This study investigated the relationship between cultural value orientations and country-specific changes in mobility during the Covid-19 pandemic. The aim was to understand how cultural values relate to mobility behavior during the initial stages of the pandemic. The aggregated data include Schwartz's cultural orientations, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, number of Covid-19 cases per million, and mobility change during the Covid-19 pandemic (Google Mobility Reports; percentage decrease in retail and recreation mobility, transit station mobility, workplace mobility and percentage mobility (...) increase in residential areas). Regression analyses showed that, after controlling for economy and severity of disease, hierarchy was the primary factor reducing mobility, such as staying at home, and mobility in public spaces, such as avoiding retail and recreation sites (marginally significant). The results are discussed in the light of previous literature and the implications for social distancing measures. (shrink)

It is possible to talk about many reasons that determine the direction of religious publications in the first quarter of the Republic, both in terms of content, style and method. While some of these factors came into play or became stronger with the Republic, an important part of it has a history that goes back to Ottoman modernization. The decline of the Ottoman state, which started on the battlefields, caused serious land losses. This regression damaged the self-confidence of Muslims and (...) spread the idea that salvation would be possible with a Western-style modernization. In this context, the obligatory relations with the Western world, which were established with the feeling of backwardness, were not limited to the military, political and cultural fields, but also spread to the religious field. For this reason, while Ottoman scholars and thinkers sought ways out through political and administrative reforms, they had to discuss the current understanding of religion and the religion-world conception formed in this direction. It has been especially emphasized that Islam does not prevent progress, encourages scientific and technical developments, and is compatible with the principles of reason and logic in terms of content. It is also known that the emphases in this manner maintain their vitality in the texts written both in the last period of the Ottoman Empire and in the Republic of Turkey. On the other hand, this approach, which was not possible to develop independently of the positivist and materialist understanding of science formed in a determinist framework of the West, also affected the field of creed along with the practical and moral issues of Islam. This situation continued and strengthened when it was transferred to the republican period. Because the founding cadres of the republic, who sought a secular and positivist ground, defended the idea that the religious field in general and the creed in particular should not conflict with the scientific understanding of the period. Expressed in the context of the present study, the political center thinks that there are compulsory fixed laws within the framework of cause-effect relationship in nature and that no effect is possible outside of these laws. In response to this attitude, the issue of miracles has been used in religious publications to express situations that go above the laws of nature, on the one hand, it has been tried to be discussed without prejudice to the attributes and actions of Allah. On the other hand, this discussion was conducted without giving the impression that Islam contradicts modern science. Discussing the issue under the influence of the secular and positivist framework drawn by the political center and Western intellectuals makes the issue a worthwhile subject to investigate. Because, in the period of the New Ilm-i Kalam, the restrictive attitude of the founding cadres accompanied the rational and scientific interpretations about the possibility of miracles. This situation significantly determined the content and style of the texts written during the period. In these circumstances, I believe that it is important to point out the points of conflict and reconciliation in the grounding of a religious issue such as a miracle. In this direction, while the current study covers the years 1924-1960 in terms of time, it is a study that especially includes the publications of the Presidency of Religious Affairs and Ankara University Faculty of Theology as a source. The date 1924, which was determined as the starting date, is important both for the establishment date in terms of the Presidency of Religious Affairs and for the abolition of the caliphate and the taking of some important decisions such as the Law on Unification of Education. On the other hand, the date of 1960 points to a coup date and some fractures in the political sense. During the study, I included the sources published by both the Presidency of Religious Affairs and the Faculty of Theology of Ankara University, as well as other sources directly related to these sources. In addition to this time and resource restriction, it was also referred to important texts written before 1924 and after 1960 when appropriate. (shrink)

Western music is characterized primarily by simple meters, but a number of other musical cultures, including Turkish, have both simple and complex meters. In Experiment 1, Turkish and American adults with and without musical training were asked to detect metrical changes in Turkish music with simple and complex meter. Musicians performed significantly better than nonmusicians, and performance was significantly better on simple meter than on complex meter, but Turkish listeners performed no differently than American listeners. In Experiment 2, members of (...) Turkish classical and folk music clubs who were tested on the same materials exhibited comparable sensitivity to simple and complex meters, unlike the American and Turkish listeners in Experiment 1. Together, the findings reveal important effects of musical training and culture on meter perception: trained musicians are generally more sensitive than nonmusicians, regardless of metrical complexity, but sensitivity to complex meter requires sufficient exposure to musical genres featuring such meters. (shrink)

Beyond the major-minor tonality that characterizes classical and contemporary Western musical genres, Turkish classical and folk music offer experimental psychologists a rich modal system in which cognition, development, and enculturation can be studied. Here, we present a cross-cultural experiment concerning implicit knowledge of musical scales. Five groups of participants—American musicians and nonmusicians, Turkish musicians and nonmusicians, and Turkish classical and folk music listeners—were asked to listen to brief melodies composed using the member tones of either the major scale or the (...) rast makam, a microtonal mode found within Turkish classical and folk genres with no equivalent in Western music. Following each melody, participants were asked to identify whether a probe tone had been presented in the melody, providing confidence ratings on a six-point scale. In general, participants’ short-term memory was influenced by implicit knowledge of musical scales, with the major scale eclipsing the rast makam even in listeners experienced with Turkish genres. Prior work and future directions in cross-cultural music cognition research are discussed. (shrink)

Prof. Dr. Muhammed İffet Şarkavî, Çağdaş Dinî Düşünce (Modern Dönem Tefsir Akımlarının Analitik İncelenmesi) adlı çalışmasında “çağdaş sorunlar karşısında dinî düşüncenin vereceği cevaplar neler olabilir?” sorusuna cevap aramaktadır. Eserin temel gayesi genelde tüm müslümanların bu sorunlara çözüm üretebilmek için sergiledikleri felsefî, kelâmî, hukukî gayretleri incelemek; özelde ise çağın problemleri karşısında müslüman müfessirlerin konumunu ortaya koymaktır diyebiliriz. Müellif müfessirlerin özellikle on dokuzuncu ve yirminci yüzyıllarda yoğunlaşan sömürgecilik faaliyetlerinin İslam coğrafyasında sebep olduğu siyasî, ekonomik, kültürel bunalımlara çözüm sadedinde ortaya koydukları fikir akımlarıyla (...) ilk dönem İslamî kaynaklarında geçen düşünce esasları arasında çok önemli ortak noktalar bulunduğu kabulünden hareket etmektedir. (shrink)