Communication strategies of the AK Party in Turkey

Despite the rise of Islamist parties and movements in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, there is a dearth of studies addressing their political communication strategies and approaches. In consideration of this fact, this doctoral thesis examines the political communication strategies of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, henceforth the AKP), from 2002 to 2017. Drawing on social movement theory and approaches to political communication, it analyses the transformations that have taken place within the AKP and Turkey and how these have been informed by religion, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s charismatic leadership. The thesis describes how the author carried out ethnographic research during the 2014 presidential election; interviewing key personalities from politics, the media, academia and think tanks, and conducting observations at AKP headquarters and campaign rallies. A quantitative content analysis of Erdoğan’s speeches was then performed to triangulate the findings from the qualitative data, ensuring effective coverage of the entire period under consideration, and to provide continuity. The research reveals how the effective communication of a party’s message is fundamental to its political success. Furthermore, in relation to the AKP it clearly identifies two distinct policy periods: 2002 to 2009, when the party promoted a liberal political ideology and pro-Western foreign policy; and 2010 to 2017, when a pro-Muslim agenda emerged. It also highlights the significance of Erdoğan’s dominance of the AKP, and the consequent lack of institutionalisation within the party, before discussing the implications of the study findings for the AKP, Turkey and the wider MENA region. Of particular interest is how the changes in the AKP’s policy appear to have been reinforced by Erdoğan, who has consistently made effective use of a variety of political communication strategies, including Americanisation, and references to pertinent local images and symbols, to create a sense of collective identity amongst the AKP’s supporters

Re-presenting the Conflict: Multilingualism, Intertextuality and Non-Translation in New Turkish Cinema

This thesis investigates the re-presentations of conflict in new Turkish cinema vis-à-vis the official discourse in the 1990s and 2000s. It aims to identify to what extent the selected films present alternative perspectives on the conflict in relation to the ones that are promoted in the official discourse. The thesis adopts a critical discourse-analytical approach to the study of the interplay between the films and the official discourse as an intertextual one in which the former revisit and rework the latter. The thesis analyses this interplay on two levels. First, it situates the films within the history of the conflict to establish the effect of the state rhetoric and practices on their production, distribution and reception. Second, the thesis examines each film’s interplay with the official discourse through the lens of multilingualism, non-translation and recontextualisation. It draws on the mainstream press as the medium for the identification of the official discourse on the conflict to be taken as a reference point on this second level of analysis. Demonstrating the historical overlap between the official and media discourses on the conflict, the thesis specifically focuses on the broadsheet newspaper, Milliyet, which effectively acted as the mouthpiece of the state. The inquiries into the functions of depicting multilingualism and translation also highlight the linguistic dimension of the conflict and discuss the official language ideology and language policy in Turkey as two interrelated components of the official discourse on the conflict. Finally, the thesis examines the recontextualisation of national symbols, official images, texts, audio and video material, songs and fairy tales in the films in identifying their intertextual references and interplay with the official discourse. The thesis thus introduces new readings of the selected films and contributes to the literature on the depictions of multilingualism and non-translation in Turkish cinema

The Proceedings of the International History of Public Relations Conference 2012. Bournemouth University, 11-12 July 2012

Papers, keynote address and presentations from IHPRC 201

Popular Music and Public Diplomacy: Transnational and Transdisciplinary Perspectives

In the early years of the Cold War, Western nations increasingly adopted strategies of public diplomacy involving popular music. While the diplomatic use of popular music was initially limited to such genres as jazz, the second half of the 20th century saw a growing presence of various popular genres in diplomatic contexts, including rock, pop, bluegrass, flamenco, funk, disco, and hip-hop, among others. This volume illuminates the interrelation of popular music and public diplomacy from a transnational and transdisciplinary angle. The contributions argue that, as popular music has been a crucial factor in international relations, its diplomatic use has substantially impacted the global musical landscape of the 20th and 21st centuries

Popular Music and Public Diplomacy

In the early years of the Cold War, Western nations increasingly adopted strategies of public diplomacy involving popular music. While the diplomatic use of popular music was initially limited to such genres as jazz, the second half of the 20th century saw a growing presence of various popular genres in diplomatic contexts, including rock, punk, reggae, and hip-hop. This volume illuminates the interrelation of popular music and public diplomacy from a transnational and transdisciplinary angle. The contributions argue that, as popular music has been a crucial factor in international relations, its diplomatic use has substantially impacted the global musical landscape of the 20th and 21st centuries

Tracing cultural change in the reproduction of intolerance : 'secularism', 'Islamism' and others in Turkey’s experience of democratization

Defence date: 16 January 2020Examining Board: Ayhan Kaya, Istanbul Bilgi University; Hanspeter Kriesi, European University Institute – SPS Department; Élise Massicard, CERI, Sciences Po; Olivier Roy, European University Institute – SPS Department (Supervisor)How do cultural resources such as values and beliefs, and their functions in ideology-making, change? In the democratization literature, the value-based approach to culture seeks cultural change based on values. However, the combination of this approach with value-surveys fails to consider several ways in which change may unfold between cultural periods. Instead, this study will delve into a history of conversational texts, which are endogenously grounded within culture, capable of demonstrating culture in action and reflecting what is collective about culture as it operates through dialectical encounters. I focus on change in three landscapes of culture in Turkey, which have witnessed some of the most persistent stories of the unequal relationship between the self and the other

Curse and/or blessing? Turkish soap operas and their impact on contemporary Algerian women: audience reception and audio-visual analysis of the historical TV drama Harim al-Sultan (The Magnificent Century)

Turkey is now the second biggest TV market exporter after the US finding huge audiences among Arab women. This study examines how Algerian women perceive the Dizi genres, what makes them captivating and influential, and determines the dominant positive and negative themes tackled in these TV dramas. Based on literature review on globalized media, media effect theories, and gender studies, an online focus group discussion, online questionnaires, and interpretative phenomenological analysis techniques this study aims to understand the reception and perception of Turkish TV series by Algerian female viewers. The thesis implements the audio-visual content analysis method on the most-watched Dizi TV drama titled Harim al-Sultan as a case study to identify the prominent features of those soap operas. The findings show that the lack of Algerian local cinematic production, cultural proximity between Turkey and Algeria, Syrian dialect, creative scenarios, and modern lifestyles broadcasted in the Dizi TV dramas has rapidly increased its popularity among Algerian female viewers. The results also indicate that Turkish TV dramas depict women who appear to be modern and independent and who challenge imposed traditional patriarchal values. At the same time, they also promote gender stereotypes, romanticizing rape stories, and spreading Western ideologies under the umbrella of modernity that could threaten or weaken Algerian females’ traditional values. Audio-visual content analysis shows that Harim al-Sultan contains controversial topics, that generated many critiques in terms of history, power, religion, identity, and representation of women. Nonetheless, this study examines how participants incorporate some Dizi TV series’ features in a relevant way to Algerian female traditional values and lifestyles, thus, arguing for the creation of an ambiguous identity which sits at the cusp of traditional principles and modern hybrid identities

Narrative motion on the two-dimensional plane: the “video-ization” of photography and characterization of reality

"Art is not truth. Art is a lie that enables us to recognize truth" Pablo Picasso Time, as known to many, is an indispensable component of photography. Period(s) included in “single” photographs are usually and naturally much shorter than periods documented in video works. Yet, when it comes to combining photos taken at different times on one photographical surface, it becomes possible to see remnants of longer periods of time. Whatever method you use, the many traces left by different moments, lead to the positive notion of timelessness (lack of time dependence) due to the plural presences of time at once. This concept of timelessness sometimes carries the content of the photo to anonymity, the substance becomes multi-layered and hierarchy disappears. This paper focuses on creating photographical narratives within the two-dimensional world. The possibility of working in layers with transparency within the computer environment enables us to overlay succession of moments seized from time on top of each other, in order to create a storyline spread in time that is otherwise not possible to express in a single photograph, unless properly staged. Truth with the capital T is not taken as the departure point in this article; on the contrary, personal delineations of temporary yet experienced smaller realities is suggested