‘Global’ IR and Self-Reflections in Turkey: Methodology, Data Collection, and Data Repository

Abstract

This article covers the disciplinary debates on ‘global’ IR and the self-reflections of IR scholars about the state of the discipline in Turkey. It argues that high quality methodological training can contribute to overcoming the dissatisfaction felt by scholars of IR in Turkey. It suggests that inclusion of IR knowledge produced in the non-core into the ‘Global’ pool can be achieved through local ‘revolutions’, and that the potential for progress in this direction lies in methodological improvement and data-collection projects. The article offers three exemplary data projects to crystalize the argument: the Social Sciences Data Repository, the Global Security Database (GloSec) and the Global Risk Assessment Dataset (GRAD). These projects aim to: disseminate data-based research and encourage data sharing among scholars in Turkey, train prospective IR scholars to produce research based on clear, replicable, and rigorous methodology in Turkey, encourage graduate students in Turkish universities to have a global scholarly outreach and talk to the global scholarly community, and contribute to IR scholarship with these local pedagogical and academic experiences. Two separate groups of researchers composed of graduate students from various universities across Turkey are trained in the ways of research design, the fundamentals of data collection, and writing research papers based on rigorous methodological design, data, and replicable findings. Thus, the paper not only discusses the diagnoses in the literature regarding the shortcomings of the International Relations discipline in Turkey, but also offers concrete directions for a potential treatment.

Keywords

• Data collection
• data repository
• global studies
• methodology
• Turkey

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