Turkey’s Representation in the News Covering the Cyprus Problem: An Analysis of the British Press (2000)

Year 2021, , 70 - 99, 14.12.2021

Hanife Erişen , Nilüfer Türksoy

https://doi.org/10.53281/kritik.988133

Cited By: 1

Abstract

This study aims to explore the representation of Turkey in the British news texts covering the Cyprus problem in the 2000s. The article goes on to question how the British broadsheet press represents Turkey, as one of the role-playing states in the fate of Cyprus. Using Said’s Orientalism and Young’s White Mythology as a theoretical basis for evaluation, a qualitative content analysis was utilized upon 45 news texts. Findings established that the othering of Turks was alive during this period. The British press portrayed Turkish people involved in the Cyprus problem as ‘dark-skinned Turks’, ‘from underdeveloped eastern Anatolia’ that ‘wear Islamic dress and have large families’ and are ‘settlers’ invaders or occupiers on the Cyprus island. Comparatively, the other role-players in the Cyprus problem (Greece, Greek Cypriots, and Turkish Cypriots) were less frequently Orientalized and not in the traditional sense, as presented by Said, their level of being orientalized relating to their relations with the British.

Keywords

British press, Cyprus problem, Media representation, Turkey, Othering, Orientalism, Said

Representation of Turkey in the News on the Cyprus Problem: An Analysis on the British Press (2000)

Abstract

Bu çalışma, 2000'li yıllarda Kıbrıs sorununu ele alan İngiliz haber metinlerinde Türkiye'nin temsilini araştırmayı amaçlamaktadır. Makale, Kıbrıs'ın kaderinde rol oynayan devletlerden biri olarak İngiltere basınının Türkiye'yi nasıl temsil ettiğini sorgulamaktadır. Değerlendirme için Said'in Oryantalizm ve Young'ın Beyaz Mitoloji kuramlarından yararlanılarak, 45 haber metni üzerinden nitel içerik analizi yapılmıştır. Bulgular, bu dönemde Türklerin ötekileştirildiğini ortaya koymaktadır. İngiliz basını Kıbrıs sorununa karışan Türkleri "koyu tenli", "az gelişmiş Doğu Anadolu'lu", "İslami kıyafet giyen ve geniş aileleri olan", ve Kıbrıs adasında "yerleşikler" veya “işgalciler” olarak tasvir etmektedir. Kıbrıs sorununa ilişkin diğer rol oyuncularının (Yunanistan, Kıbrıslı Rumlar ve Kıbrıslı Türkler) ise nispeten daha az sıklıkta ötekileştirildikleri gözlemlenmiştir.

Keywords

İngiliz basını, Kıbrıs sorunu, Medya temsili, Türkiye, Ötekileştirme, Oriyentalism, Said

References

• Aissaoui, Rabah. 2007. History, Cultural identity and difference: The issue of Turkey’s accession to the European Union in the French national press. Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 9(1): 1-14.
• Akçalı, Emel. 2011. Getting real on fluctuating national identities: Insights from Northern Cyprus. Antipode 43(5): 1725–1747.
• Bail, Chris A. 2015. Terrified: How Anti-Islam Fringe Organisations Became Mainstream. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• Barthes, Roland. 1961. The photographic message. In: Barthes, R. (Ed.), A Barthes Reader, 1st ed., pp. 196 - 199.
• Bartlett, Margaret W. 2013. Cyprus 1960-1970: An Intellectual History of the Cold War Toll, the United Nations and Decolonisation, Ph.D. dissertation, New Jersey, Drew University.
• Bakić-Hayden, Milica. 1995. Nesting orientalisms: The case of Former Yugoslavia. Slavic Review 54(4): 917-931.
• Birce, Bora. 2015. Representation of Turkey in the British Print Media: To Be or Not To Be European. Ph.D. dissertation, London, City University London.
• Bryce, Derek. 2007. Repackaging orientalism: Discourse on Egypt and Turkey in British outbound tourism. Tourist Studies 7(2): 165–191.
• Burr, Vivien. 1995. An Introduction to Social Constructionism. London: Routledge.
• Chomsky, Noam, Herman, Edward, S., 1988. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books.
• Cirakli, Mustafa (2018). Turkish migration into the north of Cyprus and the (re)construction of Turkish Cypriot identity in the Turkish Cypriot press (1995–2013). In Kyritsi, Thekla and Christofis, Nikos (Eds.), Cypriot Nationalisms in Context: History, Identity and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 199-219.
• Devran, Yusuf. 2007. The portrayal of Turkey in the British media: Orientalism resurfaced. Insight Turkey 9(4), 100-115.
• Douai, Aziz., and Lauricella, Sharon. 2014. The ‘terrorism’ frame in ‘neo-orientalism’: Western news and the Sunni–Shia Muslim sectarian relations after 9/11’. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 10(1): 7-24.
• Fiebig-von Hase, Ragnhild. 1997. Introduction. In: Fiebig-von Has, R., Lehmkuhl, U. (Eds), Enemy Images in American History. Berghahn Books, pp. 1-42.
• Fourie, Pieter J. 2001. Media Studies: Content, Audiences and Production. South Africa: Juta and Company Ltd.
• Fowler, Roger. 1991. Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: Routledge.
• French, David. 2016. Fighting EOKA: The British Counter-Insurgency Campaign on Cyprus, 1955-1959. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Gangloff, Sylvie. 2008. Turkey’s accession to the EU: The flexible reality underlining the debate. In: Timmerman, C., Rochtus, D., Mels, S. (Eds.), European and Turkish Voices in Favour and Against Turkish Accession to the EU. PIE Peter Lang, pp. 33-44.
• Gans, Herbert J. 1979. Deciding what’s news: Story suitability. Society 16: 65-77.
• Gitlin, Todd. 1980. The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Göktürk, Turgay B. 2018. Türkiye’nin 1974 öncesi Kıbrıs Politikası, vizyonu ve uygulamaları. Okman Printing Ltd.
• Hall, Stuart. 1997. The spectacle of the “Other”’. In: Hall, S. (Ed.), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage, pp. 223–279.
• Herman, Edward S., and Chomsky, Noam. 2002. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books. Jackson, Nancy B. 2003. Arab Americans: Middle East conflicts hit home. In: Lester, P.M., Ross, S.D. (Eds), Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media. Westport, CT: Praeger, pp. 75-83.
• Kauffman, Chaim. 2007. An assessment of the partition of Cyprus. International Studies Perspectives, 8(2): 206-223.
• Kliot, Nurit, and Mansfield, Yoel. 1997. The political landscape of partition: The case of Cyprus. Political Geography 16(6): 495-521.
• Kösebalaban, Hasan. 2007. The permanent “Other”? Turkey and the question of European identity. Mediterranean Quarterly 18(4): 87-111.
• Kylstad, Ingrid. 2010. Turkey and the EU: A ‘new’ European identity in the making?’. LEQS Paper No: 27. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=1708025
• Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Van Dijk, T., 1991. Racism and the Press. Routledge.
• Van Dijk, Teun. 1993. Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Society 4(2): 249-283.
• Manoff, Robert K, and Schudson, Michael. 1986. Reading the news. In: Manoff, R.K., Schudson, M. (Eds.), Reading the News: A Pantheon Guide to Popular Culture. New York: Pantheon Books, pp. 1-8.
• Merskin, Debra. 2001. Winnebagos, Cherokees, Apaches, and Dakotas: The persistence of stereotyping of American Indians in American advertising brands. Howard Journal of Communication 12(3): 159–169.
• Merskin, Debra. 2004. The construction of Arabs as enemies: Post-September 11 discourse of George W. Bush. Mass Communication & Society 7(2): 157-175. McNair, Brian. 2009. News and Journalism in the UK. London: Routledge.
• Navaro-Yashin, Yael. 2006. De-ethnicizing the ethnography of Cyprus: Political and social conflict between Turkish-Cypriots and settlers from Turkey. In: Papadakis, Y., Peristianis, N., Welz, G. (Eds.), Divided Cyprus: Modernity and an Island in Conflict. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 84–99.
• Negrine, Ralph., Kejanlioglu, Beybin., Aissaoui, Rabah, and Sylianos Papathanassopoulos. 2008. Turkey and the European Union: An analysis of how the press in four countries covered Turkey's bid for accession in 2004. European Journal of Communication 23(1): 47-68.
• Neumann, Iver B. 1999. Uses of the Other: “The East” in European Identity Formation. University of Minnesota Press. Nossek, Hillel. 2004. Our news and their news: The role of national identity in the coverage of foreign news. Journalism 5(3): 343–368.
• Paksoy, Alaadin. F. 2012. Representation of Turkey’s EU Bid in the British media. PhD dissertation, Sheffield, University of Shef field.
• Pinkus, Jenny. 1996. Subjects Positions and Positioning. Available at http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/theory/subpos.html14
• Poole, Elizabeth. 2002. Reporting Islam: Media Representations of British Muslims. London: I.B. Tauris.
• Poole, Elizabeth., Richardson, John E. 2006. Muslims and the News Media. I.B. Tauris.
• Psaltis, Charis., Cakal, Huseyin. 2016. Social identity in divided Cyprus. In McKeown, S. et al. (Eds), Understanding Peace and Conflict Through Social Identity Theory. New York: Springer, pp.229-244.
• Saeed, Amir. 2007. Media, racism and Islamophobia: The representation of Islam and Muslims in the media. Sociology Compass 1(2): 443-462.
• Said, Edward. 2003. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. Routledge.
• Saussure, Ferdinand.de. 2011. Course in General Linguistics. Translated by W. Baskin. Edited by P. Meisel and H. Saussy. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Scammell, Margaret., Semetko, Holli A. 2008. Election news coverage in the U.K. In: Strömbäck J. and Kaid L.L. (Eds.) The Handbook of Election News Coverage Around the World. London: Routledge, pp. 73-89.
• Schreier, Margrit. 2012. Qualitative Content Analysis in Practice. London: Sage.
• Schudson, Michael, 2003. The Sociology of News. New York: W.W. Norton.
• Sözen, Ahmet., Özersay, Kudret. 2007. The Annan plan: State succession or continuity. Middle Eastern Studies 43(1): 125-141.
• Spivak, Gayatri, C., 2009. Can the subaltern speak? In Sharp, J.P., (Ed.), Geographies of Postcolonialism: Spaces of Power and Representation. Sage, pp. 109-130.
• Spyrou, Spyros. 2002. Images of the “Other”: “The Turk” in Greek Cypriot children’s imaginations. Race Ethnicity and Education 5(3): 255–272. Şahin, Sanem., Karayianni, Christiana 2020. Journalism matters: Reporting peace in Cyprus. Media, Culture & Society 42(7-8): 1360-1376.
• Varnava, Andrekos. 2009. British Imperialism in Cyprus, 1878-1915: The Inconsequential Possession. Manchester University Press.
• Walter, S. 2019. Better off without you? How the British media portrayed EU citizens in Brexit news. The International Journal of Press/Politics 24(2): 210-232.
• Wimmel, Andreas. 2009. Beyond the Bosporus? Comparing public discourses on Turkey’s EU application in the German, French and British quality press. Journal of Language and Politics 8(2): 223-243.
• Xydis, Stephen, G. 1973. Cyprus: Reluctant Republic. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
• Young, Robert. J.C. 1990. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. Routledge.