Turkish Terrorism Studies: A Preliminary Assessment

Abstract

This article aims to determine the academic disciplinary condition of Turkish

terrorism studies in comparison to international ones. We first examine

contemporary international terrorism studies and new trends, and then

longitudinally assess Turkish terrorism studies via context and methodology.

Last, we discuss how and through which perspectives the Turkish discipline

could improve and thus contribute to the contemporary literature. We generated

three datasets after examining theses, dissertations, and articles. Further, we

conducted interviews with and administered questionnaires to terrorism experts

to interpret the dataset findings. Regarding context, the most striking point of

the Turkish research field is its multi-disciplinary character; because of this

fact, Turkish terrorism studies tend to neglect the broader field’s terminology

and theoretical accumulation. Regarding methodology, a significant problem in

the terrorism studies in Turkey is that studies are mostly composed of literature

reviews rather than empirical research, thus there is much opportunity for

development.

Keywords

• Turkish terrorism studies,academic discipline,methodology,context,dataset

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