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Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 2019

Turkish television series gained their presence in the global enter- tainment market being dubbed as Turkey’s soft power asset. However, in more recent years, together with increasing govern- ment control over Turkey’s media landscape and rising authoritar- ianism, historical television series depicting the Ottoman Empire have flourished primarily on Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) public broadcasting. This paper argues that historical television series on TRT reflect the political elite’s populist-nationalism and are in line with the AKP’s (Justice and Development Party) political discourse. Therefore, television series aired on TRT are operationa- lized by the AKP government to advance their political agenda and are thus employed as propaganda tools in disseminating a populist-nationalist discourse.

Middle East Critique

Turkish drama series aired on state network TRT (Turkish Radio and Television) connect Ottoman history with contemporary events in Turkey and have been instrumental agents in the government’s attempts to shape the political reality in accordance with its political agenda. This article examines the narrative cultivated by the popular historical drama Payitaht: Abdülhamid (2017) by using the dramatistic process framework. In doing so, it analyzes the overlapping narrative of historical and contemporary in-groups and out-groups. Payitaht: Abdülhamid recreates the current political divides on screen in Turkey by assigning guilt and redeemer statuses to certain characters in the drama series and by providing a longitudinal perspective of Turkish history. Payitaht: Abdülhamid is, therefore, a political tool used by the ruling AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi [Justice and Development Party]) government to cultivate and propagate a worldview that connects the Ottoman past to contemporary politics. Furthermore, Payitaht: Abdülhamid feeds the existent divisions within Turkey by reinforcing the AKP’s political discourse on key domestic and foreign policy issues and helps to push its agenda to the fore.

This article addresses power, ideology and media context generally. .In democratic countries, the free media is regarded as the " fourth estate " besides the legislative, executive and judiciary branches. It can be said that political power has a significant role in shaping media discourse. The newspapers as the most efficient print media elements have an effective role in media discourse. Besides determining political agenda, the newspapers function as the instrument of hegemony of the political authority. The objective of this article is twofold. The first is to analyze the role of the media discourse in the (re)production of ideologies. Within this framework, the role of the media in democratic countries will also be under scrutiny. Second,a historical overview of Turkish print media in general and the Hürriyet newspaper in particular will be provided. Bourdieu argues that, the power of the words lies not in their intrinsic qualities but in the belief that they are uttered by authorized spokespersons (Bourdieu, 1991: p.170). In this context, one of the main arguments of this article is that the Hurriyet newspaper as one of the leading voices of the mainstream media is efficient in determining the political and social agenda. The qualitative research method is used in the article. ÖZ Bu makale genel olarak güç, ideoloji ve medya söylemini irdelemektedir. Demokratik ülkelerde özgür medya yasama, yürütme ve yargı erkinin yanında " dördüncü kuvvet " olarak görülmektedir. Siyasal gücün medya söylemini şekillendirmede önemli bir rolü olduğu söylenebilir. En etkili yazılı medya unsurlarından olan gazeteler medya söyleminde önemli bir role sahiptirler. Siyasal gündemi belirlemeye ek olarak gazeteler siyasal iktidarın hegemonya aracı olarak da işlev görmektedirler. Bu makalenin çift yönlü bir amacı bulunmaktadır. Birincisi, ideolojilerin söylemsel olarak üretilmesinde medya diskurunun rolüne ışık tutmaktır. Bu çerçeve içinde, demokratik ülkelerde medyanın rolü analiz edilecektir. İkinci olarak genelde Türk yazılı basını, özelde ise Hürriyet gazetesi tarihi bir özet ile analiz edilecektir. Bourdieu'a gore (1991, p. 170), kelimelerin gücü onların içkin özelliklerinde değil onların yetkin sözcüler tarafından ifade edilmesindedir. Bu bağlamda Hürriyet gazetesinin anaakım medyanın başat seslerinden biri olarak siyasal ve sosyal gündemi belirlemede etkili olduğu makalenin temel iddialarından biridir. Makalede nitel araştırma yöntemi kullanılmıştır. Anahtar Sözcükler: İdeoloji, güç, medya, söylem, medya söylemi, Türkiye'de yazılı medya POWER, IDEOLOGY AND MEDIA DISCOURSE Montgomery (1995: p. 251) argues that " language informs the way we think, the way we experience, and the way we interact with each other. " Language use cannot be evaluated as a reflection of reality, it is in fact central to producing it. The words are not value-free, they reflect the authority and the interests of those who speak. " Language is not an isolated phenomenon; language is deeply social, intertwined with social processes and interaction. " (Wodak, 1999: p.186). Habermas argues that language is a tool of domination. It serves to legitimize the authority of organized power (cited in Wodak and Meyer, 2009: p.10).

This article examines the ways in which Turkish Radio and Television Institution (TRT), as the public service broadcaster of Turkey, has been mobilized by the Justice and Development Party ( JDP) to contribute to the dissemination of a neo-Ottomanist discourse in the neighboring geographies. Our focus is on two expansions of TRT, namely TRT Avaz and TRT El Arabia, that aim at reaching markets outside the national borders of Turkey. Our interest here lies in three intersecting phenomena. One is the notion of neo-Ottomanism and its deployment as a cultural policy geared towards a market of transnational viewers. The other is the digitalization of broadcasting and the recent transformations in the global media spheres that allow for alternate cosmopolitan media cultures. Finally, we are concerned with the transformation of TRT's role, from initially being a 'nationalizing' and 'internationalizing' institution to later being transformed into a 'transnational' apparatus of the JDP government. We argue that the transnationalisation of TRT has become possible under the historical coincidence of the revival of neo-Ottomanism and the transformations in the global media environment. We conclude by suggesting that in line with JDP government's neo-Ottomanist discourse, TRT now works towards fostering a transnational communality around the notions of Ottoman culture and Ottoman morals among Arab speaking and Islamic populations.

Throughout this investigation, my main purpose is to deliberately investigate the relation between the rise of the political Islam and emergence of the social media in the case of Turkey. In theory, my main focus will be the alterations in the media concept under the rule of Justice and Development Party(AKP). I will try to explain how political Islam perceives and utilizes the media elements and how it affects the perception and usage of media in Turkey. Then, I will focus on the shifts in media under the AKP rule. By shifts, what I mean is that the oppositions of the political Islam had been moving into other media elements rather than TV and newspapers, since the AKP reign had began. However, the pace of this transition had always changed according to the circumstances in Turkey. According to RTUK statistics, the percentage of the people watching TV for at least 2-3 hours per day, was %75 in 2006, when AKP was relatively new; whilst in 2018, the same percentage decreased to %44(RTÜK, 2006).According to another research, the people using the internet for more than 1 hour is %95.7 and the people using the social media for more than 1 hour is %76.2 in the year of 2015 in Turkey(RTÜK,2016). Therefore, it is fair to claim that the media elements of the country had changed during the rule of AKP. Apparently, this change is affected by technological and global shifts in the world.

International Journal of Communication, 2018

Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2019

Today’s communication technologies has maximised communication speed. This huge development in communication in international arena also paved way for the emergence of a great amount of translation need and market. Media has been among the institutions which needs this translation need most. As it is the translation of news texts for media, such institutions followed a function oriented approach to translations. That is to say, while translating a news text into any other language, the news translator or the journalist must keep the purpose of the source text, which is to create an intended effect on source language readers, in the target text: to create an intended effect on the target language reader. This ‘intended effect’ of news texts has attracted the attention of discourse analysis. Thus, critical discourse analysis methods have been developed in order to explicate the ideological elements imbedded in news texts. In other words, Critical Discourse Analysis is a research method which searches for how social phenomena such as power relations, moral values, ideologies and identity definitions are reflected on individuals and social orders through linguistic structures. Determining how and to what extent these power relations, moral values, ideologies and social phenomena take place in news texts is the purpose of this study. To this end, Teun A. van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis model is taken as basis for this study as it allows a detailed analysis of news texts. News texts on ‘Operation Shah – Euphrates’ dated 02.23.2015 in Turkish newspapers published in English are selected as sample texts for analysis. Although the newspapers published in English are taken as the main analysis material, original texts in newspapers published in Turkish are also included to give an idea about the transfer of political language with its intended messages. At the end of the analysis, it has been observed that the news texts of Hürriyet Daily News, Today’s Zaman and Daily Sabah, of which texts are analysed, involve some ideological elements in their news texts. Moreover, the Turkish versions of these newspapers, Hürriyet, Zaman and Sabah are also observed to involve the same ideological elements, besides intensive national connotations. Consequently, it has been observed that newspapers utilise news texts to reproduce and popularise their own ideologies on a national scale, and sustained the same attitude in their English versions which address non-Turkish readers around the world.

İstanbul Aydın Üniversitesi iletişim çalışmaları dergisi

A leading article or editorial is an opinion piece written by the editorial staff of a newspaper and represents the opinion of the publisher. This study examines the portrayal of Turkey as presented within the broad context of political media discourse in the leading articles of three influential British quality newspapers: the Guardian, the Financial Times, and the Daily Telegraph, between 2005 and 2010. The aim is to find out what arguments/issues the editorials cover in favour of or against Turkey, and whether Turkey's multi-dimensional East-West transformation has influenced the political discourses and the nature of news in the British press. A qualitative content analysis was performed on three newspapers' leading articles. Findings indicate that although editorial staff of British conservative, labour, and liberal press had a great deal to talk about apparently different subjects that constitute comments on Turkey's turbulent relationship with the European Union, or its human rights record, unending debate on secularism versus Islamist politics or lack of ethnic minority rights domestically; at the same time, they had created a rather positive, constructive and consistent political image of Turkey, by portraying the country as a rather democratic, secular, Muslim state that can create a bridge between the West and the Middle East in international affairs.

Markets, Globalization & Development Review, 2017

This article examines the ways in which Turkish Radio and Television Institution (TRT), as the public service broadcaster of Turkey, has been mobilized by the Justice and Development Party (JDP) to contribute to the dissemination of a neo-Ottomanist discourse in the neighboring geographies. Our focus is on two expansions of TRT, namely TRT Avaz and TRT El Arabia, that aim at reaching markets outside the national borders of Turkey. Our interest here lies in three intersecting phenomena. One is the notion of neo-Ottomanism and its deployment as a cultural policy geared towards a market of transnational viewers. The other is the digitalization of broadcasting and the recent transformations in the global media spheres that allow for alternate cosmopolitan media cultures. Finally, we are concerned with the transformation of TRT's role, from initially being a 'nationalizing' and 'internationalizing' institution to later being transformed into a 'transnational' apparatus of the JDP government. We argue that the transnationalisation of TRT has become possible under the historical coincidence of the revival of neo-Ottomanism and the transformations in the global media environment. We conclude by suggesting that in line with JDP government's neo-Ottomanist discourse, TRT now works towards fostering a transnational communality around the notions of Ottoman culture and Ottoman morals among Arab speaking and Islamic populations.

New Perspectives on Turkey

New Perspectives on Turkey, 2017

In contemporary Turkey, a growing interest in Ottoman history represents a change in both the official state discourse and popular culture. This nostalgia appropriates, reinterprets, decontextualizes, and juxtaposes formerly distinct symbols, ideas, objects, and histories in unprecedented ways. In this paper, we distinguish between state-led neo-Ottomanism and popular cultural Ottomania, focusing on the ways in which people in Turkey are interpellated by these two different yet interrelated discourses, depending on their social positions. As the boundary between highbrow and popular culture erodes, popular cultural representations come to reinterpret and rehabilitate the Ottoman past while also inventing new insecurities centering on historical “truth.” Utilizing in-depth interviews, we show that individuals juxtapose the popular television series Muhteşem Yüzyıl (The Magnificent Century) with what they deem “proper” history, in the process rendering popular culture a “false” version. We also identify four particular interpretive clusters among the consumers of Ottomania: for some, the Ottoman Empire was the epitome of tolerance, where different groups lived peacefully; for others, the imperial past represents Turkish and/or Islamic identities; and finally, critics see the empire as a burden on contemporary Turkey.

Media, Culture & Society, 2005

Media, Culture & Society September 2005 27: 787-798. This article examines how the leading Turkish newspaper, Hurriyet, constructs an image of the ethnic minority Kurds. Critical discourse analysis is used to assess how the image of the Kurds has changed from the end of the internal conflict with the PKK to the country’s bid to join the EU, finding that Kurds are not allowed to speak for themselves and their culture is mocked and demonized by the mainstream Turkish press.

Asian Politics & Policy, 2016

In the reputed work Securitization: A New Framework for Analysis (Buzan, Wæver, & de Wilde, 1998), the Copenhagen School theoreticians indicated that the media sector might not offer the correct answers in surveying the nexus between governments’ manoeuvres and sociopolitical developments because it is not easy to determine the principal goals of the sector. Nonetheless, they agreed that media is apt to be exploited as a threat “manufacturing” tool (Buzan et al., 1998, pp. 88–89; Sheafer & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2010, p. 212), even though it does not control the urgency levels of issues without the will of governments (Hass, 2009, p. 83). The Copenhagen School also claims that securitization theory, which examines the relationship between security threats and political discourses, might have better practicability for peripheral researchers than other critical approaches within security studies (Bilgin, 2011, p. 405). The reference point is that “peripheral scholars may be distrustful of the ways in which ‘security arguments’ are often (mis)used by rulers and elites for domestic purposes” (Bilgin, 2011, p. 403). Although this statement needs to be evaluated in another review, the Copenhagen School’s arguments of (mis)usage of security issues and exploitation of the media sector have been proven in Turkey’s everlasting dilemmas, which were revived by the Justice and Development Party (Turkish acronym AKP) after the nine years of desecuritization of Kurdish separatism and Bashar Assad as the old enemy.

bilig, 2024

The Nagorno-Karabakh issue between Azerbaijan and Armenia became one of the most critical agenda items in the international community again in 2020, resulting in thousands of casualties from both countries due to the conflicts. This study discusses Türkiye's attitude towards the 2020 Karabakh War in the context of international relations, based on the constructivist theory. It focuses on explaining how the country's national identity, as well as the international norms it adheres to, played a decisive role in its current foreign policy implementation. To do this, news articles related to the 2020 Karabakh War were gathered from Turkish and Azerbaijani news portals and subjected to content analysis. The analysis findings revealed that both Turkish and Azerbaijani media heavily emphasized messages related to shared identities and norms that play a significant role in shaping the perception and identities of the parties involved in the conflict. Furthermore, the media depicted the war as a matter of national identity and sovereignty.

— This study stems from a leading article published in the British daily, The Independent (2 June 2012): It is time for Turkey to take the lead on Syria. This article argued that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ―set too much store by the laudatory press clippings about the rise of the new Ottomans and exaggerated his government's influence in Damascus.‖ This argument is very important for Turkey's foreign policy. The term ―Neo-Ottoman‖ depicts a foreign policy that draws part of its legitimacy from Turkey's experience as a once imperial power in its wider neighbourhood. Social and political life acquires its meaning through discourse, especially through the articulation of meaning and identities. The process of establishing meaning is a political process, entangled by pluralism and struggles for power. Post-marxsist discourse theory uses political power to fix the meaning of a subject and refers this process as articulation. The argument in this paper looks into the effect of the national and international press on political communication; more precisely, into how the ―Neo-Ottoman‖ discourse was projected in the press, production and reproduction of neo-ottoman vision and how it was brought to the forefront by the international media in assessment of Turkey's foreign policy. Therefore, we will be focusing on different views of prominent national and international figures illustrating their views on this issue. While doing so, we will cover articles published in Turkey, the Middle East, Europe and the USA.

İntihal /Plagiarism: Bu makale, en az iki hakem tarafından incelenmiş ve intihal içermediği teyit edilmiştir. / This article has been reviewed by at least two referees and scanned via a plagiarism software. Çerçeveleme analizi ve derlembilim yaklaşımı kullanan bu çalışma uluslararası medyada Türkiye'nin temsilini Aralık 2016 ve Haziran 2018 arasındaki BBC Haberlerine odaklanarak incelemiştir. Sonuçlar Türkiye'nin BBC Haberler'deki ülkeler arasında 17. sırada yer aldığını ve uluslararası olarak sıklıkla Suriye, ABD, Almanya, Rusya ve Hollanda ile ilintilendirilmiş olduğunu göstermektedir. Sıklıkla kullanılan kelimeler Türkiye, Türk, Erdogan, halk, Suriye, hükümet, Kürt, Suriyeli, devlet ve darbe olmuştur. Türkiye etkileyici bir lider (Erdogan) tarafından idare edilen, silahlı Kürt gruplarla gerilim yaşayan, Suriye iç savaşına karışmış, başarısız darbe teşebbüsünden muzdarip olurken Gülen Hareketi'ne saldıran ve bunun da toplumda ağır baskıya neden olduğu bir ülke olarak temsil edilmiştir. BBC'nin özellikle üç haber çerçevesi kullandığı bulunmuştur: çatışma (Erdoğan vs. Gulen, Türkiye vs. Suriye, Türkiye vs. silahlı Kürt gruplar), insan çıkarı (terör, savaş ve baskı yüzünden acı çekme) ve sorumluluk (kurtarıcı olarak Erdogan).

Turkish Studies, 2010

2018

Since its emergence, nationalism has been maintaining its influence on societies and media has enabled the reproduction of nationalist ideologies, rituals, symbols, myths and discourses. Nationalism has changed and transformed both over time and among different political regimes and societies. Therefore, in order to fully understand the current state of nationalist ideologies, it is important to examine the historical development of nationalism and its reflections in media. This article examines the emergence and early period of Turkish nationalism and its reflections in the Turkish media. After the establishment of the Turkish Republic, particularly during the period between 1923 and 1950, new notions and institutions settled into the society. One of the most important notions during that time was nationalism given that the new Turkish Republic was established as a nation state. Turkish nationalism is mostly affected by political and social changes of the external world. Between the two world wars, extreme nationalist ideologies were popular all around the globe. This atmosphere of the external world also affected Turkish nationalist discourse and its reflections in the media. "Gök-börü" Journal is an important example of extreme Turkish nationalist discourse. The Journal was published in the Autumn of 1942 when Germany was pushing through Russia. This period was also a time when extreme nationalism and racism was occurring in the world and in Turkey, both were popular concepts. The journal can be differentiated from the other Turkic magazines published during the same period by its harsh rhetoric and ideas about blood nationalism. Keywords Gök-Börü journal • Turkish nationalism • Turkist journals • Racism • Historical development of Turkish nationalism • Türkkan Türkiye Cumhuriyetinin İlk Döneminde Aşırı Milliyetçi Söylem ve Türk Medyasında Yansımaları: Gök-Börü Dergisi Örneği Öz Milliyetçilik ortaya çıkışından bu yana, toplumlar üzerinde etkisini sürdürmektedir, medya ise milliyetçi ideolojilerin, ritüellerin, sembollerin, mitlerin ve söylemlerin yeniden üretilmesine imkan vermiştir. Milliyetçilik hem zaman içinde hem de farklı siyasal rejim ve toplumlar arasında değişip ve dönüşmüştür. Bu nedenle, milliyetçi ideolojilerin mevcut durumunu tam olarak anlamak için, milliyetçiliğin tarihsel gelişimini ve bu gelişmenin medyadaki yansımalarını incelemek önemlidir. Bu makale Türk milliyetçiliğinin erken dönem biçimlerini ve Türk medyasındaki yansımalarını incelemektedir. Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nin kuruluşundan sonra, özellikle 1923-1950 arası dönemde, yeni kavramlar ve kurumlar topluma yerleşmiştir. Bu dönemde tartılan önemli kavramlardan biri de, yeni Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nin bir ulus devlet olarak kurulması nedeniyle, milliyetçiliktir. Literatürde Türk milliyetçiliğinin çoğunlukla dış dünyanın politik ve sosyal değişimlerinden etkilendiği belirtilmektedir. İki dünya savaşı arasında, aşırı milliyetçi ideolojiler tüm dünyada popüler bir durumdadır. Dış dünyanın bu atmosferi Türk milliyetçi söylemini dolayısıyla da bu söylemin medyadaki yansımalarını etkilemiştir. "Gök-börü" Dergisi aşırı Türk milliyetçi söyleminin önemli bir örneğidir. Dergi, dünyada ve Türkiye'de aşırı milliyetçiliğin popüler olduğu bir dönemde, Almanya'nın Rusya içlerine ilerlediği 1942 sonbaharında yayımlanmaya başlamıştır. Dergi dönemde yayınlanan diğer Türkçü dergilerden sert söylemiyle ve kan milliyetçiliği konusundaki düşünceleriyle farklılaşmaktadır. Anahtar kelimeler Gök-Börü dergisi • Türk milliyetçiliği • Türk gazeteleri • Irkçılık • Türk milliyetçiliğinin tarihsel gelişimi • Türkkan

2017

Ever since the beginning of its first term in 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been influencing the media in order to curtail and circumvent independent journalism in Turkey. This repression on media freedom in the last fifteen years indicates democratic regression in Turkey. A free press is vital to any democracy, allowing for constructive public debate while also holding government accountable. Nonetheless, rather than establishing a secure and independent space for the press, the government has formed an environment that is contentious and even threatening for journalists to report opposing views. In addition, the unruly government proceedings toward news media have primarily been led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now the President of Turkey, establishing an intimidating, powerful media autocracy. This article explores Turkey’s current state of declining freedoms of the press as the government has employed different strategies to suppress the media’s ro...

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