB, when ritual architecture completely disappears from the archaeological record at a time of increased reliance on agriculture? Through a critical review of the use of terms like ‘sedentism’, ‘egalitarianism’ and ‘ritual’, I argue that the architecture of the Early Neolithic is related to the management of social relationships through symbolic place-making activities. Based on a comparative review of burial activity, building continuity and the use of symbolic imagery, I examine the symbolic construction of some of the earliest examples of long-term occupational focus in southeast Anatolia, such as Hallan Çemi, Demirköy, Körtik Tepe, Hasankeyf Höyük, Gusir Höyük, Göbekli Tepe, Çayönü and Neval? Çori, in an attempt to understand the social factors behind the emergence and demise of Early Neolithic monumental architecture. The evidence from the above-mentioned sites suggests that Early Neolithic place-making reflects community formation at a variety of scales, at the center of which lay the continuous reinvention of kinship concepts. While some sites, with concentrations of burials, may have become the locus for construction of more intimate local place-based networks, other sites, such as Göbekli Tepe, may have integrated the extended networks. Arguably, the formation of large scale networks during the PPNA posed a threat to local groups. Thus, a focus on local group formation and close control of social exchanges may have begun during the early PPNB, and the places such as Göbekli Tepe may have fallen out of use during this process. In the context of the symbolism and figurine evidence, I further argue that sex and gender may have become important issues, both in the formation of place-communities during the late PPNA—early PPNB, and in the emergence of autonomous households during the later PPNB.     

The Role of Government Policies and Strategies Behind the Shrinking Urban Core in an Expanding City Region: The Case of Izmir

Over the last few decades, the term urban shrinkage has come to be accepted as a valid concept in international academic circles, and has gradually gained importance, with its causes the subject of well-documented discussion. While previous discussions of urban shrinkage have directed attention to cities shrinking as a whole, recent research started to recognize the case of shrinkage in growing cities and regions. As such, recent discussions of urban shrinkage indicate that patterns of shrinkage vary considerably from city to city, and from sub-region to sub-region, with the importance of local dynamics in responding to changing economic pressures given much consideration. Recent studies have tended to disregard the role of government policies and strategies put in place to facilitate the adaptation of the urban economies to the new conditions. Taking Izmir as an example, being a fast-growing metropolitan region in Turkey, this paper presents evidence of government policies and strategies aimed at enhancing the development of peripheral areas that have led to shrinkage of the metropolitan core. This paper focuses on this experience and discusses its implications.     

Determining suitable investment areas using multi‐variable statistical methods: evidence from the Black Sea region in Turkey

Investment is an important decision for economic development, balanced growth and public welfare. There are many factors influencing investment. Thus, investment must be evaluated with multidimensional methods. Using taxonomy and principal component analysis this study attempts to determine appropriate investment areas in planned provinces in the Black Sea Region. Analyses were based on a number of demographic, economic, health, education, employment and cultural indicators. Results indicated that provinces were grouped into four clusters. Gümü?hane and Bayburt were determined to have the highest priority for investment in the manufacturing industry.     

Not Only Helpless but also Hopeless: Changing Dynamics of Urban Poverty in Turkey,the Case of Sultanbeyli,Istanbul

This paper is an attempt to understand the changing characteristics of urban poverty in Turkey since 1980. First, it analyses how the urban poor in Turkey had adopted aggressive survival strategies by strengthening their solidarity networks on religious, ethnic and cultural bases until the 2000s. Then it sheds light on how those networks have dissolved later on thanks to a set of internal and external factors and concludes that Turkey now faces deepening poverty levels and engendering new forms and dynamics of poverty. This paper is based on the Sultanbeyli district of Istanbul, a district almost entirely composed of unauthorized houses whose population grew at an unprecedented rate after 1980; and it is a perfect case for the study of issues relating to migration, urbanization and poverty in Turkish cities.