Güneş Murat Tezcür
Biographic Data
| ID | 250025 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Güneş Murat Tezcür |
| GIVEN NAMES | Güneş Murat |
| FAMILY NAME | Tezcür |
| SIGNATURE | TEZCÜR G M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Loyola University Chicago |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5722-6209 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 286 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Reckoning with Racial Violence
∞ How do Americans perceive public memorials that address the legacy of racial violence? What role do these commemorative spaces play in shaping collective memory within the built environment? This study presents the first nationally representative analysis of how Americans view the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (NMPJ) in Montgomery, Alabama, the most ambitious racial justice memorial in the United States. We first situate the NMPJ with…
They are Hiding the Truth and Plotting
What factors explain Latino support for conspiracy theories? Contemporary scholarship offers valuable insights on how psychological, social, and political factors shape support for conspiracy theories. At the same time, scholarly understanding of the dynamics that foster conspiracy beliefs among racial and ethnic minorities is much more limited. Utilizing survey responses from more than 1,000 Latinos, we theorize explicitly about the factors that…
Symbolic Megaprojects
Selective Humanitarianism in Asylum Policies
To what extent does refugee protection in Western Europe depend on the ethno-religious and gender identity of asylum seekers? This article examines how selective humanitarianism, shaped by the identity of asylum seekers and migrants, shapes their protection status. It offers an analysis of Germany’s response to Yezidi refugees, in comparison with that of France, in the wake of the genocidal campaign carried out by the Islamic State in 2014. Drawi…
All the Sultan’s Men
Why do some political rulers engage in frequent shuffling of their governors while others allow their governors to serve longer? We argue that shuffling of governors reflects the level of a ruler’s perception of insecurity. Building on perspectives about situational origins of distrust and paranoid cognition, we argue that democratic leaders, characterized by higher levels of existential security, practice less frequent shuffling of governors com…
Beyond Collateral Damage
Under what conditions do states pursue counterinsurgency measures with little disregard for civilian life? This article argues that the states have an incentive to engage in group-selective violence involving disproportionate force when facing a local population sympathetic to an armed insurgent organization. Such a military strategy allows the state to punish the local population while claiming that civilian casualties are an unintended conseque…
The Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics
Turkey has a history of multiparty electoral competition going back to 1950, longer than many other nations in the world. Until recently, it was often perceived as a model country that showed the feasibility of democratic governance in a Muslim-majority society. However, the rise of religious-nationalist populism and sociopolitical polarization has resulted in an authoritarian turn that has stifled political liberalization. Turkish foreign policy…
Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics
A conditional norm
The norm against chemical weapons (CW) is considered to be a strong and universal restraint against poisonous methods of warfare. Yet the repeated CW attacks during the Syrian civil war have raised questions about the robustness of this international norm. Under what conditions do third parties emphatically sanction violators of the norm? Adopting a historical approach, we analyse the discursive and contextual dynamics characterising the CW attac…
The Effectiveness of Harnessing Human Rights
Under what conditions can a human rights-based approach be successfully utilized? This article argues that the efficacy of a human rights discourse is, in large part, determined by the nature of the arena in which rights are claimed. Utilizing process tracing, involving content analysis and in-depth interviews, the article examines the decades-long struggle to block the construction of a large dam in southeastern Turkey. The analysis focuses on t…
A Path out of Patriarchy? Political Agency and Social Identity of Women Fighters
Violent movements in different parts of the world have employed large numbers of women fighters. I address the question of how and why so many women from diverse backgrounds join an ethnic insurgency. Informed by an intersectional approach, I suggest that when gender and ethnic inequalities overlap, an ethnic insurgency promising gender emancipation would have strong appeal among women. At the same time, the intersection of class and gender shape…
Kurdish politics in post-2011 Syria
The PYD has emerged as the predominant Kurdish political party in Syria soon after the outbreak of the civil war. Why and how did the PYD, established only in 2003, eclipse other Kurdish groups? This article addresses this historical puzzle and argues that conventional arguments that explain the rise of the PYD primarily as a function of its coercive practices with the complicity of the Assad regime are incomplete. Deriving insights from studies …
Religious Statecraft
Factional conflict has been a central feature of Iranian politics since the revolution. Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar’s Religious Statecraft uses rich primary sources in Persian to develop this feature as a key factor explaining the emergence, rise, and change of religious ideas in contemporary Iran. The book suggests that political factions strategically construct and deploy religious ideas in response to domestic threat perceptions. Hence, far fro…
Ethnic nationalism versus religious loyalty
When religious differences are present within an ethnic group, how do they affect the scope of its nationalist mobilization? The Kurds of Iran presents an ideal case to address this question given their religious diversity and varying levels of involvement in Kurdish nationalist movements. Building on an institutional approach to ethnic identity, this article argues that the dynamics of Kurdish ethnic mobilization in Iran reflect the nature of po…
A Century of the Kurdish Question
The Kurdish question remains one of the most important and complicated issues in ethnic politics in contemporary times. Taking the Ottoman Defeat in the World War I in 1918 as a historical critical juncture, the article sets the agenda for the special issue and develops a conceptual approach to think about the strategies of Kurdish nationalism. It goes beyond the state-ethnic minority antagonism that has been the most predominant theme in the stu…
Jihadist waves
This article offers the first systematic analysis of cross-generational and cross-organizational aspects of jihadist foreign fighter (JFF) mobilization. How are individuals fighting in Syria different from foreign fighters who fought in the previous jihadist wars? What factors distinguish the Islamic State (IS) fighters from individuals joining other jihadist groups in Syria? The article builds an original sample of 477 JFFs from Turkey spanning …
Ethnic Exclusion and Mobilization
Yunus Emre, The Emergence of Social Democracy in Turkey
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Risks
Why do ordinary people take extraordinary risks and join an ethnic armed rebellion? This article tests a series of well-established hypotheses about selfish and identity based motivations and a new hypothesis based on prospect theory. It then employs a unique multimethod research strategy combining one of the most comprehensive datasets on insurgent recruitment that contains biographical information about 8,266 Kurdish militants with extensive fi…
Soft Power, Religion, and Anti-Americanism in the Middle East
This study presents the first systematic analysis of the public opinion dimension of soft power competition in the contemporary Middle East. Building on the scholarship on perceptions of foreign states and Arab public opinion, it proposes a series of hypotheses about sectarian identity, religious worldviews, and anti-Americanism as determinants of attitudes toward Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia in the context of regional rivalry. It then presents…
Electoral Behavior in Civil Wars
This study analyzes the effects of political violence on electoral behavior by focusing on one of the longest lasting ethnic conflicts in contemporary times, the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. How do armed conflict and electoral institutions shape turnout in a civil war context? Building on an original data-set at the sub-national level, the study reaches two major conclusions. First, it shows rural displacement caused by political violence led to…
Violence and nationalist mobilization
According to theories of nonviolent resistance, violence is counterproductive and undermines the ability of a movement to achieve mass support. At the same time, studies of ethnic insurgencies suggest that violence is the only available method of mobilization in political systems characterized by entrenched ethnic hierarchies. Engaging with these arguments, this article addresses a historical puzzle: What factors explain the timing and ability of…
Catholic and Muslim Human Rights Activism in Violent Internal Conflicts
When do religious organizations develop human rights platforms during violent internal conflicts? This article offers the first comparative study to address this question and focuses on religious organizations in El Salvador, Peru, Turkey, and Indonesia. It identifies two causal factors to explain variation in religious human rights activism in these four countries: (1) transnational religious ideas and linkages, and (2) the nature of the state-r…
Mosul under Isis
Understanding insurgency
The Moderation Theory Revisited
An influential political science literature argues that integration of radical political parties within the political system leads to their moderation. These parties trade off their ideological platforms for electoral viability and political legality. Radicals become moderates through strategic interests. In this article, I revisit this thesis and apply it to the Islamic political actors in Iran and Turkey by employing the comparative method of a…
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Risks
Why do ordinary people take extraordinary risks and join an ethnic armed rebellion? This article tests a series of well-established hypotheses about selfish and identity based motivations and a new hypothesis based on prospect theory. It then employs a unique multimethod research strategy combining one of the most comprehensive datasets on insurgent recruitment that contains biographical information about 8,266 Kurdish militants with extensive fi…
Judicial Activism in Perilous Times
Under what circumstances do courts act in ways that challenge the political hegemony of the military in countries with weak democratic institutions? This article addresses this question by focusing on a critical case of judicial activism in Turkey. It argues that lower courts unexpectedly can be centers of judicial activism that contributes to expansion of civil liberties and restrictions on arbitrary state power when the high judiciary supports …
When democratization radicalizes
This article addresses a historical puzzle: Why did the insurgent PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan), which was militarily defeated, which renounced the goal of secession, and whose leader was under the custody of the Turkish state, remobilize its armed forces in a time when opportunities for the peaceful solution of the Kurdish question were unprecedented in Turkey? The PKK's radicalization at a period of EU-induced democratization in Turkey count…
Ethnic Exclusion and Mobilization
Soft Power, Religion, and Anti-Americanism in the Middle East
This study presents the first systematic analysis of the public opinion dimension of soft power competition in the contemporary Middle East. Building on the scholarship on perceptions of foreign states and Arab public opinion, it proposes a series of hypotheses about sectarian identity, religious worldviews, and anti-Americanism as determinants of attitudes toward Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia in the context of regional rivalry. It then presents…
Support for Democracy in Iran
This article presents the first systematic analysis of support for democracy in the Islamic Republic of Iran and contributes to the scholarly literature on popular views of democracy in an authoritarian regime. It reaches three main findings. First, religiosity is strongly and negatively related with support for democracy. Second, education and age indirectly affect support for democracy; their effects are mediated through satisfaction with regim…
Religious Participation among Muslims
Women as Candidates
Patriarchal practices and understandings, especially those based on religious teachings, are seen as serious hindrances to women's access to political power. This obstacle often is seen as greatest in countries where Islam is the dominant religion. This study offers preliminary insights regarding how the sex of political candidates affects voting perceptions and behavior in Turkey, one of the few democratic countries with a Muslim majority popula…
Trends and Characteristics of the Turkish Party System in Light of the 2011 Elections
This article offers an analysis of basic trends in the post-1980 Turkish party system. How has the Turkish party system evolved during the last eight elections? How do these characteristics change with the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi)? Utilizing statistical methods informed by fieldwork conducted during the parliamentary elections of 2002, 2007, and 2011, the article suggests that Turkish elections e…
Democracy promotion, authoritarian resiliency, and political unrest in Iran
This article argues that recent de-democratization in Iran can be best understood by analysing the interplay of domestic Iranian politics and two external developments. These were the colour revolutions in several post-communist states and the hostile US policies toward Iran after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Together they generated a political climate in Iran conducive to hardliner attempts to discredit and neutralize the reformist opposition. …
Electoral Behavior in Civil Wars
This study analyzes the effects of political violence on electoral behavior by focusing on one of the longest lasting ethnic conflicts in contemporary times, the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. How do armed conflict and electoral institutions shape turnout in a civil war context? Building on an original data-set at the sub-national level, the study reaches two major conclusions. First, it shows rural displacement caused by political violence led to…
Religiosity and Islamic Rule in Iran
We investigate the relationship between religiosity and support for Islamic rule in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). Are high levels of religiosity associated with an ideology characterized by clerical rule, supremacy of Islamic law, and state enforcement of Islam? The data come from a random sampling survey conducted in Tehran in August 2003. It covers a range of questions on religiosity, social, and political attitudes, and has a sample of 4…
Ethnic nationalism versus religious loyalty
When religious differences are present within an ethnic group, how do they affect the scope of its nationalist mobilization? The Kurds of Iran presents an ideal case to address this question given their religious diversity and varying levels of involvement in Kurdish nationalist movements. Building on an institutional approach to ethnic identity, this article argues that the dynamics of Kurdish ethnic mobilization in Iran reflect the nature of po…
A Century of the Kurdish Question
The Kurdish question remains one of the most important and complicated issues in ethnic politics in contemporary times. Taking the Ottoman Defeat in the World War I in 1918 as a historical critical juncture, the article sets the agenda for the special issue and develops a conceptual approach to think about the strategies of Kurdish nationalism. It goes beyond the state-ethnic minority antagonism that has been the most predominant theme in the stu…
Violence and nationalist mobilization
According to theories of nonviolent resistance, violence is counterproductive and undermines the ability of a movement to achieve mass support. At the same time, studies of ethnic insurgencies suggest that violence is the only available method of mobilization in political systems characterized by entrenched ethnic hierarchies. Engaging with these arguments, this article addresses a historical puzzle: What factors explain the timing and ability of…
A Path out of Patriarchy? Political Agency and Social Identity of Women Fighters
Violent movements in different parts of the world have employed large numbers of women fighters. I address the question of how and why so many women from diverse backgrounds join an ethnic insurgency. Informed by an intersectional approach, I suggest that when gender and ethnic inequalities overlap, an ethnic insurgency promising gender emancipation would have strong appeal among women. At the same time, the intersection of class and gender shape…
Jihadist waves
This article offers the first systematic analysis of cross-generational and cross-organizational aspects of jihadist foreign fighter (JFF) mobilization. How are individuals fighting in Syria different from foreign fighters who fought in the previous jihadist wars? What factors distinguish the Islamic State (IS) fighters from individuals joining other jihadist groups in Syria? The article builds an original sample of 477 JFFs from Turkey spanning …
Activism in Turkish Foreign Policy
This article argues that long-term changes in Turkish foreign policy are primarily due to the diversification of the country’s political and economic interests. Important international structural shifts such as the end of the Cold War or the broad fluctuations in oil prices have constituted the initial impetus for the changes that we have seen in Turkish policies. Discussing alternative perspectives on new activism in Turkish foreign policy, the …
Kurdish Nationalism and Identity in Turkey
This article argues that the evolution of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey is more ambivalent and nuanced than is usually acknowledged. This claim is based on three interpretive approaches: 1) the primary actors in national politics are conceptualized as organizations, rather than as ethnic groups; 2) a boundary-making approach to ethnic identities is more promising than an insistence on an ethnic versus civic nationalism dichotomy; and 3) state-soc…
Constitutionalism, Judiciary, and Democracy in Islamic Societies
This article reconsiders the relationship between secularism, liberalism, and democracy in non-secularized societies by focusing on judicial activism. The goal is to identify the forms of constitutionalism and judicial review that are necessary for the sustainability of democracy in societies where exclusive and holistic interpretations of religion remain pervasive. How is it possible to prevent majority rule from decaying into the tyranny of the…
Beyond Collateral Damage
Under what conditions do states pursue counterinsurgency measures with little disregard for civilian life? This article argues that the states have an incentive to engage in group-selective violence involving disproportionate force when facing a local population sympathetic to an armed insurgent organization. Such a military strategy allows the state to punish the local population while claiming that civilian casualties are an unintended conseque…
Religious Statecraft
Factional conflict has been a central feature of Iranian politics since the revolution. Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar’s Religious Statecraft uses rich primary sources in Persian to develop this feature as a key factor explaining the emergence, rise, and change of religious ideas in contemporary Iran. The book suggests that political factions strategically construct and deploy religious ideas in response to domestic threat perceptions. Hence, far fro…
A conditional norm
The norm against chemical weapons (CW) is considered to be a strong and universal restraint against poisonous methods of warfare. Yet the repeated CW attacks during the Syrian civil war have raised questions about the robustness of this international norm. Under what conditions do third parties emphatically sanction violators of the norm? Adopting a historical approach, we analyse the discursive and contextual dynamics characterising the CW attac…
Religious Participation among Muslims
Constitutionalism, Judiciary, and Democracy in Islamic Societies
This article reconsiders the relationship between secularism, liberalism, and democracy in non-secularized societies by focusing on judicial activism. The goal is to identify the forms of constitutionalism and judicial review that are necessary for the sustainability of democracy in societies where exclusive and holistic interpretations of religion remain pervasive. How is it possible to prevent majority rule from decaying into the tyranny of the…
Political Participation in the Middle East
Religiosity and Islamic Rule in Iran
We investigate the relationship between religiosity and support for Islamic rule in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). Are high levels of religiosity associated with an ideology characterized by clerical rule, supremacy of Islamic law, and state enforcement of Islam? The data come from a random sampling survey conducted in Tehran in August 2003. It covers a range of questions on religiosity, social, and political attitudes, and has a sample of 4…
Judicial Activism in Perilous Times
Under what circumstances do courts act in ways that challenge the political hegemony of the military in countries with weak democratic institutions? This article addresses this question by focusing on a critical case of judicial activism in Turkey. It argues that lower courts unexpectedly can be centers of judicial activism that contributes to expansion of civil liberties and restrictions on arbitrary state power when the high judiciary supports …
Kurdish Nationalism and Identity in Turkey
This article argues that the evolution of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey is more ambivalent and nuanced than is usually acknowledged. This claim is based on three interpretive approaches: 1) the primary actors in national politics are conceptualized as organizations, rather than as ethnic groups; 2) a boundary-making approach to ethnic identities is more promising than an insistence on an ethnic versus civic nationalism dichotomy; and 3) state-soc…
Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey
Moderation theory describes the process through which radical political actors develop commitments to electoral competition, political pluralism, human rights, and rule of law and come to prefer negotiation, reconciliation, and electoral politics over provocation, confrontation, and contentious action. Revisiting this theory through an examination of two of the most prominent moderate Islamic political forces in recent history, Muslim Reformers i…
The Moderation Theory Revisited
An influential political science literature argues that integration of radical political parties within the political system leads to their moderation. These parties trade off their ideological platforms for electoral viability and political legality. Radicals become moderates through strategic interests. In this article, I revisit this thesis and apply it to the Islamic political actors in Iran and Turkey by employing the comparative method of a…
When democratization radicalizes
This article addresses a historical puzzle: Why did the insurgent PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan), which was militarily defeated, which renounced the goal of secession, and whose leader was under the custody of the Turkish state, remobilize its armed forces in a time when opportunities for the peaceful solution of the Kurdish question were unprecedented in Turkey? The PKK's radicalization at a period of EU-induced democratization in Turkey count…
Women as Candidates
Patriarchal practices and understandings, especially those based on religious teachings, are seen as serious hindrances to women's access to political power. This obstacle often is seen as greatest in countries where Islam is the dominant religion. This study offers preliminary insights regarding how the sex of political candidates affects voting perceptions and behavior in Turkey, one of the few democratic countries with a Muslim majority popula…
Trends and Characteristics of the Turkish Party System in Light of the 2011 Elections
This article offers an analysis of basic trends in the post-1980 Turkish party system. How has the Turkish party system evolved during the last eight elections? How do these characteristics change with the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi)? Utilizing statistical methods informed by fieldwork conducted during the parliamentary elections of 2002, 2007, and 2011, the article suggests that Turkish elections e…
Support for Democracy in Iran
This article presents the first systematic analysis of support for democracy in the Islamic Republic of Iran and contributes to the scholarly literature on popular views of democracy in an authoritarian regime. It reaches three main findings. First, religiosity is strongly and negatively related with support for democracy. Second, education and age indirectly affect support for democracy; their effects are mediated through satisfaction with regim…
Democracy promotion, authoritarian resiliency, and political unrest in Iran
This article argues that recent de-democratization in Iran can be best understood by analysing the interplay of domestic Iranian politics and two external developments. These were the colour revolutions in several post-communist states and the hostile US policies toward Iran after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Together they generated a political climate in Iran conducive to hardliner attempts to discredit and neutralize the reformist opposition. …
Activism in Turkish Foreign Policy
This article argues that long-term changes in Turkish foreign policy are primarily due to the diversification of the country’s political and economic interests. Important international structural shifts such as the end of the Cold War or the broad fluctuations in oil prices have constituted the initial impetus for the changes that we have seen in Turkish policies. Discussing alternative perspectives on new activism in Turkish foreign policy, the …
Soft Power, Religion, and Anti-Americanism in the Middle East
This study presents the first systematic analysis of the public opinion dimension of soft power competition in the contemporary Middle East. Building on the scholarship on perceptions of foreign states and Arab public opinion, it proposes a series of hypotheses about sectarian identity, religious worldviews, and anti-Americanism as determinants of attitudes toward Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia in the context of regional rivalry. It then presents…
Electoral Behavior in Civil Wars
This study analyzes the effects of political violence on electoral behavior by focusing on one of the longest lasting ethnic conflicts in contemporary times, the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. How do armed conflict and electoral institutions shape turnout in a civil war context? Building on an original data-set at the sub-national level, the study reaches two major conclusions. First, it shows rural displacement caused by political violence led to…
Violence and nationalist mobilization
According to theories of nonviolent resistance, violence is counterproductive and undermines the ability of a movement to achieve mass support. At the same time, studies of ethnic insurgencies suggest that violence is the only available method of mobilization in political systems characterized by entrenched ethnic hierarchies. Engaging with these arguments, this article addresses a historical puzzle: What factors explain the timing and ability of…
Catholic and Muslim Human Rights Activism in Violent Internal Conflicts
When do religious organizations develop human rights platforms during violent internal conflicts? This article offers the first comparative study to address this question and focuses on religious organizations in El Salvador, Peru, Turkey, and Indonesia. It identifies two causal factors to explain variation in religious human rights activism in these four countries: (1) transnational religious ideas and linkages, and (2) the nature of the state-r…
Yunus Emre, The Emergence of Social Democracy in Turkey
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Risks
Why do ordinary people take extraordinary risks and join an ethnic armed rebellion? This article tests a series of well-established hypotheses about selfish and identity based motivations and a new hypothesis based on prospect theory. It then employs a unique multimethod research strategy combining one of the most comprehensive datasets on insurgent recruitment that contains biographical information about 8,266 Kurdish militants with extensive fi…
Jihadist waves
This article offers the first systematic analysis of cross-generational and cross-organizational aspects of jihadist foreign fighter (JFF) mobilization. How are individuals fighting in Syria different from foreign fighters who fought in the previous jihadist wars? What factors distinguish the Islamic State (IS) fighters from individuals joining other jihadist groups in Syria? The article builds an original sample of 477 JFFs from Turkey spanning …
Ethnic Exclusion and Mobilization
A Century of the Kurdish Question
The Kurdish question remains one of the most important and complicated issues in ethnic politics in contemporary times. Taking the Ottoman Defeat in the World War I in 1918 as a historical critical juncture, the article sets the agenda for the special issue and develops a conceptual approach to think about the strategies of Kurdish nationalism. It goes beyond the state-ethnic minority antagonism that has been the most predominant theme in the stu…
Kurdish politics in post-2011 Syria
The PYD has emerged as the predominant Kurdish political party in Syria soon after the outbreak of the civil war. Why and how did the PYD, established only in 2003, eclipse other Kurdish groups? This article addresses this historical puzzle and argues that conventional arguments that explain the rise of the PYD primarily as a function of its coercive practices with the complicity of the Assad regime are incomplete. Deriving insights from studies …
Religious Statecraft
Factional conflict has been a central feature of Iranian politics since the revolution. Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar’s Religious Statecraft uses rich primary sources in Persian to develop this feature as a key factor explaining the emergence, rise, and change of religious ideas in contemporary Iran. The book suggests that political factions strategically construct and deploy religious ideas in response to domestic threat perceptions. Hence, far fro…
Political science (35 works) · Law (33 works) · Politics (31 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Law (26 works) · Political economy (23 works) · Turkey's Politics and Society (23 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (16 works) · Democracy (11 works) · Islam (11 works)