A critical evaluation of the third way and its reflections on Turkish politics

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Siyaset Bilimi ve Kamu Yönetimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2005

Öğrenci: DUYGU TÜRK

Danışman: OSMAN GALİP YALMAN

Özet:

This thesis aims to provide a critical evaluation of the Third Way and its reflections on Turkish politics. The Third Way emerged in the late 1990s with a claim to provide an alternative both to the old social democracy of welfare state period and to neo-liberalism. Based on a specific account of the radically changed world, the Third Way has maintained that the new conditions have rendered the old conceptualizations, as well as the old political positions, invalid. In this sense, this thesis argues that the re-definitions of the state and society relationship, the citizenship and the global order that the Third Way theory pursue have become the hegemonic notions of the current political context. It also claims that the Third Way can be considered as a product of the common attempts maintained by various approaches to complement the competitive market mechanism with social solidarity based on a socially inclusive strategy. The reflections of the Third Way on current Turkish political atmosphere are assessed in the thesis as further proofs of the hegemonic position that the Third Way occupies.