The Legal Status of Transsexuals in Turkey

ABSTRACT

The development of the legal regulations concerning transsexuals in Turkey can be analysed in three phases. The first phase was prior to 1988 when there were no legal parameters at all. The second phase started in 1988 when certain changes made in the Turkish Civil Code (TCC) for the first time gave people who had already undergone sex reassignment surgery (SRS) the possibility to enter this change into the birth register. The third phase commenced in 2002 when the new Turkish Civil Code came into force.¹ Art.40 of the Code now regulates the pre-conditions for a surgery and the procedure for getting a court authorisation in order to be operated as well as the procedure for entering the sex change into the birth register after the operation. Following remarks aim at briefly explaining these historical developments in Turkish law and presenting the current legal situation in Turkey with respect to transsexuals. The deficiencies in the existing regulation and possible ways of surmounting these will also be examined.     

Ultralarge lotteries: Analyzing the Lottery Paradox using non-standard analysis

A popular way to relate probabilistic information to binary rational beliefs is the Lockean Thesis, which is usually formalized in terms of thresholds. This approach seems far from satisfactory: the value of the thresholds is not well-specified and the Lottery Paradox shows that the model violates the Conjunction Principle. We argue that the Lottery Paradox is a symptom of a more fundamental and general problem, shared by all threshold-models that attempt to put an exact border on something that is intrinsically vague. We propose application of the language of relative analysis—a type of non-standard analysis—to formulate a new model for rational belief, called Stratified Belief. This contextualist model seems well-suited to deal with a concept of beliefs based on probabilities ‘sufficiently close to unity’ and satisfies a moderately weakened form of the Conjunction Principle. We also propose an adaptation of the model that is able to deal with beliefs that are less firm than ‘almost certainty’. The adapted version is also of interest for the epistemicist account of vagueness.     

‘Theory of mind’ development of Pakistani children: Do preschoolers acquire an understanding of desire,pretence and belief in a universal sequence?

Research on “theory of mind” (TOM) suggests that a grasp of the mind develops universally and sequentially, but both these claims require testing in different cultural groups. Study 1, involving 72 preschoolers, showed the expected developmental transition on false belief tasks; 3 year olds were below statistical chance, while 4 year olds were at chance, representing a lag behind Western children. The same pattern of at chance (pretence, desire and belief) and below chance performance (false belief) was replicated in study 2 with 77 preschoolers (3–5 years) and corroborated the lag identified for some Asian countries. This deficient and varied timing of TOM performance is consistent with theories (social constructivist) supporting the role of social factors in TOM development. Moreover, significant inter-task correlations corroborate the need to broaden the research focus beyond false belief tasks.     

Grateful recounting enhances subjective well-being: The importance of grateful processing

This study examined the interaction of the Thanksgiving holiday with gratitude in relation to well-being using a three-week long, daily diary design with a sample of 172 undergraduate students. Multilevel modeling revealed that without controlling for gratitude, people reported higher levels of positive affect on Thanksgiving holiday than during other days of the study. Reports of life satisfaction, meaning in life, and negative affect did not differ during the holiday. When within-person and between-person levels of gratitude were included, negative relationships were revealed between Thanksgiving and life satisfaction and positive affect. The results from this study sustain the argument that holidays impact people’s well-being depending on certain individual psychological characteristics. In the case of Thanksgiving, gratitude was critical for understanding whether the holiday appeared to positively or negatively influence life satisfaction and positive affect. The present study also supported an important role for gratitude in achieving and maintaining well-being.     

The unbearable lightness of meaning: Well-being and unstable meaning in life

Psychological theories prioritize developing enduring sources of meaning in life. As such, unstable meaning should be detrimental to well-being. Two daily experience sampling studies were conducted to test this hypothesis. Across the studies, people with greater instability of daily meaning reported lower daily levels of meaning in life, and lower global levels of life satisfaction, positive affect, social connectedness and relationship satisfaction, along with higher global levels of negative affect and depression. In addition, instability of meaning interacted with average daily levels of meaning to account for significant variance in meaning in life scores. Relative to people with more stable meaning, people with unstable meaning tended to score near the middle of the distribution of well-being, whether they reported high or low levels of daily meaning. Results are discussed with an eye toward a better understanding of meaning in life and developing interventions to stabilize and maximize well-being.     

自然阅读与校对阅读的知觉广度研究

采用经典的移动窗口技术,以Eyelink2000型眼动仪为工具,探讨了自然阅读和校对阅读两种不同的任务对中文阅读知觉广度的影响,结果表明：（1）与校对阅读条件相比,自然阅读条件下的阅读速度更快、眼跳幅度更大。（2）自然阅读条件下被试的知觉广度为注视点右侧2-3个字;校对阅读条件下被试的知觉广度仅为注视点1个字的空间。结果说明,读者在校对阅读和自然阅读条件下采用了不同的阅读策略,阅读知觉广度的大小受任务要求的影响。     

民族本质论对跨民族交往的影响——以中国内地的藏族大学生为例

本研究以中国内地的藏族大学生为例,通过两个研究探讨了民族本质论对跨民族交往的影响。研究一通过相关研究发现,民族本质论与接触数量、接触质量呈显著负相关,与民族间的社会距离呈显著正相关;研究二启动了民族本质论和民族建构论,结果发现,相比本质论启动条件,民族建构论启动条件下藏族大学生的跨汉民族交往意愿较高。本研究说明,民族本质论是影响跨民族交往的重要因素,加强民族的社会建构论是促进跨民族交往的重要举措。     

Research Note Examining non-religious groups in Britain: theistic belief and social correlates

Major changes in religious belonging in Britain in recent decades have included a marked decline in levels of Christian affiliation and a growing segment of society who profess no affiliation—the ‘religious nones’. This research note uses a contemporary opinion poll to examine the groupings within the broad ‘religious nones’ category, focusing on those who identify as atheist or agnostic or who profess some other non-religion identity. This research note examines the patterning in theistic belief across these groups and assesses the socio-demographic correlates of these groups. At each stage, the non-religious groups are compared with those who profess a religious affiliation. These empirical findings are of note, given trends in the British religious landscape and wider scholarly debates about the nature and extent of secularisation, and should encourage future research in the area of non-religion.