Ceren Belge

Dr. Belge received her Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Washington.  During 2008-2010, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies at Harvard University.  Her research interests include state-minority relations, law and society, the politics of everyday life, and gender relations.  Her dissertation, titled “Whose Law?: Clans, Honor Killings, and State-Minority Relations in Turkey and Israel,” received the best dissertation awards of the Law and Society Association and Israel Studies Association.  The dissertation examines how the visions of national identity in Turkey and Israel shaped the modes of governance each state developed to control its minority population and the willingness and capacity of these states to administer a uniform body law of law over all citizens.  Currently, Dr. Belge is working on an FQRSC-funded project on civilian victimization during the Kurdish conflict in Turkey, a project on informal dispute resolution in low income neighborhoods of Istanbul and Cairo (with Lisa Blaydes), and a project on the transformation of judicial power in Turkey.  She teaches courses on the Middle East, comparative politics, and ethnic conflict.

CV

Courses

POLI 395      Politics of the Middle East

POLI 487Y   Authority & Protest in the Middle East

POLI 487Z   Women & Gender in the Middle East

POLI 657      Nationalism and Ethnicity

Publications

• “State Building and the Limits of Legibility: Kinship Networks and Kurdish Resistance in Turkey.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 43, no. 1, 2011: 95-114.
• “From Expert Rule to Bureaucratic Authority: Governing the Bedouin.” Israel Studies Forum 24, no. 1, 2009: 82-108.
• “Friends of the Court: The Republican Alliance and Selective Activism of the Constitutional Court of Turkey.” Law and Society Review 40, no. 3: 653-92.
• “The Weight of Cultural Values and Regional Customs in the Punishment of Violence Against Women: An Analysis of the Decisions of Şanlıurfa Second Criminal High Court.” Şanlıurfa Barosu Dergisi 13, 39-54. [in Turkish, Journal of the Şanlıurfa Bar Association].