Moving ‘East’ or ‘West’?: Examining liberal-democratic values in Turkey, 2000–2008 Open Access

Reinvigorated by the 9/11 attacks on the USA, bombings in Europe, and the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the debate over the compatibility of Islam and democracy continues to rage. Many European Union (EU) elites and residents believe that Turkey's proposed EU entry represents a clash between Turkish and ‘European’ values, including Christianity (e.g., Dixon 2008; Strasser 2008). Former Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy said:

In the context of these debates, research has examined liberal-democratic values in Turkey and in the EU as of 2001, along dimensions central to the EU's Copenhagen Criteria for entry (democracy, rule of law, and minority rights) (Dixon 2008): People in Turkey held similar evaluations of democracy as people in the EU member and candidate states. However, people in Turkey were more accepting of rule by religious politicians, more accepting of authoritarian political values, and less tolerant of minorities and immigrants than people in the EU. These value differences were not explained by Turkey's location within the Islamic civilization, but rather by Turkey's lack of economic development relative to the EU.

Nevertheless, much has changed since the above analyses. According to Freedom House (2011), Turkey's political rights and civil liberties have improved between 2000 and 2010. The electoral success of the religious-based, Justice and Development Party (JDP) in 2002, 2007, and 2011, though, seemingly supports Huntington's (1996) thesis that holds that religious identities continue to be prominent in Turkey. The traditionally strong role of the military may have been eclipsed after another suspected intervention and its political fallout. Finally, the Turkish state's relations with minorities may have been altered by the US-led Iraq war (2003), migration, and EU pressure (Tank 2005; Grigoriadis 2010; see also Dixon and Ergin 2010). All of this happened after Turkey experienced a severe financial crisis in 2001, but rapid economic growth thereafter (Yeldan 2008).

In spite of these changes, previous research has not examined liberal-democratic value change in Turkey (but see Yeşilada and Noordijk 2010 for trends in tolerance). This oversight has salient political consequences because EU elites and residents continue to believe in Turkish-European cultural differences, with some suggesting – like Huntington – that these differences are immutable. This is also theoretically important because other social science theories, such as human development theory, suggest that values may change under certain circumstances (e.g., Inglehart and Baker 2000; Inglehart and Norris 2003; Norris and Inglehart 2004). Yet, these theories ignore the particular context of societies and still other factors, such as nationalism. And, national identity has not been a focus of extant survey analyses of Turkey, either (e.g., Tessler and Altinoğlu 2004; Toros 2009; Yeşilada and Noordijk 2010).

In light of these unanswered questions and their importance, this study asks two questions: to what extent have liberal democratic values – anti-authoritarianism, ethnic tolerance, and anti-religious rule¹ – changed in Turkey between 2000 and 2008?² Second, what factors explain these value changes? To answer these questions, we use descriptive, factor, and multivariate analyses on four waves of the European and World Values Survey data (2000, 2001, 2007, and 2008).

As Inglehart (2000: 96) writes, ‘democracy is not attained simply by making institutional changes or through elite-level manoeuvring. Its survival depends also on the values and beliefs of ordinary citizens’. Scholars have long believed that values are an integral part of democracy (e.g., Lipset 1994). Yet, as a review of the literature indicates, we know little about value change and its sources (Hiltin and Piliavan 2004).

At the heart of this debate is Huntington's (1996) clash of civilizations thesis, which holds that inherent and persistent differences between Islam and Western Christianity explain why liberal democracy and related values are less developed in predominantly Muslim countries. Not only has Huntington's (1996) thesis been criticized for its monolithic conceptualization of ‘Islamic civilization’ and the assumption that (an unchanging) Islam is the source of undemocratic values, Turkey does not neatly fit into his civilizational classifications. According to Huntington (1996), Turkey is a ‘torn country’. Its leaders have ‘looked to the West’ for liberal-democratic values, but its public may resemble those of other predominantly Muslim countries. Huntington's (1996) thesis thus suggests little possibility of value change in Turkey, except perhaps in the direction of increasing religious fundamentalism–something that EU pundits and some in Turkey fear.

Human development theory proposes that as societies socioeconomically develop, their people come to accept post-materialistic values, including the liberal-democratic values examined here. This theory has received support across non-Muslim and Muslim societies alike; thus, it represents a challenge to Huntington's (1996) thesis (Inglehart and Norris 2003; Norris and Inglehart 2002, 2004). At the individual level, this theory assumes that people prioritize materialistic before post-materialistic values; as such, income and education should be related to more liberal-democratic trends in these values. However, like Huntington's (1996) thesis, human development theory ignores the particular, historical and changing context of societies. This is important in the case of Turkey because discussion of the military, minorities, and religion are closely linked to one another as well as to other political factors, such as nationalism.

Turkey's ‘modernization’ project was a largely top-down process with significant military influence inherited from the Ottoman Empire. It was led by Mustafa Kemal, or Atatürk, who was himself a military commander, Turkey's first president, and who is viewed by many in Turkey as the leading figure for Turkish modernization in its early years through today. As the Kemalist ‘guardian’ of the Turkish Republic, the military has directly intervened in civilian politics on multiple occasions (1960, 1971, and 1980). After the 1980 coup, the National Security Council (NSC) gave the military even more formal power in civilian affairs. In 1997, the military asked the government to step down in a ‘post-modern’ coup (Satana 2008). And, there were threats of another intervention in 2007 (Hürriyet Daily News 2011).

While the military has long occupied an important place in Turkish politics, several recent developments have changed its focus. In the wake of the end of the Cold War, the more ‘post-modern’ Turkish military's influence has been partly driven by a culture of (internal) insecurity, which includes perceived internal threats from minorities and religion (Kösebalaban 2002; Satana 2008). The JDP played a role in the waning influence of the military, as its election in 2002 and its initial pro-EU stance may have been means by which to undermine the military (Dağı, 2005). Aydın and Keyman (2004) claim that with the reforms of the NSC and its (more civilian) composition in 2001, 2003, and 2004, the role of the military in politics declined in favour of a more democratic rule.

While recent policy changes in Turkey have moved in a less politically authoritarian direction, it is not clear if values have moved in tandem with them. In the wake of the Iraqi war (2003), some suggest that nationalism is on the rise in Turkey (Grigoriadis 2010). This is important because as Turan (2007: 338) writes, ‘If not countered by the democratic impulse, the intensification of nationalism might easily open the way for more authoritarian politics’.

Support for military rule is but one component of authoritarian values, albeit perhaps the most important in Turkey. On the one hand, Satana (2008: 372) notes, ‘there is a rising trend among the intelligentsia in the last years toward opposing military interference in politics’, which suggests that human developmental factors – especially education – promote anti-authoritarian values. On the other hand, nationalism may undermine liberal trends in anti-authoritarian values (Turan 2007; Grigoriadis 2010), as well as ethnic tolerance, which is discussed later.

If nationalism was one of the reasons for the fall of the Ottoman Empire, it was one of the primary building blocks of the Turkish Republic. In fact, it is one of the six arrows of Mustafa Kemal's philosophy, Kemalism (Yeğen 2007).³ The Treaty of Sèvres (1920) also helped spur nationalism in Turkey; this would have reduced the territory of modern-day Turkey, established an Armenian republic, and granted an autonomous region to the Kurds (Zürcher 2004).

Scholarly and political attention has especially focused on the Kurds, among the ethnic minorities in Turkey. Expressions of ‘Kurdish-ness’ – including in language, education, and even names – were long banned in Turkey (McDowall 2004). During the heyday of Kurdish nationalism in the 1970s, the Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan in Kurdish – or, more commonly known by its initials, PKK – was established and has been in conflict with the Turkish state since 1984 (Zürcher 2004). This conflict evokes Turkish nationalist sentiment and foments intolerance toward the Kurds and other minorities in Turkey because of the large number of lives lost (Barkey and Fuller 1998). And, conflict between Kurds and the Turkish state has not ended: as recently as 2009 the largest pro-Kurdish party was shut down (Schleifer 2009).⁴

Today, Turkey faces challenges in an increasingly global context (Dixon and Ergin 2010). The Iraqi war of 1990–1991 increased migration to Turkey (Sirkeci 2005). There is the possibility of more migration in the wake of the most recent Iraqi war (2003), which also raises concerns about further PKK conflict. However, ‘EU conditionality’ has played a positive role in Turkey's human and minority rights policies, especially after it became an EU candidate (Kardas 2002; see also Dağı 2001). In line with Turkey's bid to join the EU, the Turkish state made some reforms in the past few years to help resolve the Kurdish question; a state-run TV station may broadcast in Kurdish for the first time, and Kurdish language is allowed to be taught in some private institutions (Yeğen 2007).

Despite these policy changes, scholars still note xenophobia in Turkey – a majority of people in Turkey say that foreigners take our jobs; more than three-quarters say that ‘Turks don't have friends other than Turks’ (Çarkoğlu and Toprak, 2007; Toprak et al. 2009); and prejudice towards the Kurds, in particular, is high (Dixon and Ergin 2010). The only study to examine general tolerance over time in Turkey, though, suggests a recent upswing in tolerance between 1990 and 2005, with income and education promoting tolerance, as human development theory would predict (Yeşilada and Noordijk 2010). As Turkish history and other studies suggest (e.g., Dixon and Ergin 2010), though, nationalism should be accounted for, as it is likely to promote intolerance of ethnic minority groups, in particular (Yeğen 2007). Yet, in Turkey, nationalism is intertwined with secularism, the latter of which is the topic of the next section.

Under the Turkish model of laicism, the Turkish state controls religion (largely through the Directorate of Religious Affairs; Shankland 1999). Kuru (2009) describes this model as ‘assertive secularism’, and others describe it as ‘secularist authoritarianism’ (e.g., De Leon et al. 2009: 208).⁵ Even from the early foundations of the Republic, including with the abolition of the Caliphate, this laic model was not universally endorsed however (Zürcher 2004).

As another ‘arrow’ of Kemalism, secularism has subsequently been subject to a broad interpretation. It has been used as a justification for the closure of political parties, such as the National Order Party in 1971, the National Salvation Party in 1980, and more recently the Welfare Party in 1998, as well as prohibitions on the display of religious symbols in public, among other examples (De Leon et al. 2009; Kuru 2009). According to some (e.g., Dağı, 2005), rather than stifling religious expression, though, Turkish policies may have unintentionally created an increased demand for the role of religion in political and public life.

Such an increased demand of religious expression is more likely with a conducive ‘political opportunity structure’ (McAdam 1982). The national election in 2002 was crucial in this sense because for the first time a political party with an Islamic background – the JDP – had a majority in parliament and was able to establish a single-party government (Öniş 2006, 2007). This aroused fears that the JDP would reverse Turkish laic policies, including the ban on headscarves in public institutions, and perhaps even move to an Islamic state (Turan 2007; Kuru 2009). Voters who regarded religious freedoms and the headscarf issue important for their voting behaviour were more likely to support the initially Euro-sceptic JDP than its counterpart, the Republican People's Party, RPP (Çarkoğlu and Kalaycıoğlu, 2007). Yet, when the JDP came to power, it adopted a pro-Western and -EU stance (Dağı, 2005; De Leon et al. 2009). In 2007 and 2011, the JDP won the national elections again.

Similar to Huntington (1996), some Kemalists in Turkey fear that religious values have recently grown more fundamentalist. To the extent that religious values have changed, however, scholars suggest they are rooted in different sources. They may be a product of backlash against historical policies, as well as greater opportunities for more public and personal expressions of religiosity as of late (De Leon et al. 2009; Kuru 2009).

In order to examine liberal-democratic value change in Turkey and its sources, we examine World and European Values Survey data. Of course, public opinion data are only one source of data that allows for the examination of cultural change (another data source, for example, are newspapers, which could be analyzed in terms of their content). The advantage of using World and European Values Survey data to examine cultural change is that the same questions are asked in the same way over time to nationally representative samples of people from Turkey. While the problem of social desirability is inevitable when using public opinion data, this problem is likely most acute for questions asking about general values concerning democracy (Inglehart 2003), which we do not use in the analyses.

In the analyses, we use four waves of the World and European Values Survey data. The World Values Survey (WVS) data was collected in Turkey between December 2000 and January 2001, as well as between January and March 2007 (World Values Survey Group 2009); we refer to these waves as the 2000 WVS and 2007 WVS, respectively. The European Values Survey (EVS 2010) data was collected in Turkey between September and October of 2001 and again between November 2008 and January 2009, which we refer to as the 2001 EVS and 2008 EVS. Although it would be ideal to have more time points to examine change, these periods are important representations of the transition to JDP political power (2002 to the present), as well as Turkey's EU candidacy (1999).

The potential sample sizes by wave are N=3401 (2000) WVS), 1206 (2001 EVS), 1346 (2007 WVS), and 2384 (2008 EVS), totalling 8,337. We minimized missing data on independent variables (described later), but we excluded missing data for each dependent variable, leaving us with varying sample sizes for each analysis (see the tables).

We conducted factor analyses of several questions that represent liberal-democratic values on their face (see Appendix, Table A1, which also includes question wording). Based on these results, we created two additive scales, with questions coded so that higher scores indicate more liberal-democratic values. The first scale, anti-authoritarian values, includes questions about if the rule of a strong leader, experts, or the army is a good thing for the country (α =0.55; see also Norris and Inglehart 2002 for similar measures). Ethnic tolerance is the second scale, which includes questions indicating if people of a different race and immigrants/foreign workers are preferred as neighbours (α=0.68) (see also Dixon 2008).

In order to examine people's preferences concerning religious rule, we make use of two individual questions that were widely available across years/surveys.⁶ The first asks if a politician who does not believe in God is unfit for public office (strongly agree–strongly disagree [but reversed]). The second asks if religious leaders should not influence the government (strongly agree–strongly disagree), which substantively relates better to political debates in Turkey.

In our models, we include a series of binary variables representing year/survey (2001 EVS, 2007 WVS, 2008 EVS, with 2000 WVS as the reference group). To understand the effects of human development factors, we include variables for income (in 2008 Turkish lira)⁷ and education completed (with ‘college’ coded high). For these and other variables, we also included separate variables indicating if there was missing data on them (missing=1; otherwise=0). To examine the impact of religiosity, we include religious attendance (never–every day), as well as the importance of God in people's lives (1–10 with greater importance coded high; e.g., Tessler and Altinoğlu 2004). As political factors, we include national identity (not at all proud–very proud)⁸ and political ideology (1–10 with right coded high). Finally, we include standard demographic controls of age (in years, with mean replacement for missing data), and sex (male=1, female=0). Descriptive statistics on the major independent variables are presented in  Appendix A, Table A2.

To answer our first research question concerning trends in liberal-democratic values, we use t-tests of mean (scale) differences and z-tests for ordinal items (using the ologit command in Stata). Given survey sampling error and large sample sizes, we are cautious about interpreting the year/wave coefficients if they do not meet a more stringent criterion of significance (p≤0.001).

To understand the explanation of these values and their trends, we conduct multivariate analyses. For the two scales (anti-authoritarian and ethnic tolerance values), we use ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Because the items concerning religion and state are ordinal but do not scale well, we use ordered logit models for each item.⁹ For every dependent variable, we present the gross trend (Model 0), followed by controls for demographic (Model 1), human development (Model 2), religious (Model 3), and political factors (Model 4).

Figure 1 displays the results of the change in anti-authoritarian and ethnic tolerance values across the survey years/waves. Contrary to notions that values in Turkey cannot change or change in a liberal-democratic direction, people in Turkey have adopted significantly more anti-authoritarian (or conversely, less authoritarian) values between 2000 and 2008 (p=0.0001), as well as between 2001 and 2008. Yet, supplementary analyses of the component items of this scale reveal that this trend is to a greater extent due to a rejection of strong and expert leaders than a rejection of army rule, the latter of which has long been a problematic issue in Turkish politics and an obstacle to EU membership. For example, whereas 25 percent of people in Turkey said that having the army rule was ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ good in 2001, 33 percent said the same in 2007 and 2008. As some observers suggest (e.g., Turan 2007), it may very well be that the JDP's perceived threat to the military has fermented somewhat of a backlash in popular opinion. However, this opinion is relatively muted at the voting polls.¹⁰

The pattern for ethnic tolerance values in Figure 1 is more mixed. Despite a slight dip in ethnic tolerance values in Turkey between 2000 and 2001, ethnic tolerance significantly increases between 2001 and 2007 (see also Yeşilada and Noordijk 2010). Yet, people in Turkey express significantly less tolerant values in 2008 and 2007 (or, for that matter, in 2008 vs. 2000). These most recent trends may reflect a renewed scepticism in the wake of some measures designed to improve minority rights (e.g., Kurdish broadcasting, education, etc.).

Have values concerning religion and state changed? This depends on which question people are asked. On the one hand, there is a steady decrease in the percentage of people who ‘strongly disagree’ that politicians who do not believe in God are unfit for public office. As Figure 2 reveals, this percentage decreases from 11 percent in 2000 to 5 percent in 2008. This, though, likely reflects a more personal preference and is probably not very different from the USA and some European countries, where an atheist running for political office would risk political suicide. On the other hand, people in Turkey have not become significantly more accepting of a potential merger of religion and state. A very similar percentage of people across the three available years/surveys ‘agree strongly’ that religious leaders should not influence government decisions (2001 EVS=26%, 2007 WVS=22%, and 2009 EVS=28%). Hence, Kemalists' perceptions of an increasing personal religious revival or expressions thereof are partially correct, which the JDP may have promoted with political policies. Yet, Kemalists' (and Huntington's) fear that increasing religious identification and practice necessarily leads to a blurring of the lines between religion and state is not borne out by these descriptive data.

What explains these trends? Looking first at people's anti-authoritarian values (their rejection of a strong leader, an expert leader, and army rule) in Table 1, we see the gross, liberal-democratic trend in Model 0 is not due to demographic factors; when the demographic factors of sex and age are added in Model 1, the trend remains. In Model 2, the coefficient for EVS 2001 becomes significant at the 0.01 level, indicating that anti-authoritarian values are slightly greater in 2001 than in 2000 after accounting for human development factors. This trend remains intact after accounting for people's religious attendance and the importance of God in their lives (see Model 3), the latter of which is negatively related to anti-authoritarian values. And in the final model (4), we see that still other factors, particularly national identity, play a role in explaining anti-authoritarian values and trends. People who are more proud of their national identity are less likely to support anti-authoritarian values, which is expected given that nationalism and support for authoritarian politics–especially military rule–are confounded (e.g., Turan 2007). Moreover, after controlling for political ideology and national identity, the difference between people's anti-authoritarian values in 2000 and 2001 diminishes in significance. Altogether, what this means is if education had risen more quickly, particularly between 2000 and 2001, there would have been a slightly more liberal trend in anti-authoritarian values. Yet, Turkish nationalism counteracts these forces and suppresses what would have been greater, but still small, gains in these values.¹¹

Next, we turn to ethnic tolerance values – that is, people's willingness to live next to someone of a different race or an immigrant/foreign worker. As Figure 1 earlier revealed, ethnic tolerance in Turkey dipped after 2000, then increased in 2007, and then decreased in 2008 (see Model 0 of Table 2). As the results of Model 1 indicate, these fluctuations are only partly due to age and sex. Human development factors are more powerful explanations (see Model 2). The combination of education and income explains about 45 percent of the difference between 2000 and 2001 (calculated as [0.20–0.11]/0.20), about 28 percent of the difference between 2000 and 2008, and the greatest total amount of explained variance of ethnic tolerance values, as judged by the R-squared value. Moreover, the WVS 2007 coefficient becomes slightly significant after accounting for human development factors. Although especially religious – but also political – factors help to explain these values (see Models 3 and 4), the sum total of the results indicate that human development factors best explain ethnic tolerance values and their fluctuations. Substantively, this means that ethnic tolerance – at least toward minorities in an abstract sense – is most likely due to a sense of material threat among those at the bottom end of a socioeconomic ladder.¹²

However, the story for trends in values concerning religion and state is somewhat different. Table 3 presents results from ordered logit models of the two items noted previously in Figure 2 (see Model 0). Although demographic factors account for some of the trend in people's values regarding if politicians who do not believe in God are fit for public office (see Model 1, top panel), human development factors account for a much larger proportion of them (see Model 2). After controlling for socioeconomic factors on this value, the large difference between 2000 and 2008 greatly diminishes, and the slightly significant difference between 2000 and 2001 disappears. As expected, religious factors further explain this trend (see Model 3). People who place greater importance on God in their lives as well as those who more frequently attend religious services are less likely to disagree that politicians who do not believe in God are unfit for public office. And, it is somewhat surprising that national identity is negatively related to this more secular value, as the results of Model 4 indicate; as suggested before, this may reflect this item's more secular nature in personal, as opposed to political, terms. Moreover, it may be due to the fact that people in Turkey overwhelmingly express a strong sense of national identity.

That story changes further when we look at people's values concerning religious leaders influencing government, which we argued is a more political (rather than personal) value. As was displayed in Figure 2, this value does not change much over the years or across the models (see the bottom panel of Table 3). In Model 3, we see that the importance people place on God and the extent to which they attend religious services – as somewhat more personal religious expressions – are negatively related to this more political secular value, as Kemalists and Huntington might expect. However, these more personal religious expressions have little impact on trends in the extent to which people believe that religious leaders should not influence government. National identity and political ideology affect these trends somewhat (in Model 4). This stands in contrast to the other values we examined, including the more personal religious values immediately above, and is further discussed later.

In light of theoretical and political debates revolving around the ‘clash of civilizations’, Turkey's EU entry, and the role of religious versus secular identity in Turkey, this paper extended research on liberal-democratic values and the sources of their changes in Turkey through descriptive, factor, and multivariate analyses of four waves of the World and European Values Survey (2000, 2001, 2007 and 2008). The descriptive results reveal that Huntington's (1996) characterization of predominantly Muslim countries unable to make liberal-democratic change, as well as his and Kemalists' fears of a religious revival in Turkey, are overstated. Despite the JDP's electoral successes, people's values concerning religious rule in a more political sense have not changed during the time period we examined. However, expressions of religious rule in a more personal sense have increased somewhat. The latter, in particular, may be due to a new opportunity structure in Turkey, which allows for a greater expression of personal religiosity (e.g., Dağı, 2005; De Leon et al. 2009), as well as the peculiarity of Turkish secularism more generally.

People's values in Turkey toward authoritarian rule have moved in a more liberal direction, except with respect to the military. While this general trend bodes well for democracy, the exception may be worrisome to EU observers who have criticized Turkey for the role of the military. Also potentially worrisome is that despite a slight uptrend in ethnic tolerance between 2001 and 2007 in Turkey, ethnic tolerance decreases overall during the time period examined. However, the available survey items we use reflect general tolerance, not toward particular ethnic groups. Moreover, conclusions should bear in mind that although we have examined critical time periods, our analyses are based on, at most, four waves of a survey.

What explains these value changes? Although personal expressions of religiosity little explain the trends in liberal-democratic values, they are nevertheless associated with ethnic intolerance (see also Yeşilada and Noordijk 2010), and even more so than national identity. The patterns in our data are also due to human development factors. This theory partially explains the trends in anti-authoritarian, ethnic tolerance, and more personal secular values. Once human development factors (e.g., income and education) are accounted for, many of the illiberal trends in these values diminish in importance or the liberal trends become more liberal.

However, Turkey is a good example of why we need to be careful of relying on the clash of civilizations thesis, human development theory, or some other broad theoretical notion to explain the particularities of a certain society. In the case of Turkey, political factors – such as political ideology and national identity – are also important explanations. On the one hand, they somewhat counteract the forces of human development on liberal-democratic value changes, such as in the case of anti-authoritarian values. On the other hand, stronger national identity is very much aligned with political (but not more personal) secularism.

Indeed, this latter finding here may reflect the weakening of religious versus secular and nationalist political alignments after the JDP came to power. A likely explanation is that international pressures such as the Iraqi wars, EU elite, and public opposition against Turkey, and the recent raid (in 2010) on the Turkish flotilla en route to Gaza arouse both nationalistic and religious sentiment. This offers the JDP an opportunity to politically capitalize on these developments and reinforce these values by simultaneously using nationalist and religious rhetoric, which may also be easier in good economic times. This suggests that Turkey is moving neither ‘East’ nor ‘West’; rather, it is very much moving in its own direction.

A previous version of this paper was presented at the Koç University Social Science Seminar (January, 2010). The second authors, whose names are in alphabetical order, were generously funded by Koç University during portions of this project. We thank the European Societies editor and reviewers, as well as Andrew Fullerton and Zeynep Mirza for their very helpful comments on previous versions of this paper. We also gratefully acknowledge the research assistance by Nazmiye Altındaş, Meaghan Flanigan, Cansu Öktem, and Lan Truong.

Jeffrey C. Dixon is an assistant professor of Sociology at the College of the Holy Cross in the US.

Yetkin Borlu is a PhD student in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology at The Pennsylvania State University in the US.

Ms. Duygu Kasdoğan is a PhD student in Science and Technology Studies at York University in Canada.