No abstract

This article, using methods from corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, reports the findings of a research project that aimed to explore the representations of Syrian asylum seekers in the Turkish press from March 2011, when the first Syrians arrived in Turkey, to December 2015, when the project ended. Using a corpus of 2321 texts collected from five Turkish daily newspapers, concordances of the words Syrian, refugee and asylum seeker were examined and grouped along patterns through which discourses on and around Syrian asylum seekers were uncovered. We found differing discourses that framed asylum seekers as ‘our brothers’, ‘victims’, ‘needy people’ and/or ‘threat’, ‘criminals’ and so on. Newspapers maintained one or a combination of these discourses to construct their own reality about the refugee crisis in Turkey. The analysis also reveals that Turkish newspapers use pertinent terms interchangeably, leading to an ambiguity which reflects the political as well as daily usage of the terms.

Bu çalışmada Türk basınında Suriyeli sığınmacı temsilleri incelenmektedir. Örneklem için, en yüksek tiraja sahip ilk beş gazetede ("Hürriyet", "Sabah", "Posta", "Sözcü", "Zaman") 2014 yılında yayımlanan ilgili tüm haberler, köşe yazıları ve görseller seçilmiştir. Mevcut çalışma, Suriyeli sığınmacıların Türk basınında 2011-2015 yılları arasındaki temsillerini inceleyen (TÜBİTAK destekli) daha geniş çaplı bir araştırma projesinin bir kısmını oluşturmaktadır. Mevcut literatürde sıkça ihmal edilen ya da ayrı bir inceleme alanı olarak ele alınan haber görselleri, bu çalışmada haber metinleri ve köşe yazılarıyla beraber incelenmektedir. Araştırma sonuçlarında görülmüştür ki, Türk gazetelerinde Suriyeli sığınmacılarla ilgili haber ve görsellerin içerikleri çoğunlukla olumlu ya da yansız özelliklere sahiptir. Temsil özelliklerine odaklandığımızda ise temsillerde bir ikilem olduğu görülmektedir. Temsiller Suriyeli sığınmacıyı zorlu koşullar içinde "yoksul" ve "yardıma muhtaç" olarak gösterirken, aynı sıklıkta toplum güvenliği için bir "tehdit" olarak da göstermektedir. Sıkça tekrarlanan bu temsiller ve ikilem göstermektedir ki Türk basınının Suriyeli sığınmacı temsili, uluslararası çalışmalarda tanımlanan stereotipik sığınmacı temsillerini yeniden üretmektedir.

This paper explores discourses on and around internationalization as a reflection of the contemporary development of Turkish higher education. It analyses policy documents published by the Council of Higher Education (henceforth the CoHE), academic and media articles over ten years. By examining these texts through a combination of policy framing analysis and (critical) discourse analysis, the study explores how discourses on and around internationalization are framed by policy-makers, academics and media commentators. The study concludes that policy-makers’, academics’ and media commentators’ understanding of internationalization is not solidified into a clear-cut and homogeneous definition and that internationalization is often quantified with references to student and academic numbers. In fact, the discourses on/around internationalization reflect aspects of global trends towards the marketization of higher education and significantly of Turkey's economy policies.

Dominant self-complacent national narratives (not only) in Turkey have long silenced past wrongdoings. Among these, the massacre of thousands of Kurds in Dersim during the 1930s, being part of the wider suppression of the Kurdish minority until the present day, is a particularly significant example. However, against the background of an almost global emphasis on recognising past crimes, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, offered an apology on 23 November 2011. Erdoğan’s unexpected move has been both viewed as an opportunity for a more inclusive understanding of Turkish citizenship, as well as criticised for being a calculated manoeuvre in order to sideline political opponents. In this article, we investigate both this performance and its public reception. Drawing on the discourse-historical approach to critical discourse analysis, we ultimately illustrate how Erdoğan instrumentalised an ‘apology’ for political gain.