Thinking Architecture with an Indian Ocean Aquapelago

This article takes up the charge of thinking architecture with one of the Indian Ocean’s central coral atoll formations, the Maldives archipelago. It is undertaken as a critique of the concept of the archipelago as deployed in architecture since the 1970’s. Architects have used the archipelago as a metaphoric metageographical concept based on a land/sea binary, to conceive of architecture as autonomous from its environments. This permits the discipline exemption from its contexts and frames its engagement with the diverse mobilities of contemporary globalization. To counter this, the article draws from a broad body of literature familiar to readers of GeoHumanities, namely island studies, urban island studies, political ecology and thinking with water to undertake a reading of the Maldives as an oceanic aquapelago, as an alternative metageographical concept for architecture in today’s globalized world.

The institutional design of intra-party democracy through legal instruments: Turkish case

The importance of political parties for contemporary representative democracies is beyond dispute. Despite their significance for state-level democracy, political parties continue to be regarded as oligarchical and to be criticised because of their internal practices. For this reason, intra-party democracy (IPD) warrants in-depth analysis. This thesis investigates IPD in Turkey, primarily from the perspective of participatory democracy, with the purpose of suggesting reforms to the Turkish Political Parties Law (TPPL). Turkish political parties and Turkish party regulation provide an interesting case because there is a significant difference between mature democracies and Turkey regarding IPD regulation. IPD in established democracies has always been regarded as a private concern of parties and has been left unregulated. IPD in Turkey, by contrast, is provided for both by the constitution and the TPPL. Although IPD is a constitutional and legal requirement in Turkey, however, political parties in fact display a high level of non-democratic administration. The main reason is that the TPPL only pays lip service to the idea of IPD and requires no specific measures apart from establishing a party congress with a representative form of democracy. By establishing and holding party congresses, political parties are perceived as conforming to the requirements of IPD under the law. In addition, the contested nature of democracy as a concept has impeded the creation of efficacious legal principles. Thus, the existing party law fails to tackle the lack of IPD within political parties and, for this reason, is in need of reform. Furthermore, almost every Turkish party’s own constitution highlights the importance of IPD and promises IPD. However, these declared commitments to IPD in their constitutions alone, especially in countries where the democratic culture is weak, are unlikely to make much difference in practice. Accordingly, external regulation is necessary to ensure the protection of the rights and interests of the party members with regards to their participation in intra-party decision-making processes. Nevertheless, in spite of a general consensus in favour of reforming the TPPL, a lack of consensus exists as to what kind of reforms should be adopted. This thesis proposes that reforming the TPPL in line with an approach based on participatory democracy could provide better IPD within Turkish political parties, citing as evidence comparative case studies of the participatory practices for policy-making, leadership selection and candidate selection in mature democracies. This thesis also analyses membership registration and the effect of state funding on IPD, which are highly problematic in Turkey and represent impediments to the flourishing of IPD.