CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Türker, Ezgi |
|---|---|
| Title | Sociological Explanations of Political Violence in Guatemala and Turkey: A Comparative Research |
| Summary | In the social science literature, as a commonly accepted definition, the state is referred to as ‘the monopoly of legitimate use of coercive power’. The scope and extent of coercion by the state has been researched extensively as part of the ‘capacities of the state’. Yet, the interplay between state and civil society with respect to political violence is overlooked. Citizen-on-citizen political violence is the subject of this thesis. I conduct a cross-regional paired comparison between Guatemala and Turkey in terms of citizen-led political violence in order to delve into the puzzle of persistent political violence in Turkey, despite the strong state. I argue that the characteristics of the culture of violence attributed to post-conflict societies are found in Turkey on the societal level. On the state level, I argue that the Turkish state compensates its weakness in civil society relations by relying on citizen-led political violence, whereas in Guatemala political violence is the result of both weakness of the state and the culture of violence. In order to establish my argument, firstly I assess the strengths of the two states by utilizing databases of Worldbank, World Values Survey and Latinobarometer. Then, I scrutinize the reports of local and international human rights organizations. As a conclusion, I find that the sociological approach to the culture of violence has explanatory power in explaining citizen-led political violence in Turkey. |
| Supervisor | Bogaards, Matthijs |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/turker_ezgi.pdf |
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