Browsing by Author "Oyvat, Cem"

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Citation Count: 2
Ethnic Fractionalization Conflict and Educational Development in Turkey
(Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd, 2019) Oyvat, Cem; Tekgüç, Hasan
We examine the impact of ethnic fractionalization and conflict on limiting the educational development in Southeastern Turkey. Our estimates show that although the armed conflict in the region did not directly hinder education investments it reduced school enrolment rates at middle and high school levels while increasing enrolment at the primary school level. Moreover we show that provinces with higher percentages of Kurdish population received less education investment. These results suggest that the neglect of Kurdish areas is an important factor behind Southeastern Turkey's educational underdevelopment while land inequality and the armed conflict had mixed effects on education in the region.
Citation Count: 0
Pious People, Patronage Jobs, and the Labor Market: Turkey Under Erdoğan's Akp
(Springer, 2024) Oyvat, Cem; Tekguc, Hasan; Yagci, Alper H.
In fragmented societies, electoral competition often entails using public office to advance group interests. Using individual-level polling data from 2012 to 2018, we analyze whether age cohorts entering the labor market before and after the religiously conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) assumed power in Turkey experienced different public employment outcomes based on their religion and religiosity. Our analysis reveals that under the AKP rule, pious Sunnis (who constitute a large part of the society) significantly increased their presence in public sector employment (notably among women) and in high-status private jobs (notably among men). Furthermore, the subset of highly religious Sunnis (only 9.3% of the population) improved their likelihood of being employed in the public sector compared to other pious Sunnis and everyone else. Our findings are likely to be driven by the lifting of the headscarf ban in public employment and AKP's strategic use of public employment and resources to reward like-minded groups in both the public and private spheres.