Islamic Mediation in Turkey: third party roles of "Alim's" in the resolution of communal conflicts

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1063525 (Table of Contents)

In the Conflict Resolution field (CR), communal level dispute resolution practices are studied within the context of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), which includes a variety of techniques, processes, and institutions of conflict management and settlement, as alternatives to formal legal procedures. This thesis examines the mediation practices of Alims as examples of the consent based third party intervention practices of ADR processes. Alims are mainly guided by the principles and the normative assumptions of Islam in their mediation practices. This study is one of the first empirical studies on the communal level dispute resolution practices within the Islamic networks of the Turkish society. Semi structured interviews are conducted with a focused group of Alims for the generation of empirical data about their mediation practices. Cultural characteristics and normative orders of the societies, or communities significantly influence the natures, underlying assumptions, and mechanisms of the dispute resolution processes. The recent popularity of the cross-cultural comparative CR researches facilitates the study of the role of norms and culture on the techniques, methods, and underlying assumptions of the mediation practices. While approaches to the study of comparative aspects of cultures have been emphasized in the CR field, analysis of the deeper more unique aspects of however, is not yet commonly employed in the field. This study proposes a broader theoretical notion of culture in CR studies by emphasizing theoretical and research approaches from the fields of Legal Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology. Key determinants of mediation procedure such as dispute types, mediator roles, and mediator techniques, are also systematically analyzed with reference to empirical data.