Turkish politics: raison d’État versus republic

Turkey is still far from having reached the level of advanced representative democracies. Turkish social and political life oscillate between the two modes of modern unfreedom: tryranny of majority and soft despotism. The logic of raison d'État is observed as the dominant state of mind in Turkey both in power circles and among the ruled. The article explores the literature of the sociology of Turkish politics paying special attention to the evolution of political vocabulary. After examining the impacts of the latest developments and considering contemporary challenges of authoritarianism, it argues that a Tocquevillian tension of freedom/unfreedom is shaping the framework of Turkish politics.     

Mediator role of intergroup anxiety in relationship between the social contact,intercultural sensitivity and attitudes towards Syrians among Turkish local society

Turkey is the country with the highest Syrian refugee population hosted in the world. Social acceptance of immigrants by the local community is as important as the social cohesion of immigrants regarding the social integration process. The aim of the current study was to examine the role of social contact, intercultural sensitivity, intergroup anxiety, gender, age, education, abroad experience and city on attitudes of Turkish local society towards Syrians. In this regard, data were collected from 207 local community members living in Ankara and Adana provinces of Turkey. According to the analysis, qualitative social contact, intercultural sensitivity and intergroup anxiety predicted the attitudes of the local community towards Syrians. In addition, intergroup anxiety had a mediating role between qualitative social contact, intercultural sensitivity and attitudes towards Syrians. When close social contact and intercultural sensitivity of Turkish local society increase, intergroup anxiety decreases and it increases positive attitudes towards Syrians. Lastly, while there was no gender difference in attitude towards Syrians, females were higher in intercultural sensitivity than males.     

Attachment Styles and Self‐Image in Turkish Adolescents

The purpose of this article is to examine the attachment styles and the relation of these styles to the self‐image in Turkish adolescents. The study included 378 adolescents (196 females and 182 males) from high schools with different socioeconomic status (SES) who were administered Relationship Scale Questionnaires and Offer Self‐Image Questionnaires. The findings indicate that adolescents from a low SES had significantly low scores on self‐image scales compared with those from high and middle SES. It was found that secure attachment patterns affect social relationships and superior adjustment aspects of self‐image positively. The results of this study show that attachment patterns play an important role in the development of the self‐image, which is a crucial psychological structure gained in adolescence.     

Quantal models: a review with additional methodological development

Analysis of quantal models is a particular aspect of the general problem of investigating multimodality. The distinction is that the spacings between modes are integral multiples of some unspecified fundamental unit and that the number of modes is not defined. Such semi-structured models arise in a wide variety of contexts such as biology, cosmology, archaeology and molecular physics. This paper presents a brief review of their historical development in such areas as an aid to their recognition in other contexts as well as giving guidance to their analysis from the statistical viewpoint. The available methodology for their analysis is collated into a coherent and self-contained account, establishing various optimality properties under particular parametric distributional assumptions. An illustrative power study shows how dependence on sample size and failure of assumptions such as underlying distribution, origin of measurements and independence affect the power of various analyses. These aspects are illustrated by an example from developmental biology.     

Variance Estimation for Fractional Brownian Motions with Fixed Hurst Parameters

Some real-world phenomena in geo-science, micro-economy, and turbulence, to name a few, can be effectively modeled by a fractional Brownian motion indexed by a Hurst parameter, a regularity level, and a scaling parameter σ², an energy level. This article discusses estimation of a scaling parameter σ² when a Hurst parameter is known. To estimate σ², we propose three approaches based on maximum likelihood estimation, moment-matching, and concentration inequalities, respectively, and discuss the theoretical characteristics of the estimators and optimal-filtering guidelines. We also justify the improvement of the estimation of σ² when a Hurst parameter is known. Using the three approaches and a parametric bootstrap methodology in a simulation study, we compare the confidence intervals of σ² in terms of their lengths, coverage rates, and computational complexity and discuss empirical attributes of the tested approaches. We found that the approach based on maximum likelihood estimation was optimal in terms of efficiency and accuracy, but computationally expensive. The moment-matching approach was found to be not only comparably efficient and accurate but also computationally fast and robust to deviations from the fractional Brownian motion model.     

Reliability of semi-Markov missions

We consider a device that is designed to perform missions consisting of a random sequence of phases or stages with random durations. The mission process is described by a Markov renewal process and the system is a complex one consisting of a number of components whose lifetimes depend on the phases of the mission. We discuss models and tools to compute system, mission, and phase reliabilities using Markov renewal theory. A simplified model involving a mission-based system with maximal repair is analyzed first, and the results are then extended to the case where there is no repair using intrinsic aging concepts. Our objective is to focus on computation of system reliability for these two possible extreme cases.     

Capacity inverse minimum cost flow problem

Given a directed graph G=(N,A) with arc capacities u _ij and a minimum cost flow problem defined on G, the capacity inverse minimum cost flow problem is to find a new capacity vector [^(u)]\hat{u} for the arc set A such that a given feasible flow [^(x)]\hat{x} is optimal with respect to the modified capacities. Among all capacity vectors [^(u)]\hat{u} satisfying this condition, we would like to find one with minimum ||[^(u)]-u||\|\hat{u}-u\| value. We consider two distance measures for ||[^(u)]-u||\|\hat{u}-u\| , rectilinear (L ₁) and Chebyshev (L _∞) distances. By reduction from the feedback arc set problem we show that the capacity inverse minimum cost flow problem is NP\mathcal{NP} -hard in the rectilinear case. On the other hand, it is polynomially solvable by a greedy algorithm for the Chebyshev norm. In the latter case we propose a heuristic for the bicriteria problem, where we minimize among all optimal solutions the number of affected arcs. We also present computational results for this heuristic.     

Moments of order statistics of the standard two-sided power distribution

The standard two-sided power distribution is a flexible distribution having uniform, power function and triangular as subdistributions, and it is a reasonable alternative to the Laplace distribution in some cases. In this work, computationally efficient expressions for moments of order statistics, expressions for L-moments, and asymptotic results for sample extrema are derived. Then a simulation study is performed for the location-scale estimation problem of a small data set by considering the maximum likelihood estimation method and the best linear unbiased estimation method based on the moments of order statistics.     

Distribution planning of bulk lubricants at BP Turkey

We address the distribution planning problem of bulk lubricants at BP Turkey. The problem involves the distribution of different lube products from a single production plant to industrial customers using a heterogeneous fleet. The fleet consists of tank trucks where each tank can only be assigned to a single lube. The objective is to minimize total transportation related costs. The problem basically consists of assigning customer orders to the tanks of the trucks and determining the routes of the tank trucks simultaneously. We model this problem as a 0–1 mixed integer linear program. Since the model is intractable for real-life industrial environment we propose two heuristic approaches and investigate their performances. The first approach is a linear programming relaxation-based algorithm while the second is a rolling-horizon threshold heuristic. We propose two variants of the latter heuristic: the first uses a distance priority whereas the second has a due date priority. Our numerical analysis using company data shows that both variants of the rolling horizon threshold heuristic are able to provide good results fast.     

Recantation of Sexual Abuse Disclosure Among Child Victims: Accommodation Syndrome

Background: Disclosing the sexual abuse may be related on many individual and/or environmental factors in all age groups. The sociocultural context is the most influential factor of the disclosing process especially for those living in patriarchal cultural values. This study compares the impacts of sexual abuse and other sociodemographic variables between recanting and non-recanting victimized groups in Adana city from Turkey.

Methods: The samples attending our department were divided into two groups: group 1 comprised victims who recanted their first abuse disclosure, and group 2 comprised victims who insisted on the veracity of their first report at further evaluations. The characteristics of the child, family, and abuser were compared between recanting victims and non-recanting victims by retrospective data.

Results: Each group included 27 children, for a total of 54 subjects. All adverse social reactions after the sexual abuse, including keeping secrets and a repressive family attitude, were higher among group 1 victims than group 2 victims (p < 0.0001).

Conclusions: Although they are victimized by protecting family integrity, victims may show a tendency to keep secrets and to not immediately disclose an abuse event.