🎉 Excited to share that
@mberfinbaydar
and I have also received the
@APSAInequality
Best Paper in Social and Economic Inequality Award for our paper "Homogenizing the High Street"!
Grateful for the recognition🎈🎈🎈
I am incredibly honored to share that
@MBerfinBaydar
and I received the Weber Best Paper Award by
@apsa_section11
for our paper "Homogenizing the High Street: The Economic Cleansing of Minority Elites through Fiscal Discrimination." 🎈🧿
@DukePoliSci
@ForumUW
🎉Some personal news: I am thrilled to share that I will be joining the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington as an assistant professor starting next academic year. I am super excited about moving to Seattle and joining a great department! (1/3)
🚨 Why do most high-income individuals think they are middle-income? How does this misperception affect tax preferences? I answer these questions in my new article in the Journal of Politics
@The_JOP
🚨
Here is a summary:
As they say, I have some professional news:
I have been promoted to Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington. 🥳🤩
I am incredibly happy and grateful to everyone who believed in my work and supported me throughout this journey. 🥰
Since we are celebrating APSA in Montreal and Vancouver, here is a story about how academics from the global south struggle with visa problems.
In 2019, I went to the SIOE conference in Stockholm. At that point, I was a postdoc at Oxford.
I am Turkish, so I need a visa.👇
Call me crazy, but vaccine passports and plans to accept only certain vaccines as “valid” sound like a great plan to unofficially ban&limit visitors&immigrants from developing countries.
We all love 90s Turkish pop songs. However, we don't know much about these masterpieces beyond qualitative discussion&personal memories.
Using Spotify's Public API, I analyze 90s Turkish Pop with data! (1/n)
Last week, I gave an undergrad lecture at Koc University on "Tracing Economic Inequality through the Lens of Turkish Popular Music, 1960-2000".I am not an academic expert on Turkish music. However, I am a very very good listener. I want to share some insights from the lecture.1/n
My grandfather (sent to Çeşme from Veria(Karaferye) when he was 12) always told me that his mom cried, everyday, for the rest of his life. He used to tell me that Veria was rainy and beautiful, and they hated Çeşme because there were no trees¬hing survived in their garden.
On this day 99 years ago,
#Turkey
and
#Greece
signed the population exchange agreement that uprooted hundreds of thousands of people from villages, towns, and cities on either side of the Aegean.
🏠New paper with
@benwansell
on the political consequences on housing unaffordability in Europe.
We find that as unaffordability rises, citizens become less supportive of redistribution.
Why? The beneficiaries of unaffordability (homeowners) politically outnumber the losers🏠
In the current issue of JESP (Special Issue on Social Policy and Wealth): "The political consequences of housing (un)affordability” by
@benwansell
and
@aslicansunar
.
@SAGEJournals
🚨 Why do most high-income individuals think they are middle-income? How does this misperception affect tax preferences? I answer these questions in my new article in the Journal of Politics
@The_JOP
🚨
Here is a summary:
New paper on the distributional consequences of philanthropic provisioning of public goods when the population is divided along social and ethnic lines. I use an original data set from 1868 on fountains built by the Muslim elite in Ottoman Istanbul.
🎉Hey, Istanbul lovers and HPE folks🎉
📞📚I am excited to announce a new digitization project featuring telephone directories published in Istanbul between 1929 and 1955.📞📚
A thread:
🎉Hey, Istanbul lovers and data enthusiasts! We've got a treat for you: Istanbul Telephone Directories Project! 🎉
"📞📚We're excited to announce a new digitization project featuring telephone directories published in Istanbul between 1929 and 1955.📞📚
Working on the historical political economy of Turkey ends up teaching me about my own family through serendipitous ways. A long thread on state-making in Turkey circa 40's and my maternal grandmother's family. 1/n
I am incredibly honored to share that
@MBerfinBaydar
and I received the Weber Best Paper Award by
@apsa_section11
for our paper "Homogenizing the High Street: The Economic Cleansing of Minority Elites through Fiscal Discrimination." 🎈🧿
@DukePoliSci
@ForumUW
The Weber Best Paper Award goes to Berfin Baydar and Asli Cansunar for "Homogenizing the High Street: The Economic Cleansing of Minority Elites through Fiscal Discrimination."
👇👇👇
I, born+raised in Istanbul 👩🏫: "Istanbul lacked easy access to drinking water: it was not built on a major river; salty seas surrounded it."
A white man in the audience 💁♂️: "This is not true! I visited Istanbul 10 years ago; there is a river in the middle of the city!"
White/woke people researching the global south are often poor allies, esp when they patronize women from the global south, telling them how to do life. Just heard a gate-keeping story about a white prof giving a Pakistani applicant tough time with references. 1/2
❓Do voters reward incumbents for the provision of public services?
🤨PE literature finds conflicting evidence.
📢Our paper (with
@SerkantAdiguzel
and
@gozde_corekci
), just accepted at the
@The_JOP
answers this question using a spatial approach.
I am incredibly happy to learn that my
@The_JOP
article on the distributive consequences of waqf-funded public services won the best article award from
@APSAMENA
🎉⛲️🍻
You can read the paper here:
Best Article:
@aslicansunar
2022. “Distributional Consequences of Philanthropic Contributions to Public Goods: Self-Serving Elite in Ottoman Istanbul.” Journal of Politics 84 (2): 889-907. (4/10)
Hey
@APSAtweets
, there are no available biometrics appointments for a month in Seattle USCIS office 🎉. I need to drive to Spokane (248 miles) or Yakima (147 miles) if I want to get an appointment to apply for the visa. Enjoy your first-world conference ♥️
YES PLEASE USE OUR MISERY, THOUSANDS OF DEATHS, DESTROYED FAMILIES FOR YOUR EXOGENOUS SHOCK AND IDENTIFICATION STRATEGY. WRITE MANY ECONOMETRICAS USING THE DATA OF PEOPLE YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT. SHAME ON YOU.
Online publication day for my Ottoman fountains paper
@The_JOP
.
And to celebrate the occasion, a video from 2017, where I am running to an Ottoman fountain in Belgrade.
I hope I will always remain this excited about research in the years to come
🚨⛲️What are the distributional implications of the philanthropic provision of public amenities? I answer this question using data on water fountains of Ottoman Istanbul in an article that was just accepted at
@The_JOP
.
Link:
A short summary 👉
My husband
@emirdemirtas
will host a Turkish-inspired pop-up at Rachel’s Bagels on Wednesday, with all proceeds going to the earthquake relief effort.
60 other restaurants will join them in donating funds!
And they were featured at the
@seattletimes
🧡
Today was my last official day at the
@NuffieldCollege
,
@Politics_Oxford
, and
@wealthpol
team. I sincerely believe my Nuffield years were the best thing that could ever happen to me. I will always love Oxford and miss my WEALTHPOL family ❤️
I will be teaching geocoding using R in tomorrow's class. I thought it would be fun to prepare a small dataset of pubs in Oxford. Bad idea. I am now incredibly "home(?)sick".
🚨 What are the long-term effects of nation-making institutions on contemporary outcomes? Can statist institutions foster civil society development?🚨
In a new paper with
@TBozcha
, we study the persistent local impact of People's Houses (Halkevleri) on civil society in Turkey.
another perspective: for junior scholars with Global South passports, this is the first APSA we could attend in person since 2019 (I am discounting the 2021 APSA). 4 years! Imagine not attending *any* APSAs in person during your pre-tenure/consecutive JM years.
👧🏻You decided you want a career in academia when you were 10 because you thought you could get summers off (you grew up here so working during summers sounded like torture) But now you can only spend 2 weeks here because you need to go back to rainy Seattle to work on papers😔🙄
A first-year assistant prof's paradox: While preparing lecture notes for a new class, I find and become interested in at least a research idea per slide. On the other hand, esp. compared to my post-doc years, it looks like I will never find the time to pursue these questions😂🤷♀️
With
@gozde_corekci
and
@SerkantAdiguzel
, we are delighted to see this in print
@The_JOP
!
We started this article in 2016, and it is a testament to how much AKP has changed in the last decade.
I have been working with Ottoman business data for the last few days. Every entry is either a kebab, dessert, or a pastry shop (kebapçı, hoşafçı, çörekçi, simitçi). I am salivating over my keyboard 😟 Send help!
Moving conferences to Canada creates these headaches for your friends&students with global south passports.
If you don't see their struggle, it does not mean it does not exists.
Kılıçdaroğlu’nun nasıl bir zorbaca dayatılma olduğunu biri bana açıklasın. 6lı masada diğer partilerin ne işi var diyebilirsin, neden benim temsil gücümle onlarınki bir olsun benim daha çok oyum var diyebilirsin, eyvallah. Fakat bunlar masa kurulurken konuşulması gereken şeyler.
Altılı Masa süreci tamamen bir tiyatro ve masa dışında geliştirilen Kılıçdaroğlu adaylık sürecinin zorbaca dayatılmasını estetik hale getiremeyen bir başarısızlık öyküsü olarak anılacak. Amacı seçim kazanmaktan çok adaylığı kazanmak olanların tatmin olduğu bir süreç oldu
Şu an evde misafirlerle ilan edilen Covid sayılarının manipülasyonu ve vergilerin yüksekliğinin politik sonuçları konuşuluyor. Kimse benim fikrimi sormuyor, sohbete dahi müdahil etmiyor, muhteşem 😂
I am happy that the APSR is paying attention to gender inequalities in submissions. However, my biggest problem with the APSR is that (in my and my friends' recent experiences) it desk-rejects *all* papers on Turkey, suggesting these papers should go to sub-field journals.
Submissions by women & mixed gender teams are increasing at
#APSR
. This AY, we’ve handled 283 subs by women and 366 subs by mixed gender teams; increases over the last year of 79.1% and 48.2% respectively.
#WomenAlsoKnowStuff
🎶🎸🎷What makes a song popular?
What were the most popular Turkish pop songs during the last decade?
Did number-one songs sound like each other in terms of mood, danceability, happiness?
A thread 🧵
New in
@JHPE
with
@NelaMrchkovska
:
🏫Lit on state-building: teachers play a pivotal role in enhancing state control.
👩🏫We ask: do teachers strengthen state-society relations in rural areas in newly founded and weak states?
🇹🇷We study early Republican-era Turkey (1927–35)..
New in
@JHPE_journal
:
@aslicansunar
&
@NelaMrchkovska
examine if primary schools aid new states in establishing legitimacy among rural populations - by looking at early Republican-era Turkey (1927–35). Ask your uni librarian to subscribe to
@JHPE_journal
!
📢CALL FOR PAPERS📢
@TBozcha
,
@MelaniCammett
,
@a_ezz_eldin
, and I are co-organizing the 1st (Virtual) Workshop in the Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa (PEMENA).
📅: February 4, 2022.
Deadline for submissions: November 30, 2021
A street fruit vendor passing by saw me “studying” and gave me these apricots saying “your brain needs energy.” Turkey always warms your heart and makes you madly angry(insert hate crimes against women,lgbti,ethnic minorities, Syrians) at same time.
adding to the chorus of folks having an impossible time getting a visa for
#apsa2022
.
the mental effort, time and $$ it takes for global south passport holders to do even one of these apps (but especially canada) is such a burden—and only to learn that you can’t go after all.
557 tane 90lar Türkçe pop şarkısını, müziklerinin “neşesine”, enerji seviyelerine, ve Spotify popülerliklerine göre sınıflandırıp interaktif bir grafikte topladım. İnteraktif grafiğe link ekte!
Using these two metrics,I place 557 90s Turkish pop songs on a graph. Depending on the combination of a song’s valence&energy metrics, I place each song in one of the following categories: angry, happy, sad, and peaceful.(4/n)
Interactive chart at
Big congratulations to
@TBozcha
! Her dissertation “Essays on the Political Economy of Service Provision” won the honorable mention for the Mancur Olson Prize from the Political Economy section of
@APSAtweets
's
After three months, I finally feel at home in Seattle.
Baristas in various cafes say "welcome back" and know what I am going to order before I tell them. This is my definition of home. ☕️
I am really looking forward to lecturing about Rachel Araz and Dila Tarkan in tomorrow's political consequences of economic inequality class.😆Social media, making high-income families' daughters believe they are middle-class is a global trend, I suppose!
The amount of paperwork I had to prepare to go to a 2-day workshop in Spain. Also, I had to come down to San Francisco in person to hand in these documents.
This is madness. If this does not go through (the last Schengen I was able to get was in 2020) I won’t ever try again.
New in
@JPIPE_journal
.
@aslicansunar
and coauthors ask: Which countries manipulate COVID-19 statistics? And how does democratic quality affect statistical transparency during the pandemic?
I am sure being stuck at home with family/kids/pets for too long is hard,but may I remind you how lucky you are to have loved ones with you. My family(and dog) is scattered across 3 countries, and I am extremely worried about travel restrictions. It sucks to be separated by bans.
🎶We moved to online teaching until the end of January - and I want to make my Intro to CP class more fun for students by introducing a political (loosely defined) song every lecture. I have many examples from Turkish music, but this is a general CP course. Any suggestions?🎶
Using these two metrics,I place 557 90s Turkish pop songs on a graph. Depending on the combination of a song’s valence&energy metrics, I place each song in one of the following categories: angry, happy, sad, and peaceful.(4/n)
Interactive chart at
Only downside: Arlo seems to be afraid of Huskies🐺, but I am sure he will be fine once he gets to discover all the great options for walks and hikes in Pacific Northwest! (3/3)
#dogsofpolisci
🚨New working paper: Under what conditions do politicians prefer to use public primary education for assimilation instead of ethnic favoritism? We answer this question using a dataset from Turkey spanning 1928-2018.
My US visa didn't come on time to allow me to go to Durham to help my partner to move to Seattle and to have a final chance to say goodbye to all the loved ones&places. I also left Oxford without a proper goodbye. COVID made goodbyes much harder than they already are.
Are public services out of mind when they are out of sight? In a new paper with
@gozde_corekci
and
@SerkantAdiguzel
, we ask whether decreases in walking time to the closest local health clinic attract votes for the incumbent in Istanbul.
Before I could, my (American) dog went to UW's campus - where I will start working in 2 weeks. This story tells you everything you need to know about US's legal immigration system.
🚨 What are the long-term effects of nation-making institutions on contemporary outcomes?Can statist institutions foster civil society development?🚨
Our new
@JHPE_journal
paper investigates the persistent local impact of People's Houses (Halkevleri) on civil society in Turkey.
New in
@JHPE_journal
:
@aslicansunar
&
@TBozcha
argue that statist institutions do not necessarily crowd out civic associations and may even foster civil society development. Free w/registration.
Mevhibe Hanım, Kurtuluş Savaşı sırasında Malatya’dan Konya’ya gelip İsmet Paşa ile buluşabildiyse, 2021 yılında -pandemi de olsa- Oxford’dan önce İstanbul’a, sonra Durham’a oradan da Seattle’a taşınabilirim diye kendimi motive ediyorum.
This is one of the reasons I didn't want to stay in the UK.
I felt like a mouse trapped on a small island.
I know US visa policies suck, but I have access to an extensive network of institutions&events that would not require me to get a visa.
At that point, COVID hits.
I can't tell you how relieved I was to have all these great workshops moved online.
Finally, I COULD "GO" TO ALL OF THEM WITHOUT A VISA.
Take away: we -political economists-usually assume only "on the ground" economic realities measured in official statistics frames attitudes and behavior.However, most work in the political behavior would disagree.Maybe it is about time we take subjective perceptions seriously.8/9
I always wore my Duke hoodie to the airport.I still felt like an armor, a uniform that signaled that “i am a good type“.Whenever I flew from IST and had to take a connection,I was taken to a small room to be searched like a terrorist. Always. 1/2
I’m exhausted. Like my peers, my friends, I’m exhausted. I’m supposed to get on a flight in five days to go home for the first time in seven months, and now I don’t know if I should. I’m scared that this short trip can end up jeopardizing a future I’ve worked so hard to build.
Charitably endowed water fountains are still an important part of local infrastructure in rural parts of Turkey. This one was endowed in memory of Cafer Tonbul, probably a local notable. Kirazlı Köyü, Kuşadası.
I am very thankful to my friends and mentors for their continuous support through the job market of 2020. Special thanks go to
@benwansell
,
@p_beramendi
, and
@timurkuran
for their endless guidance and support. (2/3)
🚨New paper with
@SerkantAdiguzel
and
@gozde_corekci
.
We apply election fraud detection methods (digit-based tests that exploit human biases in generating random numbers) to the daily announced official numbers of COVID-19 cases to answer various important questions.
New in
@JPIPE_journal
.
@aslicansunar
and coauthors ask: Which countries manipulate COVID-19 statistics? And how does democratic quality affect statistical transparency during the pandemic?
I am delighted that this article found such a great home. It is the theory chapter of my dissertation, so I am super excited to share it with the rest of the world. 9/9
@womenalsoknow
@FormalTheory
@NuffieldLibrary
I just finished working on a new paper that turned out to be my favorite project to write-maybe due to having family members who shaped the institutions I wrote about. Or perhaps research is super fun when you have an amazing co-author who 100% shares your interests!
@TBozcha
I add a perceptual dimension to existing preference formation models over tax rates. I argue that preferences for progressive taxation are shaped by the interplay between subjective income group identification and guesstimation of the rich' earnings. 2/9
Büyük çoğunluğu öğretmen olan ailemin fotoğraf arşivlerini bulmam tam da
@TBozcha
ile yaptığımız ilköğretimin erken Cumhuriyet döneminde ulus inşasında kullanılması projemiz dönemine denk geldi. Bol fotoğraflı, tarihli, ve dedemli bir hikaye ⬇️
I know that the some state-making activities of the Republic of Turkey were very problematic,ex. oppression of the Kurdish population.However, the selfless devotion of those who really tried to bring science, literature, and art to the periphery of the country warms my heart.14/n
While this was all happening, somebody called me "discriminatory" because I complained saying, "I am working at Oxford; why don't they give me a visa for longer? I have no risk of staying here."
I am told everybody deserves visas, not only people working at Oxford.
Why are high-income and low-income earners not significantly polarized in their support for progressive income taxation? Does it have to do with the empirical regularity that most people classify themselves as middle-income? 1/9
Today, I will talk about the politics of nation-building in my intro comparative class giving examples from Turkey and Greece in the post-Ottoman period. I really hope the memory of this video won’t make me cry in front of 120 students.
The answer: declining class consciousness and the rise of the second dimension politics. Turks are not concerned with inequality as much as they are with other political issues. 5/n
There is an olive tree on Walton Street in Oxford. I always say hi to her when I walk to Nuffield. She reminds me-esp. in winter- if there is anything worse than being a Mediterranean living in the UK, it is being an olive tree in Oxford.Why would anyone do that to an olive tree?