Browsing by Author "Cuhadar E."
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Item Open Access Do computer games enhance learning about conflicts? A cross-national inquiry into proximate and distant scenarios in Global Conflicts(Pergamon Press, 2015) Kampf, R.; Cuhadar E.Interactive conflict resolution and peace education have developed as two major lines of practice to tackle intractable inter-group conflicts. Recently, new media technologies such as social media, computer games, and online dialogue are added to the existing set of tools used for peace education. However, a debate is emerging as to how effective they are in motivating learning and teaching skills required for peace building. We take issue with this question and have conducted a study investigating the effect of different conflict contexts on student learning. We have designed a cross-national experimental study with Israeli-Jewish, Palestinian, and Guatemalan undergraduate students using the Israeli-Palestinian and Guatemalan scenarios in the computer game called "Global Conflicts." The learning effects of these scenarios were systematically analyzed using pre- and post-test questionnaires. The study indicated that Israeli-Jews and Palestinians acquired more knowledge from the Guatemalan game than Guatemalans acquired from the Israeli-Palestinian game. All participants acquired knowledge about proximate conflicts after playing games about these scenarios, and there were insignificant differences between the three national groups. Israeli-Jews and Palestinians playing the Israeli-Palestinian game changed their attitudes about this conflict, while Guatemalans playing the Guatemalan game did not change their attitudes about this case. All participants changed their attitudes about distant conflicts after playing games about these scenarios. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.Item Open Access Examining leaders' orientations to structural constraints: Turkey's 1991 and 2003 Iraq war decisions(Palgrave Macmillan Ltd., 2017) Cuhadar E.; Kaarbo, J.; Kesgin, B.; Taner, B. O.Explanations of states' security decisions prioritise structural - systemic, institutional and cultural - constraints that characterise foreign security decisions as a function of external/international, domestic/institutional, or normative/cultural factors. By examining Turkey's 1990-1991 and 2003 Iraq war decisions systematically, we problematise this prioritisation of structure, and we investigate the dynamic relationship between structural constraints and leaders in their decision-making environments. In these cases, while the structural constraints remain constant or indeterminate, the decision outcomes and the decision-making process differ significantly. Our findings, based on structured-focused comparison, process tracing, and leadership trait analysis, suggest that the leaders' personalities and how they react to constraints account for this difference and that dependence on only one set of factors leads to an incomplete understanding of security policies and international politics. We contribute to the broader understanding of leaders' personalities by suggesting that self-confidence and cognitive complexity are the key traits distinguishing leaders' orientations towards structural constraints. © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.Item Open Access A Greek–Turkish peace project: assessing the effectiveness of interactive conflict resolution(Routledge, 2015) Cuhadar E.; Genc, O. G.; Kotelis, A.This paper evaluates a Greek–Turkish peace project, which was composed of three interactive workshops and was held with university students from Greece and Turkey. We evaluate the project by combining a two-way evaluation methodology. The first is a process evaluation where we examine the project’s ‘theory of change’ through interviews with the organizers and participant observation. A theory of change map has been created as a result depicting the beliefs of the organizers about the conflict, the conditions they see as necessary to transform the conflict, the programmatic activities and macro-level goals. In the second part, we conduct an outcome evaluation measuring empathy and trust towards the members of the other ethnic group. We employ a two-group, post-test experimental design. The findings of this phase suggest that the participant group has significantly higher level of empathy and trust towards the other group than the non-participants. Finally, we compare the results from the two phases of evaluation and draw both practical lessons for peace practitioners and theoretical implications to guide future research.Item Open Access Personality or role? comparisons of Turkish leaders across different institutional positions(Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2017) Cuhadar E.; Kaarbo, J.; Kesgin, B.; Ozkececi, T. B.Personality approaches to politics are often criticized for not examining the effect that institutional role constraints have on individual beliefs and preferences. When leaders appear to change their stance when they change roles, it is assumed that roles have a determining influence. Modern personality theory and contemporary sociological role theory, however, view the effects of roles as interacting with agents’ personalities. In this article, we investigate this question by comparing personality profiles of three Turkish leaders (Özal, Demirel, and Gül) during their tenure as prime minister and during their subsequent time as president. For Gül, we perform an additional comparison during his time as foreign minister. The personality profiles are in the form of quantitative scores generated from machine-coded content analysis of leaders’ words using the Leadership Trait Analysis method. We hypothesize that different leaders will be more susceptible to changing role contexts, depending on core personality traits, and that different traits are more likely to change with new roles. Overall, our results suggest that leaders’ traits are fairly resistant to changes across roles and that task orientation is the most likely trait to change as leaders adapt to different role demands and expectations. This study makes a contribution to our understanding of the interaction between personality and political contexts by offering specific theoretically derived hypotheses and by empirically and statistically examining a preliminary set of expectations that could be applied more broadly to other leaders. © 2016 International Society of Political PsychologyItem Open Access Turkey's search for a third party role in Arab-Israeli conflicts: a neutral facilitator or a principal power mediator?(Routledge, 2010) Altunisik, M.; Cuhadar E.This paper examines Turkey's increasing involvement in the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts as a third party in the last decade. The paper first discusses the underlying reasons and motivations behind the change in Turkish foreign policy. Inthissectionwe answer the following question: While the traditional Turkish policy in the Middle East was non- intervention, what factors contributed to this recent change? We discuss these as systemic factors and domestic factors. In the second section of the paper we summarize the theoretical literature on third party intervention and mediation especially focusing on strategies, modes, activities, and tactics used. This section lays the background for the following section which classifies the various Turkish third party strategies and activities in the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts so far. In the final section we focus on the challenges to this new Turkish role from Turkish, Israeli, and Arab perspectives. We also discuss the crises between Israel and Turkey in the last year and how they constitute a barrier to Turkey acting in an effective third party role. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.