Categories of Otherness in the Discursive Construction of National Identity During an Internal Conflict: Turks and Politically Organized Kurds in the Print Media

Authors

  • Ahmet Cevdet Aşkın

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.58262/ks.v10i2.182

Abstract

This article examines how Turkish national identity and otherness have been constructed in mainstream print media in Turkey during the ongoing ethnic conflict. The study applies critical discourse analysis to a sample of 449 news articles published in three leading mainstream dailies, Hürriyet, Milliyet, and Sabah, during a month of intensifying conflict between Turkish security forces and PKK militants in 2015. I identify five forms of discourse used to discursively construct national identity and otherness: military-legal, national-symbolic, cultural-ethical, dramatic-emotional, and ethnic. Together, these discourses construct a Turkish national identity while reinforcing the ‘other’ as illegitimate, non-national, unethical, inhumane, and non-Turk.

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Published

2022-10-31

How to Cite

Aşkın, A. C. (2022). Categories of Otherness in the Discursive Construction of National Identity During an Internal Conflict: Turks and Politically Organized Kurds in the Print Media. Kurdish Studies, 10(2), 85–102. https://doi.org/10.58262/ks.v10i2.182

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Section

Articles