An Approach to Environmental Ethics in Türkiye: An Analysis of Doctoral Dissertations on Environmental Ethics

Abstract

The growing and diversifying environmental problems have necessitated the regulation of the environment as a right and made it inevitable to approach the environment with ethical responsibility. As in other developing countries, the development of environmental ethics literature in Türkiye is relatively recent. This study aims to provide an overview of the literature by identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing all accessible doctoral dissertations on environmental ethics registered in the National Thesis Center of the Council of Higher Education (YÖK) over the last 20 years, using systematic, transparent, and reproducible methods. Within this scope, the abstracts, keywords, methodology sections, key findings, results, and recommendations of the dissertations were scanned in detail. In particular, the findings and recommendations provided by the dissertations were carefully decomposed to allow for quantitative and qualitative analysis. This structured data collection approach facilitated a comparative analysis between the dissertations and allowed for the identification of each study's unique contribution. The analysis of the collected data was conducted through a mixed-methods approach, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative methods. During the analysis process, the R programming language and relevant libraries were utilized for data processing and visualization. In a rapidly evolving field such as environmental ethics, which interacts with various disciplines, an examination conducted from a holistic perspective will support the development of environmental ethics literature in Türkiye by providing an in-depth understanding of the knowledge produced at the doctoral level.