Exposing a void by filling it: witnessing as a mode of claiming political visibility and the case of vote and beyond volunteers

Download

index.pdf

Date

2017

Author

Karaca, Gamze

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

223
views

113
downloads

Election observation and monitoring, which has begun to take effect and spread worldwide since the beginning of the 20th century, gained relevance in Turkey after 2014, with the mobilization of civil citizens organized under the domestic civil society organization Vote and Beyond. Existing literature on election observation and monitoring usually discuss the rapid spread of the practice with reference to the changes in the international normative environment or focus on the impact of it on public opinion, but seldom mention why and how this practice comes to find a place for itself in the political repertoire of the citizens who undertake monitoring and observation duty in their homelands. By deriving from the narratives of thirty respondents who volunteered as part of Vote and Beyond in the 2015 general elections of June 7 and/or November 1; this study tries to understand the monitoring position that has been created with civil initiative; relates this position to the ways through which respondents experience politics, democracy and elections; and discusses the theoretical and conceptual unfoldings of the position with regard to the notions of spectatorship, visibility, appearance and witnessing. Instead of assessing the monitoring position only in technical and legal terms, the study suggests that this position is conceived as a form political experience developed in response to the conditions and possibilities of experiencing politics in contemporary Turkey.

Subject Keywords

Voting., Elections., Election officials., Election monitoring., Political participation.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12621321/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/26682

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

The Political analysis of the Syrian crises and the zero-problem policy with Syria Arslantaş, Şenol; Bölükbaşıoğlu, Süha; Department of International Relations (2013) This thesis aims to analyze both the evolution of Turkish-Syrian relations during the period of the AKP governments and the emergence of the Syrian revolt in March 2010. With the popular revolts in many Arab countries starting in December 2010, Turkey’s general foreign policy vision, which had already undergone considerable changes from the traditional foreign policy of Turkey under the rule of the AKP government, was deeply affected by the Arab revolts. With the newly-emerged political and social conjunctu...
Conflict and cooperation: Syria-United States Relations Through 1970-2011 Tığrak, Fatih; Tür Küçükkaya, Özlem; Department of Middle East Studies (2012) This thesis analyzes the dynamics of bilateral relationship between the United States of America and Syrian Arab Republic from Hafez Asad’s grasp of power in 1970 to the latest domestic uprising of 2011. The relationship will be considered under three main vectors; struggle over Lebanon, tensions regarding peace process and Israel, and rogue statehood of Syria attributed by the United States. .
Impact of neopatrimonialism on the trajectory of the conflict in Syria Belal, Salaymeh; Tür Küçükkaya, Özlem; Department of International Relations (2018) This thesis attempts to understand the impact of the nature of the Assad regime on the trajectory of the conflict which took place in Syria following the 2011 uprising. It argues that the Assad regime which has been ruling Syria since 1970 represents a case of neopatrimonial regime. The thesis elaborates the neopatrimonial conceptualization tracing the concept back to its Weberian roots. It follows the evolution of the concept from the ‘traditional’ patrimonialism to the modern ‘neo’ patrimonialism. The the...
Filling the international and local governance gap in a presumed ‘failed state’: local councils in the oppositionheld areas of Syria Aykut, Özcan; Yalvaç, Faruk; Department of International Relations (2018) This dissertation focuses on how the governance void is filled by civil and military non-state actors in the territories where state relinquishes control and its institutions cease functioning due to state failure caused by conflicts and civil wars. Providing an insight beyond the state-centric approaches of International Relations and considering the hybrid governance experiences of Chiapas, Kosovo, Somalia, and Colombia during the protracted conflicts and civil wars; the case of civil and grassroots-based...
Creating democratic citizens: what people understand from democracy and how this understanding influences their political participation Bülbül, Asya; Çınar, Süleyman Kürşat; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2020) The aim of this thesis is to examine the influence of different conceptualizations of democracy by ordinary citizens on their political participation. In this thesis, it is argued that an important variable has been neglected in the political participation literature, namely, the conceptual definitions people offer when they are asked to define what democracy is. To test this hypothesis, the definitions of democracy by people are divided into three categories: redistributive understanding, authoritative und...

Citation Formats

G. Karaca, “Exposing a void by filling it: witnessing as a mode of claiming political visibility and the case of vote and beyond volunteers,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2017.