The Transformation of The Media System in Turkey Citizenship Communication and Convergence Eylem Yanardagoglu Full Chapter PDF Scribd

The Transformation of the Media
System in Turkey: Citizenship,

Communication, and Convergence
Eylem Yanarda■o■lu
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-transformation-of-the-media-system-in-turkey-citiz
enship-communication-and-convergence-eylem-yanardagoglu/
GLOBAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN
MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION RESEARCH
A PALGRAVE AND IAMCR SERIES
The Transformation of
the Media System in Turkey
Citizenship, Communication,
and Convergence
Eylem Yanardağoğlu
IAMCR
AIECS
AIERI
Global Transformations in Media
and Communication Research - A Palgrave
and IAMCR Series
Series Editors
Marjan de Bruin
Chair Technical Working Group Equity
Diversity and Inclusion
The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus
Kingston, Jamaica
Claudia Padovani
Department of Politics, Law and International Studies
University of Padova
Padova, Italy
The International Association for Media and Communications Research
(IAMCR) has been, for over 50 years, a focal point and unique platform
for academic debate and discussion on a variety of topics and issues gener-
ated by its many thematic Sections and Working groups (see http://iamcr.
org/). This series specifically links to the intellectual capital of the IAMCR
and offers more systematic and comprehensive opportunities for the pub-
lication of key research and debates. It provides a forum for collective
knowledge production and exchange through trans-disciplinary contribu-
tions. In the current phase of globalizing processes and increasing interac-
tions, the series provides a space to rethink those very categories of space
and place, time and geography through which communication studies has
evolved, thus contributing to identifying and refining concepts, theories
and methods with which to explore the diverse realities of communication
in a changing world. Its central aim is to provide a platform for knowledge
exchange from different geo-cultural contexts. Books in the series contrib-
ute diverse and plural perspectives on communication developments
including from outside the Anglo-speaking world which is much needed
in today's globalized world in order to make sense of the complexities and
intercultural challenges communication studies are facing.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15018
Eylem Yanardağoğlu
The Transformation
of the Media System
in Turkey
Citizenship, Communication, and Convergence
Eylem Yanardağoğlu
New Media Department
Kadir Has University
Istanbul, Turkey
ISSN 2634-5978 ISSN 2634-5986 (electronic)

Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research - A Palgrave and
IAMCR Series
ISBN 978-3-030-83101-1 ISBN 978-3-030-83102-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83102-8
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Idealink Photography / Alamy Stock Photo
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my parents, Esma and Kürşad and in loving memory of grandfather
Ali Coşkun Yanardağoğlu
Praise for The Transformation of the Media System
in Turkey
“Turkey is a living lab where one can trace the transformation of the media in con-
nection with the changing definitions of the nation. This has become even more
prevalent in the aftermath of the Gezi Protests. This work eloquently elaborates the
dialectical relationship between the increasing authoritarianisation of the state and
the rise of social media along with new forms and formats of journalism. One of the
strongest aspects of this book is that it expertly demonstrates this process especially
after the critical turn of 2007 and successfully analyses the transformation of the
Turkish media system in relation to the Europeanisation and de-Europeanisation
of the state. This comprehensive work has brought together various disciplines
such as Media Studies, Political science, Sociology and European Studies.”
—Prof. Dr. Ayhan Kaya, Istanbul Bilgi University,
Department of International Relation
“Exploring the transformation of Turkey’s mediascape historically through the

lens of political and economic change, the book sparks a new understanding of the
‘capture’ of media since the beginning of 2000s. The analysis develops around a
number of themes such as Europeanization, de-Europeanization, media diversity
and Press Freedom, globalization and anti-globalization. It establishes the position
that the current relationship between media, politics and citizens, although
increasingly authoritarian, can only be understood as the continuation of already
established economic and political structures for the benefit of those in power.
The book also offers an insight into the possibility of a new media future in the
form of the born-digital and platform-based news media that emerged over the last
decade. The opportunities and possibilities for a new communicative space are
examined but not exaggerated. They are rather explored as rights to be fought
over and claimed.”
—Roza Tsagarousianou, Phd. Reader in Media and Communication,
Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI)
College of Design, Creative, and Digital Industries
University of Westminster
Acknowledgements
This book is a culmination of my research over the last 15 years. My PhD

research at City, University of London was conducted during the heyday
of Europeanisation reforms in the mid-2000s. In about a decade, Turkey’s
social and political context transitioned from a Europeanising, globalising
and democratising setting to an increasingly self-enclosed, dismal and
oppressive one. I have always found writing about Turkey challenging,
owing to the ever-shifting nature of the political context. Over the past
few years, the turbulent events in the country have also had poignant
effects on our morale as citizens. It has been emotionally onerous to wit-
ness journalists, friends and colleagues going through lawsuits and various
investigations. The media have also endured critical reconfiguration and
transition in the last decade.
In light of this transition, the idea of this book developed at the end of
2016 as I revisited my doctoral research that investigated the implications
of Europeanisation on the relationship between media and the citizenship
system in Turkey. When I was based as a visiting scholar at the University
of Westminster in London, specifically at the Communication and Media
Research Institute (CAMRI), for short periods in 2017 and 2018, I had
the opportunity to develop my ideas. I would like to thank Dr Anastasia
Kavada, Dr Roza Tsragarasianou and Professor Daya Thussu for their
hospitality.
The writing was delayed owing to the serious health problems that my
mother suffered from in 2019. In 2020, when the global pandemic struck,
I was still in the early phases of writing. The lockdowns that completely
challenged aspects of professional and personal routines ironically acted as
ix
x Acknowledgements
catalysers to wrap myself in a cocoon to complete the manuscript. Writing

has been mainly a solo endeavour, but I have always felt the indefatigable
encouragement of a group of colleagues, friends and family members. All
errors are mine alone.
I would like to extend my gratitude to Professor Ayhan Kaya at Bilgi
University in Istanbul for steering me in the right direction in the
Europeanisation literature. I am thankful to my colleagues also at Bilgi,
Professor Aslı Tunç and Associate Professor Erkan Saka who have shared
academic sources as well as insights over the writing period. I am also
thankful for my colleagues at Kadir Has University, especially Professor
Lerna Yanık and Dr Özen Baş, for their collegiality and moral support
during the writing phase. I have to express my thanks to my former profes-
sors at City, University of London: Professor Howard Tumber, Professor
John Solomos, Professor Anthony Woodiwiss and Professor Frank
Webster—who got me thinking about journalism, human rights, media
and citizenship in the first place. I must acknowledge the scholarships at
City University, and the School of Social Sciences bursary; the Scientific
and Technological Research Council of Turkey Post-doctoral Research
Award; and Kadir Has University personal research grants I have received
over the years.
My most sincere thanks go to Professor Aydın Uğur of Bilgi University
and Professor Sevda Alankuş of Yaşar University who hold a special place
in my academic and professional development. Their nuanced guidance
has always helped me to develop my thinking. I am indebted to them both
for taking time to read and comment on various sections of the manu-
script. Their support has been very reassuring. I thank my series editors Dr
Claudia Padovani and Dr Marjan de Bruin for their invaluable feedback in
the initial stages of planning and writing. I am honoured by their trust in
me as the single author of this title. I am also indebted to my editors at
Palgrave for their patience and kindness in making this process as orderly
as possible, and my anonymous reviewers for their worthwhile feedback. I
could not have completed this book without the help of my former stu-
dent Neval Turhallı, who kindly assisted me with the intricacies of the
word processor and has been a source of enthusiasm all along. I am grate-
ful to Emre Dörter and Esra Yalçınalp for their suggestions during the
selection of the cover photo.
I am deeply appreciative of the contributions of all the participants and
respondents in the various projects that culminated in this manuscript.
Some of them remain anonymous and some are not with us any longer,
Acknowledgements xi
but without their insight, comments, observations and experiences this

book would never have been realised.
I am grateful for my friends in Turkey and abroad. I thank Burcu Sümer,
Canan Genlik, Chiara Misto, Esra Ercan Bilgiç, Hakan Tuncel, Helen
Hughes, Nick Edström, Seda Yüksel, Sheila Mullen, Umut Bozkurt, and
Yorgos Dedes who have cheered me on during various stages of my aca-
demic projects over the years. My family members, especially my uncle
̇
Ilhan Sinan Demirtaş and cousin Mert Yanardağoğlu have been steadfast
sources of love and support.
Finally, I personally acknowledge the optimism, patience, endurance
and encouragement of my mother Esma Demirtaş and father Kürşat
Yanardağoğlu, throughout my academic journey. Their love and dedica-
tion have always been my sources of inspiration and strength.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Nation, Media and Communicative Space 29
3 Politics, Media and Citizenship in Modern Turkey 59
4 Europeanisation Reforms and Early AKP Era 91
5 New Media and Politics of Communicative Citizenship125
6 Restructuring of the Media System and New Media

Convergence151
7 Conclusion191
Appendix211
Index215
xiii
About the Author
Eylem Yanardağoğlu is an associate professor and head of the New

Media department at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. She received her
PhD at City, University of London’s Sociology department. She has
taught courses such as Introduction to New Media, Theories of Media
and New Media, Social Media, Online Journalism and International
Communication at various undergraduate and post-graduate levels. Her
research interests include news production and consumption, digital citi-
zenship, digital journalism, digital platforms and transational expansion of
Turkish TV series.
xv
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
At the beginning of the millennium, the premises upon which Turkish

cultural identity were based fundamentally differed from twentieth-
century conceptualisations (Kasaba & Bozdoğan, 2000). The
Europeanisation process that accelerated at the beginning of the 2000s
catalysed a shift in Turkish modernisation, from an ‘authoritarian’ and
‘dirigiste’ (Sofos, 2001), ‘state-led’ modern project based on cultural and
national unity (Keyder, 1997) to a more ‘multicultural’ enterprise (Aydın
& Keyman, 2004).
Turkey has been ruled by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and
Development Party (AKP) since 2002. When it was initially in govern-
ment, the AKP took Europeanisation seriously, passing a number of liber-
alising reforms that were aimed at EU integration. However, contempt for
political rights and civil liberties began to grow. Critics note that the par-
ty’s authoritarian nature began to develop after 2008 when the
Constitutional Court found the AKP responsible for anti-secular activities,
although it did not shut the party down (Article 19). This authoritarian
move was consolidated following a failed coup attempt in 2016 (Freedom
House, 2020), which triggered a dramatic crackdown on perceived oppo-
nents of the leadership, most notably the media, civil society, politicians
and academics. In recent years, observers have noted that free expression
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
E. Yanardağoğlu, The Transformation of the Media System in Turkey,
Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research - A
Palgrave and IAMCR Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83102-8_1
2 E. YANARDAĞOĞLU
for citizens, civil society representatives, activists, journalists, artists and

academics has begun to be limited.1
The media markets are dominated by several vertically integrated indus-
trial and financial conglomerates and ‘political parallelism’. This was evi-
dent in the print and broadcasting sectors in Turkey before the AKP came
to power, but the existing ‘clientelist media system evolved further in its
tenure (Bayazit, 2016; Kaya & Çakmur, 2010, Yıldırım et al., 2021).
During the Gezi Park protests in 2013, large-scale media censorship
became apparent and pressure on mainstream and non-partisan media
increased. In 2014, the World Press Freedom Index (2014) noted that
Turkey’s rating had dropped from ‘partly free’ to ‘not free’. The country
was shaken by seven major terrorist attacks and a failed coup attempt
between July 2015 and 31 December 2016.2 During this period, restric-
tions and temporary bans on broadcast as well as social media were imple-
mented (Yanardağoğlu, 2019). The largest media outlets, owned by
corporate holding companies that depend heavily on government pro-
curement contracts, were vulnerable to government pressure (Freedom
House, 2015). In 2016, a new law enabled the government to suspend or
block internet access in case of war or national emergency (Freedom
House, 2016). Following the acquisition of major mainstream media con-
glomerate Doğan Media Group by pro-government Demirören Holding
in 2018, almost 90 per cent of all media outlets are owned by pro-govern-
ment businessmen at the time of writing (Yanardağoğlu, 2019).3
Constitutional changes adopted in 2017 concentrated power in the
hands of the president. The national elections in 2018 were held under
‘extreme polarization’ between two electoral alliances,4 and marked ‘a
turning point’ in Turkey’s political system from a parliamentary system
1
In 2016, more than 2000 academics signed an open letter calling on Turkey to stop a
military offensive in the Kurdish south-east; the government dismissed at least 400 of the
participants in response, and 204 had been given prison sentences by late 2019. However,
the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of a group of purged academics in a July 2019 deci-
sion (Freedom House, 2020).
2
The incidents were: 20 July 2015: Suruç bomb attack; 10 October 2015: Ankara bomb
attack; 12 January 2016: Istanbul bomb attack; 13 March 2016: Ankara; 19 March 2016:
Istanbul bomb attack; 28 June 2016: Istanbul airport attack; 15 July 2016: coup attempt; 31
December 2016: Istanbul nightclub bomb attack.
3
For details see: https://m.bianet.org/english/politics/208107-who-controls-the-
media-in-turkey (Aydınlı, 2019).
4
The People’s Allies comprised the Islamist/conservative AKP and the ultranationalist
̇
Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (MHP), while the National Allies (Millet Ittifakı) comprised
Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) and IYI ̇ ̇ Party (centre right), together with two other small
right-wing parties.
1 INTRODUCTION 3
into a presidential system (Kaptan, 2020: 3986). Erdoğan won a second

term in June 2018, with 52.6 per cent of the vote in the first round.
Although opposition party victories in the 2019 municipal elections
challenged the AKP’s omnipotent position, when candidates from the
Republican People’s Party (CHP) won the mayoral elections in Istanbul
and Ankara after two decades,5 Turkey was the worst jailer in that year of
professional journalists and persecution of civil society, academia, politi-
cians and citizens—and ranked 159 in the 2019 World Press Freedom
Index. The government also extended its attempts to control online
sources of news and information (Freedom House, 2020). In July 2020,
the parliament approved a new law that requires international content
providers with more than a million daily users, such as Facebook and
Twitter, to appoint local representatives in Turkey and to remove con-
tent within 48 hours if so ordered. Companies that fail to comply are
subject to heavy fines and eventual restrictions on their bandwidth
(Freedom House, 2021).
The mediasphere in Turkey has also become highly polarised across the
political spectrum (Konda, 2016, 2019), with readers/audience split on a
traditional/new media axis as well as in terms of pro-government/pro-
opposition media. Television is dominant in terms of news access, despite
increasing internet use and penetration among the adult population.
There is also a significant amount of news media access via social media in
the young urban educated cohort (Yanardağoğlu, 2020).
Turkey’s media system (Hallin & Mancini, 2004) is considered to have
‘mixed’ characteristics (Bek-Gencel, 2010) and to be grouped with the
polarised pluralist/Mediterranean models (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010; Uce &
De Swert, 2010). The ‘press-party parallelism’,6 which in Turkey existed
from the early Republican period and diminished in the 1980s, is an attri-
bute of the polarised pluralist/Mediterranean models (Bayram, 2010). It
was reinstated after 2007 with the emergence of a pro-government pool
media in the latter periods of the AKP governments (Irak, 2016: 338).7
5
The Supreme Electoral Council ordered a rerun of the election in Istanbul, but candidate
̇
Ekrem Imamoğ lu won again in June 2019.
6
Press Party Paralellism is a concept that is used to refer to the affinity between the political
system and media system. Kaya and Çakmur (2010: 522) explain political parellism as the
‘degree and nature of the links between media and political parties or, more broadly the
extent to which the media systems reflect major political cleavages in the society’.
7
The six newspapers in the pool media are Yeni Şafak, Star, Akşam, Türkiye, Sabah and
Yeni Akit (Irak, 2016). https://www.compol.it/rivista/special-issue/interrogating-the-
analytical-value-of-media-system-for-comparative-political-communicationsilvio-waisbord/.
4 E. YANARDAĞOĞLU
With similarities to non-Western systems, the Turkish media system was

seen as a ‘combination of state power with the power of capital’ in which
‘authoritarian state control’ was coupled with neoliberal elements. But it
remained ‘under-examined’ until recently when compared with its non-
Western counterparts (Yeşil, 2016: 3, 2018: 240). In the wake of ‘height-
ened concerns about democratic backsliding in Turkey, where the political
system is said to be transitioning from a pre-dominant party system to com-
petitive authoritarianism’, there is renewed interest in analysing the transfor-
mation of the media system, mainly focusing on an analysis of conventional
media (Yıldırım et al., 2021: 327) I intend to look at aspects of the transfor-
mation of the media system in Turkey by taking into account a previously
neglected facet—new media—because it remains to be seen how communi-
cative spaces are being affected by its development (Waisboard, 2020).8
The study also examines the media system in Turkey through the lens
of rights and citizenship. It attempts to bring together a perspective that
considers processes such as Europeanisation, de-Europeanisation and digi-
talisation in relation to communication and citizenship, thereby arriving at
a holistic view of the transformation of the media under AKP rule.
It is generally accepted that via ‘participation in and through the media’
people put their ‘right to communicate into practice’ (Carpentier, 2007:
89). In Turkey, citizens’ participation in this way has historically taken dif-
ferent forms; these include officially acknowledged minorities’ community
media organisations, state-led minority language broadcasts, tactical media
during Gezi Park protests as well as native digital citizen journalist net-
works. Here, I will track the transformation of the media system in all its
aspects (mainstream, minority, alternative, native digital) since the begin-
ning of the 2000s through the trajectories of normative, communicative,
participative and entrepreneurial citizenship practices. This work dovetails
with the transformation of the media system in Turkey vis-à-vis these
changing citizenship practices, and includes an emphasis on new media
convergence.
Turkey’s political changes over the last two decades show a transition
from a democratising, Europeanising parliamentary republic to a presi-
dential system that is increasingly de-Europeanising and anti-globalising,
8
Waisboard (2020) further argues that ‘mediatization and the blending of traditional and
digital media has completely upended politics, regardless of historical particularities’ and that
more recently, mediated populism ‘has been a scourge in different media systems such as
those in Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, the United States, and Venezuela’.
1 INTRODUCTION 5
and showing (albeit weak) authoritarian tendencies (Somer, 2016). Under

the AKP and Erdoğan, Turkey has become one of the ‘most polarized
countries in the world’ which had ‘undergone a significant democratic
breakdown’ (Somer, 2019: 42). This book is an attempt to observe, with
a communication sciences focus, how these changes have affected the
country’s media structure.
Based on research that was conducted over a span of 15 years, the book
includes aspects of the author’s doctoral and post-doctoral research proj-
ects. These were funded through institutional grants and scholarships pro-
vided by London City University Social Sciences Institute, the Scientific
and Technological Research Council of Turkey, a personal post-doctoral
research abroad grant and a Kadir Has University personal research
grant scheme.
1.1 The Media in Turkey: A Brief Overview

Turkey boasts a diverse media environment, with 14 national television
channels, 172 national newspapers, 13 national radio channels, 73 per
cent internet penetration, and a dynamic online user community with 42
million users (Media Ownership Monitor, 2017, We are Social 2020).
Despite its diversity and external pluralism, the influence of political paral-
lelism and censorship on the media has been increasing over the last decade
(Bayram, 2010; Kaya & Çakmur, 2010; McQuail, 1992: 145).9
The country’s mass media have been regarded as an agent of moderni-
sation, with journalists as part of the modernising ‘bureaucratic elite’,
since the nineteenth century (Zürcher, 1998). When the Republic was
established, radio was charged with the duty to defend the new regime
and disseminate its ideals. Mass journalism began in the 1950s with the
transition to a multi-party regime. Since the first military coup in 1960,
military interventions have mainly shaped broadcasting and
9
According to McQuail (1992), the external diversity of media indicates the level of access
in any given media structure. It raises the question whether a wide range of political and
socio-cultural differences in society corresponds to ‘an equivalent range of separate and
autonomous media channels, each catering exclusively for its own group or interest’ (1992:
145–146). Internal diversity, on the other hand, refers to a single channel or sector in which
a wide range of contents or points of view are offered. Kaya and Çakmur (2010: 522) explain
political parallelism as the ‘degree and nature of the links between media and political parties
or, more broadly the extent to which the media systems reflect major political cleavages in
the society’.
6 E. YANARDAĞOĞLU
communication policies (Kejanlıoğlu, 2004). In 1964, Turkish Radio and

Television (TRT) was founded as a public service broadcaster. After the
second military intervention on 12 March 1971, the autonomy of TRT
was repealed, replacing the notion of public service with that of state
broadcasting. The third military coup of 12 September 1980 put limits on
all forms of political and cultural expression, and placed print and broad-
casting media under tight control.
The military government that stayed in power until the 1983 elections
designated what the media could print and transmit, proscribing taboo
subjects. These were usually in line with the prevailing Republican state
ideology regarding the Kurds, non-Muslim minorities and left-wing polit-
ical philosophies. The use of Kurdish in broadcasting was also banned
(Kejanlıoğlu, 2001a, b; Tılıç, 2001).
Expressions of cultural identities in the public realm have been highly
politicised, and they have been shaped by the prevalent discourse on citi-
zenship. This has also had a bearing on who has been included in the
national communicative space, and under what conditions.
In Europe, a number of interrelated developments such as migration’,
‘economic globalisation’, ‘cultural denationalisation’, the growing global
salience of ‘transnational institutions and human rights’ have been broad-
ening the scope of citizenship (Tambini, 2001). Cultural diversity in
Turkey was not brought about by post-war migration, as seen in Europe,
but by the historical presence of national minorities,10 a state of affairs that
is still prevalent in Eastern Europe. In this sense, Turkey is an example of
‘weak multiculturalism’, which protects individual rights but also respects
group rights for officially recognised minorities (Yumul, 2005).11 However,
the controversial issue of collective rights concerning the Kurds has been
one of the most disputed issues in Turkish politics.
Media ownership began to change in the 1980s owing to economic
pressures. New business elites, with investments in finance, tourism, con-
struction, banking, steel or the automotive industry, acquired major print
outlets. The intricate relationship between politicians and media owners
that is based on favours and trade benefits has impeded media freedom
10
Kymlicka argues for a need to address different patterns of cultural diversity and to dis-
tinguish ‘national minorities’, which are ‘distinct and potentially self-governing societies’,
‘from ‘ethnic groups’, which are ‘immigrants who have left their national community to
enter another society’ (Kymlicka, 1995: 19).
11
Yumul (2005) took on the concept in relation to official non-Muslim minorities.
1 INTRODUCTION 7
and editorial integrity in Turkey since the late 1980s (Tılıç, 2001). The
largest media outlets, owned by corporate holding companies that depend
heavily on government procurement contracts, have been vulnerable to
government pressure (Freedom House, 2015). Despite a seemingly
diverse media structure, governments have usually utilised laws and regu-
lations in order to institutionalise hegemonic discourse around issues of
diversity and citizenship (Yanardağoğlu, 2013).
In the 1990s, Turkey had one of the world’s worst records on media
freedom owing to the assassination and imprisonment of journalists from
marginal left-wing groups and the oppositional Kurdish press, as well as
social democratic and Kemalist journalists (Tılıç, 2001). An open discus-
sion of this problem and also the use of taboo words such as ‘Kurds’ was
still problematic because journalists and politicians faced the threat that
they would be stigmatised as separatists (Somer, 2005). The press thus
had to shift its focus and style of reporting from politics towards entertain-
ment, culture and lifestyle. Weekly magazines broadened their thematic
output, covering issues that related to women, youth and the environ-
ment. Islamic-leaning newspapers such as Zaman also emerged in this
period (Uğur, 2002).
Paradoxically, the Kurdish insurgency brought about a general aware-
ness regarding cultural diversity, and this generated debate in the public
realm. It is possible to identify a set of internal and external factors that
changed the way in which the media represented cultural diversity in
Turkey during the 1980s and 1990s. The internal factors include the
impact of military interventions and the rise of the Kurdish nationalist
movement. The external factors include the end of the Cold War, interna-
tional conflicts such as the Gulf War and the importance of a democracy
and human rights discourse, which created an awareness of these issues
among media professionals. The other significant external factor at a more
general level was the influence of globalisation on mass media and national
communication policies.
How media regulation took place in modern Turkey can best be evalu-
ated in line with the processes of modernisation, democratisation, globali-
sation and Europeanisation (Keyman, 2010). The first attempts to
integrate with the emerging global media structure began during the first
Motherland Party (ANAP) government (1983–1987), when steps were
taken to gain access to emerging satellite technologies. Such initiatives
became necessary because new communications technologies were a
8 E. YANARDAĞOĞLU
significant aspect of global neo-liberal economic transformation. They also

helped to strengthen ties with Europe’s communications infrastructure
(Kejanlıoğlu, 2004).
The state monopoly on broadcasting was broken on 1 March 1990,
and Law No. 3984 Broadcasting Act was enacted in April 1993; this
allowed the foundation of commercial radio and television channels, and
also established the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) as the
regulator for commercial TV and radio outlets (Çaplı & Tuncel, 2005).
Between 1991 and 2002, there were several short-lived coalition gov-
ernments as well as increased corruption and nepotism in politics (Akser &
Baybars- Hawks, 2012). During this period media conglomerates who
established intricate ties with the world of politics also acquired some sort
of ‘autonomy’ and an ability to use the power of their media outlets ‘to
intervene in important political decisions (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010).
In 1997, a short-lived coalition between the Welfare Party and the True
Path Party ended when the National Security Council declared political
Islam to be more dangerous than Kurdish nationalism (Ahmad, 2003).
The so-called 28 February process was dubbed a ‘post-modern coup’, and
was considered to be the result of secular resistance from military and civic
circles backed by the mainstream media, which supported the ‘discourse
of secularism’ against the perceived threat of political Islam to middle-class
lifestyles (Özcan, 2000: 56).
Critics believed that a catalyst for ending the legitimacy crisis and
democratising issues around Islamist and Kurdish opposition in this period
was to be found in Turkey’s ongoing bid for European Union (EU) mem-
bership (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010). The European Union Summit of 1999,
held in Helsinki, marked Turkey’s commitment to EU integration, and
ushered in a reform period that became a significant form of leverage in
terms of democratisation of citizenship in Turkey.
In 2001, the AKP came to power. Between 2000 and 2006, a number
of key reforms were introduced within a total of eight EU harmonisation
packages; these involved changes in existing legislation and the enactment
of 89 new laws (M. Demir, Hürriyet, 21 March 2001). The period
between 1999 and 2006 is considered to have seen the ‘Europeanization
of media and media freedom’ in Turkey (Yılmaz, 2016a, b).
Starting in 2007, Turkish politics entered a new phase, in which the
Republican and secular political hegemony was replaced with AKP’s ‘New
Turkey’, which reflected a new political consensus. Consolidation of the
AKP’s pro-Islamist, conservative, single-party rule continued throughout
1 INTRODUCTION 9
the 2000s, and the momentum of Europeanisation significantly declined

after 2007—which also marked the second term of the AKP in power
(Yeşil, 2018; Yılmaz, 2016a, b).
President Erdoğan subsequently encouraged certain businessmen sym-
pathetic to the AKP to pool their resources and create media groups, the
so-called proponent media (yandaş medya) that backed the AKP govern-
ment. The creation of the Albayrak and Çalık media groups, which are
close to the AKP authorities and counterbalance the established Doğan
and Ciner media groups, seen to reflect the ‘old’ Turkey, can be consid-
ered to be a continuation of the ‘old game of political parallelisms and
tutelage’ that has played out in the relationship between politics and the
mass media (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010: 532). The internet also began to be
limited and censored during this period (Yeşil et al., 2017).
From 2007 onwards, the momentum of Europeanisation began to
decline and the EU’s impact on the country’s legal framework waned. For
instance, Article 301 of the Penal Code, which addresses the offences
committed by ‘insulting Turkishness’, was widely used to prosecute jour-
nalists and writers.12 It was also used to block certain platforms on the
internet, most notably YouTube for more than two years between 2008
and 2010 (Tunç & Görgülü, 2012).
The AKP managed to secure a third term in power in the June 2011
elections, and Mr. Erdoğan secured 50 per cent of the votes.
De-Europeanisation has become a more dominant form of governance
from this point, despite new legislation in the area of media freedom
(Yılmaz, 2016a, b). Until the 2013 Gezi Park protests, which began at the
end of May in Istanbul, the increasing digitalisation of media had little
impact, if any, on political parallelism in the print and broadcasting sectors
(Tunç & Görgülü, 2012). During these protests, wide-scale media censor-
ship became apparent, and this had profound consequences for main-
̇
stream outlets (Inceoğ lu, 2013). Mostly as a reaction to this news
censorship, protestors with mobile internet connections, smartphones,
laptops, tablets and 3G modems created their own alternative media,
beginning on the third day of the protests (Yanardağoğlu, 2017a).
12
The chief editor of the Armenian Agos newspaper—Hrant Dink—was shot dead in
Istanbul in January 2007 in broad daylight in front of his newspaper offices by a 17-year-old
teenager, apparently because he insulted ‘Turkishness’ in one of his newspaper essays (The
Economist, 2007).
10 E. YANARDAĞOĞLU
By the time of Gezi’s first anniversary, journalists were under increasing

pressure from their senior editors or media owners to apply self-censorship,
so as to avoid direct government interference in their affairs
(Mediabarometer, 2014). In 2014, Turkey’s press freedom record declined
sharply, and it dropped from being ‘partly free’ to ‘not free’ on the World
Press Freedom Index after 15 years.
The previously existing good relationship between the AKP and the
Gülen movement13 ended during this period, and a fight against the so-
called ‘parallel state’ began (Arslan, 2014). Polarisation in the media sector
grew as media organisations that were considered to be ‘Kurdish’, ‘leftist’
or Gülenist lost their accreditation for AKP or state institutions’ press
meetings (Önderoğlu, 2015). Media outlets such as Zaman were raided,
and journalists were detained in 2014 as part of an ongoing crackdown on
supporters of the Gülen movement (Freedom House, 2014, 2015).
At the end of 2013 voice recordings of AKP politicians were leaked on
the internet, revealing one of the largest corruption scandals. Youtube and
other social media websites were blocked or throttled a few times during
the events which also marked the beginning of the AKP implementing
further measures to control possible threats posed by digital communica-
tion. In February 2014, amendments to the Internet Law (No. 5651)
were introduced. The power of the Telecommunication Authority (TIB) ̇
was expanded to include the ability to block websites without prior court
approval. This also made it possible to block access to content based on
URLs, so individual posts online could also be blocked.14 The law allowed
websites that carried offensive material to be taken down by TIB ̇ if they
were posted domestically (Freedom House, 2014). A newly formed
Association for Access Providers was put in place to centrally enforce
blocking orders. Access to both Twitter and YouTube was blocked prior
to the local elections held on 30 March 2014 (Yeşil et al., 2017: 8–10).
The years 2015 and 2016 were very turbulent, the country being
shaken (as previously noted) by major terrorist attacks and a coup attempt
between July 2015 and 21 December 2016. During this period, restric-
tions and temporary bans on conventional and new media were
13
Fethullah Gülen is an Islamic cleric who lives in the United States since 1999. The move-
ment which is now known as FETÖ (Fethullah Terrorist Organization) is believed to have
infiltrated to all sections of bureaucracy, including the army over the course of last 30 years.
In 2014, it was declared to constitute a national security threat (Yanardağoğlu, 2017b).
14
Although a court order was expected within 48 hours for a block to remain in place.
1 INTRODUCTION 11
implemented. In June 2016, a new law enabled the government to sus-

pend or block internet access in case of war or national emergency
(Freedom House, 2015, 2016).
In the aftermath of the failed coup on 15 July 2016, there was a severe
crackdown on the media. Within six months, a total of 178 media compa-
nies had been shut down and the credentials of more than 700 journalists
had been revoked (Reporters Without Borders, 2016). In addition, the
AKP’s control over internet governance was tightening (Yeşil et al., 2017).
The two-year period between the Gezi Park protests and the 7 June
2015 general elections witnessed a significant reconfiguration in Turkish
politics as well as in its media system. It has been argued that ‘Turkey
moved to a qualitatively different phase of authoritarianism and regime
security’ (Kaygusuz, 2018: 295). The authoritarian turn within the AKP,
which became more visible with the 2015 elections, also marked the final
demise of conventional mainstream media.
When the credibility of the mainstream news channels was shaken dur-
ing the Gezi Park protests, citizen journalism emerged as a response—
counterbalancing the infringement of citizens’ right to communicate. Its
eventual success encouraged new online news production initiatives, espe-
cially more professional sites. The efforts of these ‘digitally literate citi-
zens’ who gave birth to ‘new civic initiatives’ also ‘paved the way to the
mainstreaming of digital alternatives in contemporary Turkey’ (Saka,
2019: 43). In the post-Gezi setting, critics observed five categories in the
emerging new media system: pro-government actors, traditional pro-
opposition actors, civil society-supported actors with mixed various busi-
ness models, international actors and start-ups (Uzunoğlu, 2020).
Instances in which new media are appropriated by existing outlets are
considered to be hybrid media systems, in which old and new media logics
operate together (Chadwick, 2013 in Tunç, 2018). According to some
observers, Turkey moved to a ‘post-mainstream’ media setting after 2015,
in which native digital platforms and new appropriations of social media
such as YouTube or Periscope (by former mainstream or freelance journal-
ists and/or information activists) embarked on a quest for viable business
models that would sustain independent journalism in the face of a dead-
lock in the traditional media system. Some of those who led the way, from
the younger generation of journalists, could be defined as ‘entrepreneurial
journalists’ (Konieczna, 2020). The following chapters review these devel-
opments, and consider whether new forms of convergence and entrepre-
neurial journalism may indeed create an increasingly hybrid media system
in which old and new media logics co-exist.
1.2 Theoretical Framework and Methods

In Western Europe, the main form of collective or cultural identity for the
last two hundred years has been primarily structured within the nation
state. The ‘national identity’, which facilitated the transition from a tradi-
tional to a modern society that was based on standardised education and
pervasive mass media, especially in the common dominant language, held
a significant role in the creation of national consciousness.
Mass media were an integral part of the rise of modern societies because
they had the power to form ‘a common symbolic environment’ and ‘new
ways of social interaction’ among people (Thompson, 1995: 3). The
media was considered to be central to the process of forging an emergent
national identity; it helped people to ‘imagine’ themselves as part of the
collective entity (Anderson, 1983). It also ‘persuaded’ them to accept the
traditions, myths and ceremonies that would demarcate them as a nation
separate from others (Louw, 2005). The style of messages and their trans-
mission also determined who was to be included in the national culture,
because only those who understood the message conveyed was part of the
moral and economic community (Gellner, 1983: 127). The national
media systems were eventually granted cultural monopoly, and standardi-
sation of a print language enabled the nation to be conceived as an ‘imag-
ined community’ (Anderson, 1983). The role of communication systems
was significant not only in the creation of national consciousness but also
in the transition to modernity.15
A nation is also ‘an entity which produces meanings—a system of cul-
tural representation’ because it provides its citizens with an ‘anchorage in
the social world’ through standardised education, dominant language and
pervasive mass media (Hall, 1982: 292). Over time, it became the princi-
pal venue for the exercise of citizenship; it defined people’s legal status and
sought to establish a common and homogeneous cultural ground (Turner,
2001). Media are implicated in the exercise and formation of citizenship
because they provide citizens with news, analysis and information, enabling
15
As Curran (2002: 167–168) stated, this view was propagated in Daniel Lerner’s Passing
of Traditional Society (1964) as part of more general modernisation theories. Lerner’s the-
ory of modernisation was specifically relevant to Turkey and the Middle East. As Karpat
noted (1973: 22), the main interpretation of these theories was that ‘traditional’ societies
were disappearing ‘by adopting new modes of communicating ideas and attitudes through
the mass use of tabloids, radios and movies’.
1 INTRODUCTION 13
citizens to voice their viewpoints via various forms of communication

(Murdock, 1992).
In media as a sphere within which all cultural identities are represented,
the ‘right to communicate’ emerges as a significant aspect of democratisa-
tion (Splichal, 1993; White, 1995). This incorporates traditional free-
doms, such as freedom of thought and expression, and also involves the
‘right to participate in the management of the mass media and communi-
cation organizations’ (Splichal, 1993: 11).
Media systems in culturally diverse societies are sometimes expected to
perform contradictory roles: on the one hand, they are expected to express
and maintain ‘national cultural identity’; on the other hand, they are
expected to express and maintain ‘sub-national and cultural identities
based on religion, language, or other attributes’ (McQuail, 2001: 74).
The classic interpretation of the public sphere has assumed congruence
between the media and the national culture. The nation state, as the main
‘communicative space’ (Schlesinger, 2000), has been considered to be a
useful framework with which to evaluate the ‘old era’ in which communi-
cations and media systems stayed within national borders. The public ser-
vice media in Europe were attributed a special role in the creation of a
robust political and cultural identity for citizens, providing equal access to
the formation of public opinion.
Most nation states strive to protect their media systems in what could
be called the market for loyalties opposed to the forces of globalisation.
The drive to protect this market revolves around setting ‘the rules about
who can speak, who can shape media structures or what messages course
within the society’ ‘in the name of national identity’ (Price, 2002: 36).
However, decentralising, dislocating and fragmenting the forces of glo-
balisation has jeopardised the old coherent collective identities in modern
societies (Louw, 2005: 95).
The old relationship between media and nation, as implicated in the
notion of a single common public sphere, has been contested by several
factors such as immigration, regionalisation, advances in new technologies
and the growing impact of bodies such as the EU within global gover-
nance (Morley, 2000; Murdock, 1992). According to Soysal (1996:
24–25), these developments have led to the recognition and accommoda-
tion of cultural and linguistic diversity within nation states, but they have
also revealed the paradox of the ‘two normative principles of the global
system: national sovereignty and universal human rights’.
Although citizenship is mainly viewed as a form of political member-

ship, identity politics and emerging cultural forms of citizenship have cri-
tiqued the boundaries of dominant narratives of national culture and
catalysed citizenship to become broader and more inclusive (Schuster &
Solomos, 2001). According to Turner (2001: 3–4), having access to cul-
tural citizenship entails questions about mass media and what it means to
make an ‘intervention’ in the public sphere at local, national and
global levels.
If the media in general are implicated in the formation of a universal
national identity and culture, it can be argued that minority media prac-
tices represent a disruption or an interruption to this process—because
they reflect particular interests and audiences and often use a language that
is separate from the mainstream or national linguistic idiom. One way of
looking at the relationship between media, democracy and citizenship per-
tains to the media system’s ability to maintain plurality or ‘de-
monopolisation’ of media sources and outlets. This is especially relevant to
the ability of minority groups to have access to their media in culturally
diverse societies (Rozumilowicz, 2002).
The emergence of sub-national movements in Europe challenged ‘the
traditional definitions of national culture’ because of a lack of sufficient
representation of cultural identities in public media structures (Murdock,
1992: 34). The growing complexity of European societies owing to con-
temporary flows of immigration has also made issues of representation and
visibility of ethnic minorities within media systems a matter of concern
(Silverstone & Georgiou, 2005). The term ‘diaspora’ has become a crucial
concept for the theorisation of immigration, ethnicity and identity in rela-
tion to communication media (Sreberny, 2000: 179). Dayan (1998: 105)
considers ‘particularistic media’ to be instrumental in ‘transmitting mem-
ory and filiation’ for fragile communities such as minority groups, immi-
grants and exiles, and diasporas such as the Armenians, Jews and Kurds.
Since the end of the Second World War, the normative and state-bound
scope of citizenship has been challenged by global forces. Most of the
challenges have involved the development of supranational bodies such as
the EU and the ascendance of international human rights instruments. As
a result of these challenges, citizenship has begun to be conceived as a
‘transnational matter’ (Isin & Turner, 2002), and citizens began to look
to the internationally defined human rights instruments. outside national
borders, for their rights (Turner, 1993). From the mid-1980s onwards, a
process of cultural denationalisation, with an accelerating decline in the
1 INTRODUCTION 15
nation state’s capacity to control the representations of linguistic and cul-

tural differences in the realm of national communications, began to take
place in European media systems (Tambini, 2001). The media space,
which entails communicating, propagating and interacting, is also a sym-
bolic arena in which struggles to make sense of what citizenship entails are
increasingly configured in a regional or global perspective (Cammaerts,
2007: 220).
New technologies such as the internet and mobile phones also broaden
‘citizen’s media practices’ and ‘diversify their entries and activities in the
public sphere (Harju, 2007: 98). In this view, media are bound up with
citizenship because they are involved in the formation of our understand-
ing of the meanings that are given to civic participation. Alternative media,
which are more critical and counter-hegemonic than mainstream counter-
parts, offer access to citizens to participate in news production, thereby dis-
solving the distinction between audience and producers (Atkinson, 2010).
The use of new technologies involves a shift from receiving to seeking
information. This involves a change in process for reaching informed citi-
zenship goals. The process of convergence in digital media continues to
break down the traditional separation between production and consump-
tion of media forms and formats, handing more ‘power and agency’ to
ordinary citizens in the process (Fenton, 2012: 126). One of the ‘political
effects’ of digital communication practices was similarly seen in this pro-
cess of converting ‘media consumers into producers’ (Bennet, 2004: 124).
In the contemporary ‘participatory culture’ (Jenkins, 2006), ordinary
people can engage in political activities by creating and distributing their
own content (Veenstra et al., 2014). Social media platforms such as
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube also facilitate user participation and pro-
duction as well as distribution of user-generated content (Gerbaudo,
2012; MacNamara, 2010).
During the recent waves of political unrest in various parts of the
world—the so-called Arab Spring (2010–2011), the global Occupy move-
ment (2011)—Twitter’s technical qualities were noted for facilitating citi-
zen journalism and blurring the line between journalists and audiences
(Gerbaudo, 2012; Papacharissi, 2015). The tendency for citizens to
become increasingly involved in news and information production was
noted as a positive function of social networking sites. As the convergence
of digital media continues to break down the traditional separation
between production and consumption of media forms and formats,
significant power and agency can be conferred upon ‘ordinary citizens’ in

the process (Fenton, 2012: 124).
This book is based on qualitative research that adopts a case study
approach and utilises various research techniques. The case study is a
research strategy rather than a method, and focuses on the natural setting
of the phenomenon in question. It is a form of empirical research within
which multiple methods of data collection can be utilised in order to
investigate ‘a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context’
(Blaikie, 2000; Denscombe, 2003; Stark & Torrance, 2005; Yin, 2003).
Case studies also allow researchers to ‘focus on relationships and pro-
cesses’ (Denscombe, 2003: 31) or on ‘contextual conditions’ (Yin, 2003:
13) that help to illuminate the phenomena under investigation. Deciding
which case studies should be included in a research project requires the
researchers to choose from a number of possible events, people or organ-
isations (Denscombe, 2003). A case can be selected because it possesses
the typical attributes within which the findings can be generalised or
because it is an extreme instance that contradicts existing norms
(Denscombe, 2003; Yin, 2003).
One of the cases that began to probe into the relationship between citi-
zen and communication involved the media for non-Muslim communities
because they are typical community media in Turkey. The other case
focused on the beginnings of broadcasting in different languages, first on
TRT and later on local television, which represented (during the
Europeanisation reform period in early 2000s) a contrast with the norm.
One of the greatest strengths of the case study method is considered to be
its flexibility (Robson, 2011), which allows researchers to adapt their
investigations to emergent situations. When following the trajectory of
the relationship between media, communication and citizenship in Turkey,
the flexibility of this case study strategy allowed a response to be made to
the emerging context in the following years, so that formations such as
citizen journalism networks, fact-checking initiatives and other native dig-
ital platforms could be considered.
The data that inform this book have been drawn from a number of in-
depth, informal interviews and formal documents such as reports, newspa-
per articles and international conventions or treaties, which are among the
major sources that provide the corpus of data for case studies (Yin, 2003).
Formal documents have largely been gathered through the use of
online sources and databases. Informal texts have been gathered from in-
depth interviews conducted with key opinion makers and officials
1 INTRODUCTION 17
connected with media production in Turkey. These interviews began as

early as 2004 in Istanbul, for the author’s PhD research,16 and continued
through post-doctoral studies in 2010–2011 and other research projects
as indicated throughout. Public speeches, presentations delivered at con-
ferences and interviews on podcasts and blogs have also been added to the
corpus of data.
The primary data that have been gathered through interviews and par-
ticipant observation, over almost two decades, comprise about 50 inter-
views (including anonymous ones) with journalists and editors in both
mainstream and minority media, community leaders and intellectuals in
minority communities, TV producers and editors from both the public
service broadcaster (TRT) and the local Kurdish television stations, offi-
cials from TRT and RTÜK, experts from the Delegation of the European
Commission in Ankara, citizen journalists, freelance journalists, activists,
podcast producers, and foreign broadcasters such as Deutsche Welle’s
Turkish service (DW Türkçe) and the BBC World Service Turkish section.
The participants of interviews were mainly chosen via so-called judge-
mental selection, because their knowledge about a particular social setting
or special interests offered the researcher a broader understanding of the
social phenomena in question. The interviews that were conducted during
data collection were digitally recorded and fully transcribed and analysed
with qualitative data analysis packages such as Nvivo, which provides
increased efficiency and speed when dealing with big data sets
(Silverman, 2010).
1.3 The Structure of the Book

The following chapters begin with an overview of citizenship and national
identity formation in Turkey, then capture the development of mass media
during the country’s grappling with globalising forces in the post-1980s
period. It considers the transformation and convergence within the com-
mercial mainstream media, non-Muslim community media and public ser-
vice broadcasting over a period of heightened globalisation that was
crystallised in the country’s bid for much-anticipated EU membership. It
then focuses on other aspects of convergence that are evidenced in
16
Yanardağoğlu (2008) The mediation of cultural identities: changing practices and poli-
cies in contemporary Turkey. PhD Thesis, City University, Department of Sociology.
Available at: https://library.city.ac.uk/record=b1451074.
bottom-up and participatory media practices (Jenkins, 2006); these

include the birth of citizen journalism and the beginning of the demise of
conventional mainstream media in the post-Gezi Park protests context.
The final section deals with convergence in ‘media work’ (Deuze, 2007)
as debated in and through the notion of ‘post-mainstream’ media. The
trends observed here include a virtually complete ‘media capture’ (Yeşil,
2018) of conventional mainstream media by a pro-government business
bloc co-existing with the process of mainstreaming native digital platforms
as alternative venues for media work, in an attempt to sustain diversity and
plurality.
1.3.1 Chapter 2: Nation, Media and Communicative Space

This chapter addresses the changes that took place in print and broadcast
media in Turkey by means of primary data gathered through interviews
with mainstream and minority journalists. It considers the media system’s
interaction with the neo-liberal economy and the impact of globalisation,
deregulation and the emergence of new technologies. It captures these
changing dynamics within the national communicative space by focusing
on key events such as the entrance of businessmen into the media sector,
the breakdown of state monopoly over broadcasting, the emergence of
new TV channels and programmes, the growth of print media formats
such as magazines, the burgeoning music industry and the advertising sec-
tor in the 1980s and 1990s.
1.3.2 Chapter 3: Politics, Media and Citizenship

in Modern Turkey
This chapter considers modernisation in Turkey against the backdrop of
the development of mass media. It focuses on the transition from the mul-
ticultural Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey in order to explain
the differences in citizenship practices, and how they were reflected in the
media system until the beginning of the 1980s—when the transition to a
liberal market economy started to take place and Turkey’s integration with
world markets accelerated. The chapter covers the basic tenets of the
country’s media system up to the end of the 1990s.
1 INTRODUCTION 19
1.3.3 Chapter 4: Europeanisation Reforms and Early AKP Era

This chapter focuses on some key events regarding minority language
media, mainstream and digital media in the 2000s. After Turkey’s candi-
date status was accepted in 1999, a set of Europeanisation reforms were
implemented by two governments: the Democratic Left Party, Motherland
Party and Nationalist Movement Party (DSP–ANAP–MHP) coalition and
the AKP government that came to power in November 2002. Public ser-
vice broadcaster TRT began to broadcast in 2004 and local private chan-
nels began to broadcast in Kurdish in 2006. The AKP government’s
second term began on 22 July 2007. From this date onwards, the momen-
tum of Europeanisation began to decline and ‘political tutelage’ over
media intensified (Kaya & Çakmur, 2010: 533).
1.3.4 Chapter 5: New Media and Politics

of Communicative Citizenship
In this chapter, the aim is to consider the impact of technological and
economic convergence in the media system in recent years. The internet
emerged as a new area of limitation and censorship, which intensified dur-
ing the 2007–2011 period that corresponded to AKP’s second term in
power (Yeşil et al., 2017). Since 2011, there have already been major civil
protests such as ‘Do not touch my Internet’ taking place in various parts
of Turkey, and internet users had already begun to rely on online alterna-
tive media for news provision. During the Gezi Park protests, social media
held a crucial role in news-making and news-gathering, as average citizens
̇
turned into citizen journalists (Inceoğ lu & Çoban, 2015). In this chapter,
the focus is on the emergence of citizen journalism networks, new content
producers that blur the line between news and video activism/documen-
tary forms. The chapter mainly draws on data gathered through two dif-
ferent independent research projects that the author conducted between
2014 and 2015 in Istanbul.
1.3.5 Chapter 6: Re-structuring the Media System

and Convergence
In the aftermath of the Gezi protests and the 2015 elections, hundreds of
media workers were laid off, and a purge in the media also took place in
the aftermath of the coup attempt on 15 July 2016. Doğan Media Group,
which was once the strongest media group in both market share and influ-
ence, sold its assets to pro-government Demirören Group in 2018, mark-
ing the end of mainstream media and increased media capture.
In the post-2015 media environment, a number of native digital plat-
forms—news portals, citizen-based initiatives, social enterprises, news
academies established by professional organisations, freelance journalists
and civil society organisations—constituted the emerging media scene,
especially among the opposition media. In this period, there has been
growth in media supported by international non-governmental organisa-
tions or embassies’ grant programmes. This chapter reviews these develop-
ments, and explores whether new forms of convergence may indeed be a
solution to the dilemmas that are currently part of the media system
in Turkey.
1.3.6 Chapter 7: Conclusion
The birth of the AKP media and increased media capture, leading to an
eventual collapse of what was known as mainstream news media, catalysed
the birth of native digital and platform-based news media in which new
players emerged. These new players emphasised a ‘do it yourself’ and ‘self-
actualizing citizenship’ (Kligler-Vilenchik, 2017: 1899) because their
main focus was on maintaining democratic standards and independence in
media and communication. New media convergence allows entrepreneur-
ial journalists, media professionals and content producers to fill a gap in
the news media that was previously filled by the mainstream. However,
this potential may be overshadowed by a number of internal and external
factors related to contemporary journalism’s global vulnerability; these
include sustainability of revenue models, precarisation of journalism and
political polarisation. This chapter offers a summary of the book and adds
concluding reflections.
References
Ahmad, F. (2003). Turkey: A Quest for Identity A Short History. Oneworld.
Akser, M., & Baybars- Hawks, B. (2012). Media Democracy in Turkey: Toward a
Model of Neoliberal Media Autocracy. Middle East Journal of Culture and
Communication, 5, 302–321.
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism. Verso.
1 INTRODUCTION 21
Arslan, R. (2014, December 17). 17 Aralık AKP’yi nasıl etkiledi? BBC Türkçe.
Retrieved December 17, 2017, from https://www.bbc.com/turkce/
haberler/2014/12/141216_17_aralik_akp_etkisi_analiz
Atkinson, J. D. (2010). Alternative Media and Politics of Resistance: A
Communication Perspective. Peter Lang.
Aydın, S., & Keyman, E. F. (2004). European Integration and the Transformation
of Turkish Democracy. Center for European Policy Studies. [Online]. Retrieved
November 19, 2004, from http://www.edpforum.com/pdf/07.pdf
Aydınlı, S. (2019, May 6). Who Controls the Media in Turkey? Bianet. Retrieved
May 28, 2021, from https://m.bianet.org/english/politics/208107-who-
controls-the-media-in-turkey
Bayazit. (2016). Turkey. In E. M. Noam (Ed.), Who Owns the World’s Media?
Media Concentration and Ownership Around the World (pp. 387–425). Oxford
University Press.
Bayram, S. (2010). Political Parallelism in the Turkish Press, a Historical
Interpretation. Turkish Studies, 11(4), 579–611.
Bek-Gencel, M. (2010). Karşılaştırmalı Perspektiften Türkiye’de Medya Sistemi.
Mülkiye, 34(269), 101–125.
Bennet, L. W. (2004). Communicating Global Activism: Strengths and
Vulnerabilities of Networked Politics. In W. B. Donk, B. Loader, P. Nixon, &
D. Ruch (Eds.), Cyberprotest: New Media, Citizens, and Social Movements
(pp. 123–147). Routledge.
Blaikie, N. (2000). Designing Social Research: The Logic of Anticipation. Polity.
Cammaerts, B. (2007). Activism and Media. In N. Carpentier & B. Cammaerts
(Eds.), Reclaiming the Media: Communication Rights and Democratic Media
Roles (pp. 281–220). Intellect.
Çaplı, B., & Tuncel, H. (2005). Avrupa’da Televizyon: Düzenleme, politikalar ve
̇
bağımsızlık Türkiye Izleme Raporu [Television Across Europe: Regulation, Policy
and Independence Turkey Monitoring Report]. Open Society Institute.
Carpentier, N. (2007). Participation and Media. In N. Carpentier & B. Cammaerts
(Eds.), Reclaiming the Media: Communication Rights and Democratic Media
Roles (pp. 87–92). Intellect.
Curran, J. (2002). Media and Power. Routledge.
Dayan, D. (1998). Particularistic Media and Diasporic Communications. In
T. Liebes & J. Curran (Eds.), Media, Ritual and Identity (pp. 103–114).
Routledge.
Demir, M. (2001, March 20). Allegro ma non troppo -Hızlı ama telaşlı Değil.
Hürriyet. http://arama.hurriyet.com.tr/arsivnews.aspx?id=-232984
Denscombe, M. (2003). The Good Research Guide for Small-Scale Social Research
Projects. Open University Press.
Deuze, M. (2007). Convergence Culture in the Creative Industries. International

Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(2), 443–263. Sage.
Fenton, N. (2012). Internet and Radical Politics. In J. Curran, N. Fenton, &
D. Freedman (Eds.), Misunderstanding the Internet (pp. 151–173). Routledge.
Freedom House. (2014). Freedom of the Press: Turkey Report. https://freedom-
house.org/report/special-report/2014/corruption-media-and-power-turkey
house.org/sites/default/files/resources/FOTN%202015_Turkey.pdf
house.org/country/turkey/freedom-net/2016
house.org/country/turkey/freedom-world/2020
Freedom House. (2021). Freedom of the Press: Turkey Report. Retrieved
September 30, 2021, from https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkey/
freedomworld/2021
Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Blackwell.
Gerbaudo, P. (2012). Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary
Activism. Pluto Press.
Hall, S. (1982). The Discovery of Ideology: Return of the Repressed in Media
Studies. In M. Gurewitch (Ed.), Culture, Society and the Media. London.
Hallin, D. C., & Mancini, P. (2004). Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of
Media and Politics. Cambridge University Press.
Harju, A. (2007). Citizen Participation and Local Public Spheres: An Agency and
Identity Focussed Approach to the Tampere Postal Services Conflict. In
B. Cammaerts & N. Carpentier (Eds.), Reclaiming the Media: Communication
Rights and Democratic Media Roles (pp. 87–91). Intellect.
̇
Inceoğ lu, Y. (2013, June 9). Gezi Gezi ve kötü öğrenci: Medya. Radikal. http://
www.radikal.com.tr/radikal2/gezi-ve-kotu-ogrenci-medya-1136719/
̇
Inceoğ lu, Y., & Çoban, B. (Eds.). (2015). Internet ve Sokak. Ayrıntı.
Irak, D. (2016). A Close-Knit Bunch: Political Concentration in Turkey’s Anadolu
Agency Through Twitter Interactions. Turkish Studies, 17(2), 336–360.
Isin, F. E., & Turner, S. B. (Eds.). (2002). Handbook of Citizenship Studies. Sage.
Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.
New York University Press.
Kaptan, Y. (2020). Authoritarian Populism and the Discourse of “the People” in
the Turkish Islamist Media: The Case of Yeni Şafak. International Journal of
Communication, 14, 3986–4002.
Karpat, K. H. (1973). Structural Change, Historical Stages of Modernization and
the Role of Social Groups in Turkish Politics. In K. H. Karpat (Ed.), Social
Change and Politics in Turkey: A Structural-Historical Analysis. EJ Brill.
1 INTRODUCTION 23
Kasaba, R., & Bozdoğan, S. (2000). Turkey at a Crossroad. Journal of International

Affairs, 54(1), 1–20.
Kaya, R., & Çakmur, B. (2010). Politics and the Mass Media in Turkey. Turkish
Studies, 11(4), 521–537.
Kaygusuz, Ö. (2018). Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Regime Security in Turkey:
Moving to an ‘Exceptional State’ Under AKP. South European Society and
Politics, 23(2), 281–302. https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2018.1480332
Kejanlıoğlu, D. B. (2001a). The Media in Turkey Since 1970. In D. Lovatt (Ed.),
Turkey Since 1970 (pp. 111–135). Palgrave.
Kejanlıoğlu, D. B. (2001b). Turkish Broadcasting Policy in a Historical Context:
Continuities and Discontinuities in the 1990s. Kültür ve Iletiş ̇ im Culture &
Communication, 4(2, Summer), 85–104.
Kejanlıoğlu, D. B. (2004). Türkiye’de Medyanın Dönüşümü. Imge. ̇
Keyder, Ç. (1997). Whither the Project of Modernity? In S. Bozdoğan & R. Kasaba
(Eds.), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (pp. 37–49).
Washington University Press.
Keyman, E. F. (2010). Turkey, Transformation and the Left Media. Turkish
Studies, 11(4), 539–553.
Kligler-Vilenchik, N. (2017). Alternative Citizenship Models: Contextualizing
New Media and the New “Good Citizen”. New Media & Society, 19(11),
1887–1903.
̇ im Araçları ve Sosyal Medya Etkisi. https://konda.
KONDA. (2016). Kitle Iletiş
com.tr/tr/rapor/kitle-iletisim-araclari-ve-sosyal-medya-etkisi/
KONDA. (2019). Televizyonla Değişen Algılar, Sosyal Medyanın Yükselişi ve 10
Yıllık Medya Serüvenimiz 2008 – 2018. https://konda.com.tr/tr/rapor/
konda-medya-raporu/
Konieczna, M. (2020). Entrepreneurship versus Philanthropy: Can the Market
Fund Innovation in the News Sector? Journal of Media Business Studies, 17(2),
132–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/16522354.2020.1719458
Kymlicka, W. (1995). Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority
Rights. Clarendon Press.
Louw, P. E. (2005). The Media and Political Process. Sage.
MacNamara, J. (2010). The 21st Century Media (R)evolution: Emergent
Communication Practices. Peter Lang.
McQuail, D. (1992). Media Performance: Mass Communication and the Public
Interest. Sage.
McQuail, D. (2001). The Consequences of European Media Policies and
Organisational Structures for Cultural Diversity. In T. Bennett (Ed.), Differing
Diversities: Transversal Study on the Theme of Cultural Policy and Cultural
Diversity (pp. 73–92). Council of Europe.
Mediabarometer. (2014). Media Barometer, A Home Grown Analysis of the Media

Landscape in Turkey. F. Ebert Stiftung Turkey Office.
Morley, D. (2000). Hometerritories: Media, Mobility, and Identity. Routledge.
Murdock, G. (1992). Citizens, Consumers, and Public Culture. In M. Skovmand
& C. K. Schroder (Eds.), Media Cultues Reappraising Transnational Media.
Routledge.
Önderoğlu, E. (2015, March 4). Medyanın 3 Yılı: Grafik Özet. Bianet. Retrieved
December 1, 2017, from http://bianet.org/bianet/medya/162748-medya-
kutuplastikca-haberde-otosansur-artiyor
Özcan, A. (2000). 28 Şubat: Çözülüşün Restorasyonu [28 February the
Restoration of Disintegration]. Birikim, 131, 55–59.
Papacharissi, Z. (2015). Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics.
Oxford University Press.
Price, E. M. (2002). Media and Sovereignty: The Global Information Revolution
and Its Challenge to State Power. MIT Press.
Robson, C. (2011). Real World Research: A Resource for Users of Social Research
Methods in Applied Settings. Wiley.
Rozumilowicz, B. (2002). Democratic Change a Theoretical Perspective. In
E. M. Price, B. Rozumilowicz, & G. S. Verhulst (Eds.), Media Reform:
Democratizing the Media Democratizing the State (pp. 9–26). Routledge.
Saka, E. (2019). Social Media and Politics in Turkey: A Journey Through Citizen
Journalism, Political Trolling, and Fake News. Lexington Books.
Schlesinger, P. (2000). The Nation and the Communicative Space. In H. Tumber
(Ed.), Media Power, Professionals and Policies (pp. 99–115). Routledge.
Schuster, L., & Solomos, J. (2001). Introduction: Citizenship, Multiculturalism,
Identity. Patterns of Prejudice, 35(1), 3–12.
Silverman, D. (2010). Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. Sage.
Silverstone, R., & Georgiou, M. (2005). Editorial Introduction: Media and
Minorities in Multicultural Europe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies,
31(3), 433–441.
Sofos, A. S. (2001). Reluctant Europeans? European Integration and the
Transformation of Turkish Politics. In M. Featherstone & G. Kazamias (Eds.),
Europeanization and the Southern Periphery (pp. 243–261). Frank Cass.
Somer, M. (2005). Resurgence and Remaking of Identity: Civil Beliefs, Domestic
and Internal Dynamics, and the Turkish Mainstream Discourse on Kurds.
Comparative Political Studies, 38(6), 591–622.
Somer, M. (2016). Understanding Turkey’s Democratic Breakdown: Old vs. New
and Indigenous vs. Global Authoritarianism. Southeast European and Black Sea
Studies, 16(4), 481–503.
Somer, M. (2019). Turkey: The Slippery Slope from Reformist to Revolutionary
Polarization and Democratic Breakdown. The Annals of the American
1 INTRODUCTION 25
Academy of Political and Social Science, 681(1), 42–61. https://doi.org/

10.1177/0002716218818056
Soysal, N. Y. (1996). Changing Citizenship in Europe: Remarks on Postnational
Membership and the National State. In D. Cesarani & M. Fulbrook (Eds.),
Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe (pp. 17–30). Routledge.
Splichal, S. (1993). Searching for New Paradigms: An Introduction. In S. Splichal
& J. Wasko (Eds.), Communication and Democracy (pp. 3–32). Ablex.
Sreberny, A. (2000). Media and Diasporic Consciousness: Iranians in London. In
S. Cottle (Ed.), Ethnic Minorities and the Media: Changing Cultural Boundaries
(pp. 179–196). Open University Press.
Stark, S., & Torrance, H. (2005). Case Study. In B. Somekh & C. Lewin (Eds.),
Research Methods in the Social Sciences (pp. 33–40). Sage.
Tambini, D. (2001). Postnational Citizenship. Ethnic and Racial Studies,
24(2), 195–217.
The Economist. (2007, March 10). Turkish Nationalism: Waving Ataturk’s Flag.
https://www.economist.com/europe/2007/03/08/waving-ataturks-flag
Thompson, J. B. (1995). Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media.
Stanford University Press.
Tılıç, L. D. (2001). 2000’ler Turkiye’sinde Gazetecilik ve Medyayı Anlamak.
Su Yayınları.
Tunç, A. (2018). All Is Flux: A Hybrid Media Approach to Macro-Analysis of the
Turkish Media. Middle East Critique, 27(2), 141–159. https://doi.org/10.
1080/19436149.2018.1433581
Tunç, A., & Görgülü, V. (2012). Mapping Digital Media: Turkey. A Report by
Open Society Foundation (M. Dragomir & M. Thompson, Eds.). Open Society
Media Program editors.
Turner, S. B. (1993). Contemporary Problems in the Theory of Citizenship. In
B. S. Turner (Ed.), Citizenship and Social Theory (pp. 1–18). Sage.
Turner, S. B. (2001). Outline of a General Theory of Cultural Citizenship. In
N. Stevenson (Ed.), Culture and Citizenship: An Introduction (pp. 11–32). Sage.
Uce, V., & De Swert, K. (2010). Introducing Turkey to the Three Media System
Models: The Content of TV News in Eleven Countries. https://www.ebsco.com/
terms-of-use
Uğur, A. (2002). Kültür Kıtası Atlası: Kültür, Iletiş ̇ im, Demokrasi. Yapı Kredi
Yayınları.
Uzunoğlu, S. (2020). The Politics of Media in Turkey: Chronicle of a Stillborn
Media System. In G. M. Tezvür (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics.
Oxford University Press.
Veenstra, S. A., Iyer, N., Park, C. S., & Alajmi, F. (2014). Twitter as “a Journalistics
Substitute”? Examining #wiunion Tweeters’ Behaviour and Self-Perception.
Journalism, 16(4), 1–18.
Waisboard. (2020). https://www.compol.it/rivista/special-issue/interrogating-

the-analytical-value-of-media-system-for-comparative-political-communication
silvio-waisbord/
White, A. R. (1995). Democratization of Communication as a Social Movement
Process. In P. Lee (Ed.), The Democratization of Communication (pp. 92–113).
University of Wales Press.
World Press Freedom Index. (2014). https://rsf.org/en/world-press-freedom-
index-2014
Yanardağoğlu, E. (2013). Elusive Citizenship: Media, Minorities and Freedom
of Communication in Turkey in the Last Decade. Galatasaray Üniversitesi
̇ im Dergisi, 19(2), 87–102. http://iletisimdergisi.gsu.edu.tr/tr/pub/
Iletiş
issue/7379/96602
Yanardağoğlu, E. (2017a). Citizenship, Media and Activism in Turkey During
Gezi Park Protests. Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture,
8(3), 133–150.
Yanardağoğlu, E. (2017b). The Media and the Failed Coup in Turkey: Televised,
Tweeted and FaceTimed, Yet So 20th Century. Global Media and
Communication, 13(2), 195–199. https://doi.org/10.1177/174276651
7699342
Yanardağoğlu, E. (2019). The Media and Media Policy. In The Routledge
Handbook of Turkish Politics. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781
315143842
Yanardağoğlu, E. (2020). I Stopped Reading Newspapers Because of the Internet!:
News Consumption Behaviour of Youth in Greece and Turkey. Journal of
Digital Media and Policy. Published Fastrack. https://doi.org/10.1386/
jdmp_00029_1
Yeşil. (2018). Authoritarian Turn or Continuity? Governance of Media Through
Capture and Discipline in the AKP Era. South European Society and Politics,
23(2), 239–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2018.1487137
Yeşil, B. (2016). Media in New Turkey: The Origins of an Authoritarian Neoliberal
State. University of Illinois Press.
Yeşil, B., Sözeri, E. K., & Khazraee, E. (2017). Turkey’s Internet Policy after the
Coup Attempt. http://globalnetpolicy.org/research/turkeys-internet-policy-
after-the-coup-attempt-the-emergence-of-a-distributed-network-of-online-
suppression-and-surveillance/
Yıldırım, K., Baruh, L., & Çarkoğlu, A. (2021). Dynamics of Campaign Reporting
and Press-Party Parallelism: Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism and the
Media System in Turkey. Political Communication, 38(3), 326–349. https://
doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1765913
Yılmaz, G. (2016a). Europeanisation or De-Europeanisation? Media Freedom in
Turkey (1999–2015). South European Society and Politics, 21(1), 147–161.
1 INTRODUCTION 27
Yılmaz, G. (2016b). From Europeanization to De-Europeanization: The

Europeanization Process of Turkey in 1999–2014. Journal of Contemporary
European Studies, 24(1), 86–100.
Yin, K. R. (2003). Case Study Research Design and Methods. Sage.
Yumul, A. (2005). Azınlık mı vatandaş mı? [Minority or Citizen?]. In A. Kaya &
T. Tarhanlı (Eds.), Türkiye’de Çoğunluk ve Azınlık Politikaları: AB sürecinde
Yurttaşlık Tartışmaları [Majority and Minority Policies in Turkey: Debates on
Citizenship in EU Process]. TESEV Yayınları.
Zürcher, J. E. (1998). Turkey: A Modern History. IB Tauris.
CHAPTER 2
Nation, Media and Communicative Space
In Western Europe, the main form of collective or cultural identity for the
last two hundred years was primarily structured within the nation state.
However, this has been put under scrutiny more closely since 1980s espe-
cially owing to, an increasing concern about the decentralising, dislocating
and fragmenting effects of globalisation (Hall, 1982; Louw, 2005: 95).
The so-called old identities that provided stability for the social system
gave way to new identities, thereby creating an identity crisis that dislo-
cated the central structures and processes of modern societies and under-
mined the frameworks that provided individual stability (Hall, 1982: 274).
In the transition from traditional to modern societies, a standardised
education and pervasive mass media held a significant role in the creation
of national consciousness. The mass media were considered to be an inte-
gral part of the rise of modern societies, because they could form ‘a com-
mon symbolic environment’ and ‘new ways of social interaction’ among
people (Thompson, 1995: 3). The nation state, which became the princi-
pal arena for the exercise of citizenship and defined people’s legal status,
also sought to establish a common and homogeneous cultural ground
(Turner, 2001). The nation not only functioned as a political form but
also as ‘an entity which produces meanings—a system of cultural represen-
tation’ (Hall, 1982: 292).
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 29

Switzerland AG 2021
E. Yanardağoğlu, The Transformation of the Media System in Turkey,
Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research - A
Palgrave and IAMCR Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83102-8_2
The symbolic and cultural formation of national identity necessitated

the creation of shared sentiments and traditions, to foster a sense of belong-
ing among citizens. The symbols, flags, ceremonies and national anthems
that were created were part of these invented political and social traditions
that encouraged social cohesion and new bonds of loyalty when the nation-
building process was taking off in Europe at the end of the nineteenth
century (Hobsbawn & Ranger, 1992). The media were considered to be
central to the forging of emergent national identities because they helped
people to imagine themselves as part of a collective entity (Anderson,
1983). This production of national identity through a collective, and highly
selective, memory and tradition was a process that involved the ‘inclusion’
and ‘exclusion’ of defined groups, and the demarcation of ‘us’ and ‘others’
(Schuster & Solomos, 2001: 203). In effect, the media were considered to
be the prime venues in which these processes took place (Morley & Robins,
1995). Language played an important role in inclusion because only those
who understood the messages being conveyed could be included in the
moral and economic community (Gellner, 1983: 127).
The proper reception and comprehension of media messages on a
national level necessitated a pervasive and standardised language and
granted a cultural monopoly to national media systems. The standardisa-
tion of a print language that enabled the nation to be conceived as an
‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983) and the communication systems
played a role in this transition to modernity.1
In their much-discussed book, Hallin and Mancini (2004: 11) offer
three modern media system models. The Liberal Model is found in Britain,
Ireland and North America; the Democratic Corporatist Model is mainly
present across northern continental Europe; and the Polarised Pluralist
Model prevails in the Mediterranean countries of southern Europe. Hallin
and Mancini (2004: 21) propose four characteristics of media systems that
can be used to analyse, compare and contrast them: (1) the development
of media markets, with particular emphasis on the strong or weak develop-
ment of a mass circulation press; (2) political parallelism—the degree and
nature of the links between the media and political parties or, more
1
This view was propagated in Daniel Lerner’s Passing of Traditional Society (1958) as a
part of so-called modernisation theories. Lerner’s theory of modernisation was specifically
relevant to Turkey and the Middle East (Curran, 2002: 167). As Karpat stated (1973: 22),
the main notion in these theories was that traditional societies were passing away ‘by adopt-
ing new modes of communicating ideas and attitudes through the mass use of tabloids,
radios and movies’.
2 NATION, MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIVE SPACE 31
broadly, the extent to which the media system reflects the major political
divisions in society; (3) the development of journalistic professionalism;
and (4) the degree and nature of state intervention in the media system.
Hallin and Mancini (2004: 12) acknowledge that these ‘media systems are
not homogeneous’ and are often ‘characterized by a complex coexistence
of media operating according to different principles’. Anderson’s contri-
bution is instrumental in analysing the role of the media in the formation
of nations, but it is limited to the print media and does not address how
citizens partake in the national consciousness or to what extent they might
be able to communicate their own views.
The concept of the public sphere, put forward by Habermas, estab-
lished the relationship between media, citizenship and democracy.
Habermas (1974: 49) was introducing an ‘ideal’ category of the public
sphere that was present in eighteenth-century France, Germany and
England in which speech and face-to-face communication helped to form
public opinion:
By the public sphere we mean first of all a realm of our social life in which
something approaching a public opinion can be formed. Access is guaran-
teed to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every
conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body …
citizens behave as public body when they confer an unrestricted fashion—
that is the guarantee of freedom assembly and association and the freedom
to express and publish their opinions—about matters of general interest. In
a large public this kind of communication requires specific means for trans-
mitting information and influencing those who believe it. Today newspapers
and magazines, radio and television are the media of the public sphere.
Habermas’s original theoretical framework is considered to explain the

facilitation of diversity and plurality in media systems (Dwyer, 2010: 70).
As Gunther and Mughan (2000: 9–10) write, print and broadcast media
were treated differently from the outset. Freedom of expression and press
freedom were considered to be principal aspects of democracy, and mini-
mal regulation or interference from the authorities was required. However,
governments had to regulate the broadcasting domain owing to the scar-
city of airwave frequencies, and the regulatory principles that were applied
to public service broadcasting systems became predominant in the
European context. The concept of the public sphere was generally invoked
in relation to public service broadcasting and its universalistic values,
because mass media were deemed to be the ‘fourth estate of the realm’
(Curran, 1991: 29) that upheld values such as adherence to democratic
principles and ‘public good’ (Garnham, 1990; Scannell, 1989).
Given the focus of this book, two issues pertain to the debates about
the revision of the public sphere: growing ethnic and cultural diversity in
societies and the challenges to the ‘communicative space’, which was pre-
viously considered to be congruent with the national borders within which
citizenship was defined and exercised (Schlesinger, 2000). The cultural
expansion of citizenship that critiqued the boundaries of dominant narra-
tives and definitions of national culture and identity entailed questions
about mass media and interventions in the public sphere at local, national
and global levels (Turner, 2001: 3–4). In this revision, the public sphere is
layered at micro-, meso- and macro-levels. The micro-level refers to those
who are acting at sub-state level usually in voluntary networks with a local
character; which are a vital element in social movements. The meso-level
refers to the territorial nation state in which mediation is maintained by
national TV channels and newspapers. Finally, the macro-level refers to
supranational, global or regional (European Union; hereafter EU) growth
and the contributions made to stretching the boundaries of the nation
state from global media enterprises and satellite technology (Keane,
1995: 9–13).
The original conceptualisation of the public sphere eventually disinte-
grated owing to the growth of mass democracy and literacy, urbanisation
and the popular press. However, it remained a central concept for the
analysis of relationships between the nation and the media (Robins &
Cornford, 1994), although it was criticised for ignoring issues of gender,
patriarchy and alternative public spheres (Calhoun, 1992; Curran, 1991;
Dahlgren, 1995; Dahlgren & Sparks, 1991; Keane, 1995; Webster, 2006).
Scholars also argued that public service broadcasting systems were not
able to represent and grasp the multitude of needs and demands in con-
temporary societies. The old dominance of a state-structured and territo-
rially bounded public life mediated by traditional media was ending owing
to the advent of ‘new communication networks’ that were not territorially
bound and had the capacity to ‘fragment’ the notion of a single public
sphere within the nation state (Keane, 1995: 8). The new challenges that
were shaping the contemporary public sphere were identified as a ‘crisis of
the nation state’, the ‘segmentation of audiences’, the ‘rise of new political
social movements’ and ‘emerging new computerised technologies’
(Dahlgren & Sparks, 1991). Other scholars addressed cross-border media
2 NATION, MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIVE SPACE 33
flows, new technologies and the globalisation of the public sphere, also
highlighting the contributions from fictional material such as soap operas
that brought certain issues to the attention of the public (Curran, 2000).
The nation state, as the main ‘communicative space’, was a valuable
analytical tool for evaluation of the ‘old era’ in which communications and
media systems stayed within national borders (Waisboard, 2020). Hallin
and Mancini’s (2004) model was criticised for treating media systems as an
isolated unit of analysis, in light of major changes in communicative spaces
and media markets that were brought about by globalisation, transna-
tional flows of content (also via online media) and media concentration,
internationalisation of media regulation, among other factors.
Furthermore, the concept received criticism for not taking into account
‘new technologies and online media’ in its classification (Cardoso, 2006 in
Karol, Jakubowicz 2010: 10). Critics argued, for instance, that it was
unclear how the new media—with its user generated content (UGC) and
software and hardware aspects that differed from traditional forms—might
change and affect ‘communicative spaces that are hybrid and comprise dif-
ferent elements’ (Cardoso, 2006 in Jakubowicz, 2010: 10). Waisboard
(2020) suggested that the concept must be revisited given policy and
technology transformations in the post-Cold War period that changed
media systems globally. He also questioned the ways in which a concept
coined during the heyday of the mass media can remain relevant at a time
of digital, networked, chaotic and abundant public communication.
Since the 1990s, the term ‘convergence’ has been used to account for
the development of digital technology (Dwyer, 2010). Convergence
entails the combination of computing and information technology, com-
munication networks, communication networks and (digitised) content
(Flew, 2008). It also refers to ‘contemporary emergent norms, values and
patterns of activities that blur the boundaries between media production
and media consumption’, which is increasingly reflective of the new glob-
ally networked media environment that is based on a ‘participatory’ media
culture (Deuze, 2007: 244). Such convergence of content, process and
consequences has broader implications for media work in all creative
industries, including journalism. Deuze’s (2007: 246) understanding of
‘convergence culture’ (cf. Jenkins, 2004) involves ‘both a top down cor-
porate driven process and a bottom-up consumer driven process’, and
thus ‘serves both as a mechanism to increase revenue and further the
agenda of industry, while at the same time enabling people—in terms of
their identities as producers and consumers, professionals as well as
amateurs—to enact some kind of agency regarding the omnipresent mes-

sages and commodities of this industry’ (2007: 247).
According to Castells (2000, 2001), central elements of an information
society include the pervasive effects of information and communications
technology through all forms of interactions, systems and social relation-
ships. The media were at the centre of the changes that drove globalisation
through the changes and advances that took place in information and
communication technologies from the 1970s in economy, society and cul-
ture. Castells (2007) updated this central argument when he argued that
the ‘development of interactive, horizontal networks of communication’
catalysed the rise of a new type of communication, so called ‘mass self-
communication’ over the internet and wireless connections. In this revised
understanding, the ‘public sphere has been transformed by the new con-
figurations of power relations’. For instance, the rise of mass self-
communication enables ‘insurgent politics and social movements’ to
intervene in the new communicative space (Dwyer, 2010: 41).
Online media participation is seen as the defining characteristic of the
internet in terms of its hyperlinked, interactive and networked infrastruc-
ture and digital culture (Deuze, 2007: 245). Convergence pertains to the
increased participation of individual consumers and grassroots actors by
focusing on ‘bottom-up’ processes, usually by the means of collaborative
strategies incorporated in media forms. Increased participation challenges
the previous hierarchical construction of media products and information
channels, and the ways in which macro-, top-down developments are
counterbalanced by micro-, bottom-up participation (Jongbloed, 2013).
One key issue with media convergence is how policies are made by poli-
cymakers through adherence to the standards of ‘pluralism and diversity’
and by maintenance of a range of available viewpoints in ‘emerging media-
spheres’ (Dwyer, 2010). The European media policy debates place special
attention on these two concepts, despite their ambiguity. For instance, the
EU has incorporated democratic governance and adherence to human
rights standards as a prerequisite for its relationship with aspiring member
states since the mid-1990s, and has begun to apply these conditions as
determining criteria for further enlargement (Arıkan, 2003). In exploring
this European context, the following sections will examine the impact of
such supranational and regional as well as local challenges in the relation-
ship between media, nation and citizenship.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
that can be produced; when he makes a signal, at which the lodge is
opened, and he darts forth with the speed of a frightened deer, and
plunges headlong into the river, from which he instantly escapes
again, wraps his robe around him, and makes as fast as possible for
home. Here his limbs are wiped dry and wrapped close and tight
within the fur of the buffalo robes, in which he takes his nap, with his
feet to the fire, then oils his limbs and hair with bear’s-grease,
dresses and plumes himself for a visit, a feast, a parade, or a
council.
During Mr. Bruce’s travels through Abyssinia, and while he was
sojourning in the dominions of her Majesty of Sennaar, one
afternoon he was sent for to the palace, when the king told him that
several of his wives were ill, and desired that he would give them his
advice, which he promised to do. He was admitted into a large
square apartment, very ill-lighted, in which were about fifty women,
all perfectly black, without any covering but a very narrow piece of
cotton rag about their waist. While he was musing whether or not all
these might be queens, or whether there was any queen among
them, one of them seized him by the hand and led him into another
apartment; this was much better lighted than the first. Upon a large
bench, or sofa, covered with blue Surat cloth, sat three persons
clothed from the neck to the feet with blue cotton shirts.
One of these, whom Mr. Bruce found to be the favourite, was
about six feet high, and corpulent beyond all proportion. She seemed
to him, next to the elephant and rhinoceros, to be the largest living
creature he had ever met with. Her features were perfectly like those
of a negro; a ring of gold passed through her under lip, and weighed
it down, till, like a flap, it covered her chin, and left her teeth bare,
which were very small and fine. The inside of her lip she had made
black with antimony. Her ears reached down to her shoulders, and
had the appearance of wings; she had in each of them a large ring of
gold, somewhat smaller than a man’s little finger, and about five
inches in diameter. The weight of these had drawn down the hole
where the ear was pierced so much that three fingers might easily
pass above the ring. She had a gold necklace of several rows, one
above another, to which were hung rows of sequins pierced. She
had on her ancles two manacles of gold, larger than any our traveller
had ever seen upon the feet of felons, with which he could not
conceive it was possible for her to walk; but afterwards he found they
were hollow. The others were dressed pretty much in the same
manner; only there was one who had chains which came from her
ears to the outside of each nostril, where they were fastened. There
was also a ring put through the gristle of her nose, and which hung
down to the opening of her mouth. It had altogether something of the
appearance of a horse’s bridle. Upon his coming near them, the
eldest put her hand to her mouth and kissed it, saying at the same
time, in very vulgar Arabic, “Kif-halek howajah?” How do you do,
merchant? Mr. Bruce never in his life was more pleased with distant
salutations than at this time. He answered, “Peace be among you! I
am a physician, and not a merchant.” There was not one part of their
whole bodies, inside and outside, in which some of them had not
ailments. The three queens insisted upon being blooded, which
desire Mr. Bruce complied with, as it was an operation that required
short attendance; but, upon producing the lancets, their hearts failed
them. They then all called out for the Tabange, which, in Arabic,
means a pistol; but what they meant by this word was the cupping-
instrument, which goes off with a spring like the snap of a pistol. He
had two of these, but not then in his pocket. He sent his servant
home, however, to bring one, and, that same evening, performed the
operations upon the three queens with great success. The room was
overflowed with an effusion of royal blood, and the whole ended with
their insisting upon his giving them the instrument itself, which he
was obliged to do, after cupping two of their slaves before them, who
had no complaints, merely to shew them how the operation was to
be performed.
On another occasion there was recommended to his care a
certain Welled Amlac. He had with him two servants, one of whom,
as well as his master, was ill with an intermitting fever. As our
traveller was abundantly supplied with every necessary, the only
inconvenience he suffered by this was, that of bringing a stranger
and a disease into his family. Being, however, in a strange country
himself, and daily standing in need of the assistance of its
inhabitants, he perceived the policy of rendering services whenever
opportunity offered; and, accordingly, received his two patients with
the best possible grace. To this he was the more induced as he was
informed that Welled Amlac was of the most powerful, resolute, and
best attended robbers in all Maitsha; that this man’s country lay
directly in his way to the source of the Nile; and that under his
protection he might bid defiance to Woodage Asahel, who was
considered as the great obstacle to that journey. After several weeks’
illness the patient recovered. When he first came to Mr. Bruce’s
house, he was but indifferently clothed; and having no change, his
apparel naturally grew worse, so that when his disease had entirely
left him he made a very beggarly appearance indeed. One evening
Mr. Bruce remarked that he could not go home to his own country
without kissing the ground before the Iteghe, by whose bounty he
had been all this time supported. He replied, “Surely not;” adding that
he was ready to go whenever Mr. Bruce should think proper to give
him his clothes. The latter imagined that Welled Amlac might have
brought with him some change of apparel, and delivered it into the
custody of our traveller’s servant; but, on farther explanation, he
found that his patient had not a rag but what was on his back, and he
plainly told Mr. Bruce, that he would rather stay in his house all his
life than be so disgraced before the world as to leave it after so long
a stay, without his clothing him from head to foot; asking with much
confidence: “What signifies your curing me, if you turn me out of your
house like a beggar?” Mr. Bruce still thought there was something of
jest in this, and meeting Ayto Aylo, told him, laughing, of the
conversation that had passed. “There is do doubt,” answered he very
gravely, “that you must clothe him; it is the custom.” “And his servant
too?” asked Mr. Bruce. “Certainly, his servant too: and if he had ten
servants that eat and drank in your house, you must clothe them
all.”—“I think,” rejoined our traveller, “that a physician, at this rate,
had much better let his patients die than recover them at his own
expense.”—“Yagoube,” said his friend, “I see this is not a custom in
your country, but here it invariably is, and if you would pass for a
man of consequence you cannot avoid complying with it, unless you
would make Welled Amlac your enemy. The man is opulent, it is not
for the value of the clothes, but he thinks his importance among his
neighbours is measured by the respect shewn him by the people
afar off. Never fear, he will make you some kind of return; and as for
his clothes, I shall pay for them.” “By no means,” replied Mr. Bruce; “I
think the custom so curious that the knowledge of it is worth the price
of the clothes, and I assure you that, intending as I do to go through
the Maitsha, I consider it as a piece of friendship in you to have
brought me under this obligation.” After this explanation Mr. Bruce
immediately procured the clothes; a girdle, and a pair of sandals,
amounting in the whole to about two guineas, which Welled Amlac
received with the same indifference as if he had been purchasing
them for ready money. He then asked for his servants’ clothes, which
he observed were too good, and that he should take them for his
own use when he arrived at Maitsha.
In his capacity of physician Mr. Bruce lays down certain simple
rules to be observed by persons about to travel into far eastern
countries; and though a hundred years old, and more, the said
advice is still wholesome, and may be used with advantage by
whomsoever it may concern.
Mr. Bruce’s first general advice to a traveller, is to remember well
what was the state of his constitution before he visited these
countries, and what his complaints were, if he had any; for fear
frequently seizes upon the first sight of the many and sudden deaths
we see upon our first arrival; and our spirits are so lowered by
perpetual perspiration, and our nerves so relaxed, that we are apt to
mistake the ordinary symptoms of a disease, familiar to us in our
own country, for the approach of one of those terrible distempers that
are to hurry us in a few hours into eternity. This has a bad effect in
the very slightest disorders; so that it has become proverbial—If you
think you shall die you shall die.
If a traveller finds that he is as well after having been some time in
this country as he was before entering it, his best way is to make no
innovation in his regimen, further than abating something in the
quantity. But if he is of a tender constitution, he cannot act more
wisely than to follow implicitly the regimen of sober healthy people of
the country, without arguing upon European notions, or substituting
what we consider succedaneums to what we see used upon the
spot. All spirits are to be avoided; even bark is better in water than in
wine. The stomach being relaxed by profuse perspiration, needs
something to strengthen, not to inflame, and enable it to perform
digestion. For this reason (instinct we should call it, if speaking of
beasts) the natives of all eastern countries season every species of
food, even the simplest and mildest rice, so much with spices,
especially with pepper, as absolutely to blister a European palate.
These powerful antiseptics providence has planted in these
countries for this use; and the natives have, from the earliest time,
had recourse to them. And hence, in these dangerous climates, the
natives are as healthy as we are in our northern ones.
Our author lays it down, then, as a positive rule of health, that the
warmest dishes the natives delight in are the most wholesome
strangers can use in the putrid climates of Lower Arabia, Abyssinia,
Sennaar, and Egypt itself; and that spirits, and all fermented liquors,
should be regarded as poisons; and, for fear of temptation, not so
much as be carried along with you, unless as a menstruum for
outward applications. Spring or running water, if you can find it, is to
be your only drink. You cannot be too nice in procuring this article.
But as, on both coasts of the Red Sea, you scarcely find any but
stagnant water, the way which our traveller practised, when at any
place that allowed time and opportunity, was always this: he took a
quantity of fine sand, washed it from the salt quality with which it was
impregnated, and spread it upon a sheet to dry; he then nearly filled
an oil-jar with water, and poured into it as much from a boiling kettle
as would serve to kill all the animalcula and eggs that were in it. He
then sifted the dried sand, as slowly as possible, upon the surface of
the water in the jar, till the sand stood half a foot at the bottom of it;
after letting it settle at night, he drew it off by a hole in the jar with a
spigot in it, about an inch above the sand; then threw the remaining
sand out upon the cloth, and dried and washed it again. This process
is sooner performed than described. The water is as limpid as the
purest spring, and little inferior to the finest Spa. Drink largely of this
without fear, according as your appetite requires. By violent
perspiration the aqueous part of your blood is thrown off; and it is not
spirituous liquor that can restore this, whatever momentary strength
it may give you from another cause. When hot and almost fainting
with weakness from continual perspiration, Mr. Bruce has gone into a
warm bath, and been immediately restored to strength, as upon first
rising in the morning.
In Nubia, never scruple to throw yourself into the coldest river or
spring you can find, in whatever degree of heat you are. The reason
of the difference in Europe is that when, by violence, you have raised
yourself to an extraordinary degree of heat, the cold water in which
you plunge yourself checks your perspiration, and shuts your pores
suddenly; the medium is itself too cold, and you do not use force
sufficient to bring back the perspiration, which nought but action
occasioned: whereas, in these warm countries, your perspiration is
natural and constant, though no action be used, only from the
temperature of the medium; therefore, though your pores are shut
the moment you plunge yourself into the cold water, the simple
condition of the outward air again covers you with pearls of sweat
the moment you emerge; and you begin the expanse of the aqueous
part of your blood afresh from the new stock that you have laid in by
your immersion. For this reason, if you are well, deluge yourself from
head to foot, even in the house, where the water is plentiful, by
directing a servant to throw buckets upon you at least once a day,
when you are hottest; not from any imagination that the water braces
you, as it is called, for your bracings will last only for a very few
minutes: inundations will carry watery particles into your blood,
though not equal to bathing in running streams, where the total
immersion, the motion of the water, and the action of the limbs, all
conspire to the benefit you are in quest of.
Do not fatigue yourself if possible. Exercise is not either so
necessary or so salutary here as in Europe. Use fruits sparingly,
especially if too ripe. The musa, or banana, in Arabia Felix, are
rotten-ripe when they are brought to you. Avoid all sorts of fruits
exposed for sale in the markets, as it has probably been gathered in
the sun, and carried miles in it, and all its juices are in a state of
fermentation. Lay it first upon a table covered with a coarse cloth,
and throw frequently a quantity of water upon it; and, if you have an
opportunity, gather it in the dew of the morning before dawn of day,
for then it is far better.
War Dance of the New Zealanders.
PART IX.
SAVAGE WARFARE.
CHAPTER XXI.
Hereditary pirates—A Bornean pirate fleet—Rajah Brooke and the
pirates—A tough job against the prahus—No quarter with the
Dayaks—A freebooter captain—Dayak arms—Bornean fighting
tactics—Advance of Sir J. Brooke’s troops—A debate about
fighting—Poisoned arrows—Weapons of the Amazonian Indians
—The blow-gun—A Bornean war dance—War trophies—Heads,
scalps, and brains—Horrible festivity—The Savages of North
America.
mongst the most warlike savages on the face of the

earth must be counted the natives of the coast of
Borneo. It would have been more correct, however, to
have alluded to these redoubtable barbarians as the
most warlike on the face of the sea rather than the
earth; for the majority of their conflicts take place in their “prahus”
and “sampans,” and in pursuit of their regular and hereditary calling
of pirates. Nor are they insignificant in point of number; there are the
Sarebus, the Sakarran, the Illanun, the Balagnini, each comprising a
tribe many thousands strong, and sea-robbers to a man, woman,
and child; and, besides these, a whole host of ragamuffin fellows, not
respectable enough for the society of the great pirate community,
and who, being joint-stock owners of a prahu, prowl round the coast,
and snap up any trifle too insignificant for the commanders of the
various fleets; for fleets they are beyond question. The prahus of
which the fleets are composed are long, commodious vessels,
propelled by rowers, and carrying sometimes as many as a hundred
men each. Sir J. Brooke, the celebrated “Rajah of Sarawak,” once
had an opportunity of counting ninety-eight boats about to start on a
piratical cruise, the crews of which, reckoned at the low computation
of twenty-five men each, gave a grand total of nearly two thousand
five hundred men. On the same authority, the internal constitution of
these rowers may be stated as follows:—Commanding each fleet is
one man, who holds his high post either by virtue of high birth or
riches; under any circumstances, however, he must possess bravery
and cunning, otherwise, whatever his station or right conferred by
birth, he would very soon be put down, and a proper leader elected
in his place. To each prahu there is a captain and half a dozen petty
officers, generally the captain’s relations, while all the rest—
comprising about four-fifths of the whole—are slaves. Although,
however, these latter are more or less compelled to serve, they are
not without their privileges. They have the right of plunder, which is
indiscriminate, with certain exemptions—viz., slaves, guns, money,
or any other heavy articles, together with the very finest descriptions
of silks and cloths, belong to the chiefs and free portion of the crew;
with the rest the rule is first come first served.
These worthies are indifferent to blood-shedding, fond of plunder,
but fonder than all of slaves; they despise trade, although its profits
may be shown to be greater than those of sea-plunder, and look on
their calling as the noblest occupation of chiefs and free men. Their
swords they show with boasts, as having belonged to their
ancestors, who were pirates, renowned and terrible in their day.
Without doubt the chief support of the system are the slaves they
capture on the different coasts. If they attack an island, the women
and children and as many men as they require, are carried off. Every
boat they take furnishes its quota of slaves; and when they have
collected a full cargo they visit another coast and dispose of it to the
best advantage. For instance, a cargo of slaves captured on the east
coast of Borneo is sold in the west, and the slaves of the south find
ready purchasers in the north. As the woolly-haired Papuas are
generally prized by the natives, constant visits are made to New
Guinea and the easternmost islands where they are procured and
afterwards sold at high prices amongst any Malay community. On
one occasion Rajah Brooke met eighteen boats belonging to the
Illanun pirates, and learned from their chiefs that they had been two
years absent from home; and from the Papuan negro slaves on
board, it was evident that their cruise had extended from the most
eastern islands of the Archipelago to the north-western coast of
Borneo.
Here is a picture of a pirate fleet drawn by Governor Brooke
himself:
“At this time it was hinted that a large pirate fleet had been seen in
the vicinity of the coast, and in a day or two afterwards we had
certain news of their having taken the Sadung boats bound from
Singapore; and Datu Pangeran was in consequence despatched to
communicate with them. He returned, bringing the fleet along with
him to the mouth of the river, whence they requested permission to
visit Sarawak, and pay their respects to the Rajah. I was consulted
on the subject, whether I would meet them, and as I preferred a
pacific to a hostile rencontre, and had, moreover, a considerable
curiosity to see these roving gentry, I consented without hesitation.
Report stated that their intention was to attack the Royalist (a war
ship of the English navy), as they had, it was averred, received
positive accounts of her having fifty lacs of rupees on board, and that
her figure-head was of solid gold. As, however, we had no such
treasure, and the meeting was unavoidable and might be hostile, I
put myself into a complete posture of defence, with a determination
neither to show backwardness nor suspicion. The day arrived, and
the pirates swept up the river; eighteen prahus, one following the
other, decorated with flags and streamers, and firing both cannon
and musketry; the sight was interesting and curious, and heightened
by the conviction that these friends of the moment might be enemies
the next. Having taken their stations the chief men proceeded to an
interview with the Rajah, which I attended to witness. Some distrust
and much ceremony marked the meeting; and both parties had
numerous followers, who filled the hall of audience and the avenues
leading to it. The pirates consisted of Illanuns and Malukus from
Gillolo. The Illanuns are fine athletic men with haughty and reserved
bearing, and evidently quite ready to be friends or foes as best
suited their purpose.
“Beyond the usual formalities the meeting had nothing to
distinguish it; one party retired to their boats while the other went to
their respective houses, and everything betokened quiet. In the
evening I pulled through the fleet and inspected several of their
largest prahus. The entire force consisted of eighteen boats, three
Malukus and fifteen Illanuns; the smallest of these boats carried
twenty men, the largest (they are mostly large), upwards of a
hundred. These larger prahus are too heavy to pull well, though they
carry twenty, forty, and even fifty oars; their armament consists of
one or two six pounders in the bow, one four pounder, stern-chaser,
and a number of swivels, besides musketry, spears, and swords.
The boat is divided into three sections and fortified by strong planks,
one behind the bow, one amidship, and one astern to protect the
steersman. The women and children are crammed down below, as
are the unlucky prisoners taken in the course of an action.
“Their principal plan is boarding a vessel if possible, and carrying
her by numbers; and certainly if a merchantman fired ill, she would
inevitably be taken, but with grape and canister fairly directed the
slaughter would be so great that they would be glad to steer off
before they had neared a vessel.”
Having given a description, though a necessarily brief one, of
these savage sea-lions, as well as of their laws and government, it
may be worth while to devote a little space to the narration of one of
the very many fights that took place between them and the forces
under Sir J. Brooke, whose chief business, be it understood, was to
check and to do all in his power to suppress the predatory operations
of the swarm of piratical prahus infesting the Malayan Archipelago,
to the great danger not only of peaceful native and Chinese traders,
but also of European merchantmen trading to Singapore and other
Chinese ports.
To support Sir J. Brooke in his difficult task, our government in
1843 despatched the “Dido” man-of-war, Captain Henry Keppel,
commander. The “Dido” had been cruising about for a considerable
time, and had performed many toughish jobs in the way of
subjugating pirates, when the time came for the arrival of the English
mail at Singapore, which also included the Bornean letter bags.
These were to be forwarded by a small schooner, but knowing that
the said schooner would probably be anxiously looked for by the
pirates, Captain Keppel agreed with Sir J. Brooke, that it might be as
well to send out some assistance to cruise about the road the
schooner must come. It was scarcely worth while for the “Dido”
herself to set out on such an errand, and the “Dido’s” pinnace was
under repair, so it was resolved to man a large native-built boat,
belonging to Sir J. Brooke, and called the “Jolly Bachelor.” She was
fitted with a brass six-pounder long gun, and a volunteer crew of a
mate, two midshipmen, six marines, and twelve seamen, with a
fortnight’s provisions, the whole being under the command of Mr.
Hunt, the “Dido’s” second lieutenant.
After proceeding on her leisurely course for some time, the “Jolly
Bachelor” made out three boats a long way in the offing, to which
they gave chase, but soon lost sight of them owing to their superior
sailing. They, however, appeared a second and a third time after
dark, but without the “Jolly Bachelor” being able to get near them,
and it now being late and the crew being both fatigued and hungry,
they pulled in shore, lighted a fire, cooked their provisions, and then
hauled the boat out to her grapnel near some rocks, for the night;
lying down to rest with their arms by their sides and their muskets
round the mast ready loaded. Having also placed sentries and look-
outs near, and appointed an officer of the watch, they one and all
(including the watch and the look-out it seems), fell fast asleep.
Lieutenant Hunt was the first to awake, and a very considerable
surprise greeted his still sleepy eyes. It was about three o’clock, and
the moon had just risen; the lieutenant disturbed by a slight noise,
raised his head, and lo! there was a savage brandishing his kris and
performing a war dance on the bit of a deck, in an ecstasy of delight,
thinking, in all probability, of the ease with which he had got
possession of a fine trading boat, and calculating the cargo of slaves
he had to sell, but little dreaming of the hornet’s nest into which he
had fallen.
Dayak and Malay Weapons.
Lieutenant Hunt’s face meeting the light of the moon was the first
intimation conveyed to the pirate that he had made a mistake. He
immediately plunged overboard, and before the officer had
sufficiently recovered his astonishment to know whether he was
dreaming or waking, or to rouse his crew, a discharge from three or
four cannon within a few yards, and the cutting through the rigging
by the various missiles with which the guns were loaded, soon
convinced him that it was stern reality. It was well that the men were
lying down when this discharge took place, as not one of them was
hurt; but on jumping to their legs they found themselves closely
pressed by two large war prahus, one on either side.
To return the fire, cut the cable, man the oars, and back astern to
gain room, was the work of a minute; but now came the tug of war; it
was a case of life and death. The crew of the “Bachelor” fought, says
Captain Keppel quaintly, “as they ought.” Quarter was not expected
on either side; and the quick deadly aim of the marines prevented
the pirates reloading their guns. The Illanun pirate vessels were built
in the peculiar fashion already noticed, that is with partitions through
which ports are bored for working the guns, and these barriers had
to be cut away by round shot before the musketry could be brought
to bear effectually. This done, the grape and canister of the “Jolly
Bachelor” told with fearful execution. In the meantime the prahus had
been pressing forward to board, while the English boat backed
astern; but as soon as this service was achieved, the men of the
latter dropped their oars and seizing their muskets dashed on. The
work was sharp, but short, and the slaughter great. While one pirate
boat was sinking and an effort made to secure her the other escaped
by rounding a point of rocks, where a third and larger prahu, hitherto
unseen, came to her assistance, and putting fresh hands on board
and taking her in tow, succeeded in getting off, although chased by
the “Jolly Bachelor,” after setting fire to the crippled prize which blew
up and sank before the conquerors got back to the scene of action.
The sight that presented itself to the victors on boarding the
captured prahu must indeed have been a frightful one; none of the
pirates waited on board for even the chance of receiving either
quarter or mercy, but all those capable of moving had thrown
themselves into the water. In addition to the killed, some lying across
the thwarts with their oars in their hands at the bottom of the prahu,
in which there was about three feet of blood and water, were seen
protruding the mangled remains of eighteen or twenty bodies.
Detestable, however, as is the trade of war, especially when
carried on from mercenary motives, it is hard for us, with so much of
the salt of the sea in our blood, to regard these savage Dayak rovers
without something very like sympathy. Certain it is that they possess
the chief elements of a great people, perseverance, courage, and a
restless yearning for adventure—much the same sort of folks, dear
reader, as those from which you and I sprang. But our freebooting
ancestors were heroes and led by heroes, say you. Well, here is a
Dayak hero, pictured by one who is himself a hero—a true British
man of war and one little likely to over estimate valour, or to mistake
it on the score of sentimentality.
“Among the mortally wounded lay the young commander of the
prahu, one of the most noble forms of the human race; his
countenance handsome as the hero of oriental romance, and his
bearing wonderfully impressive and touching. He was shot in front
and through the lungs, and his end was rapidly approaching. He
endeavoured to speak, but could not. He looked as if he had
something of importance to communicate, and a shade of
disappointment and regret passed over his brow when he felt that
every effort was unavailing and that his manly strength and daring
spirit were dissolving into the dark night of annihilation. The pitying
conquerors raised him gently up and he was seated in comparative
ease, for the welling out of the blood was less distressing, but the
end speedily came; he folded his arms heroically across his
wounded breast, fixed his eyes on the British seamen around, and
casting one long glance at the ocean—the theatre of his daring
exploits, on which he had so often fought and triumphed—expired
without a sigh.”
It is not a little singular, however, that although they display so
much courage and indifference to death in naval warfare, their
military tactics are of the very meanest order and are executed with
such lukewarmness that to see them as soldiers and nothing else
would be to conceive them to be the greatest curs on the face of the
earth. Of this Rajah Brooke had most rueful yet ludicrous
experience. Thanks to his own indomitable pluck and the assistance
(sparse enough at best) granted him by the British government,
together with that of the various Bornean tribes whom Brooke had
won over to his interest, the marauding Dayaks were very
considerably lessened in numbers and, better still, damped in
piratical ardour; still there were a few very formidable bodies
inhabiting forts along the coast whose interest it was to favour piracy
and who were known to do their earnest best to thwart the
endeavours of the European Rajah. Therefore a grand council of war
was held, at which were present various Malay, Chinese, and Dayak
leaders, and Sir J. Brooke, and it was formally resolved to combine
the various forces and to proceed to storm and carry the obnoxious
forts in a regular way.
All were willing enough to give their word; but our countryman
seems from the very onset to have had a dismal foreboding of what
would be the result. “To judge,” says he, “by the sample of the
council, I should form a very unfavourable expectation of their
conduct in action. Macota (a chief, as are the rest whose names are
here mentioned) is lively and active, but, either from indisposition or
want of authority, undecided. The Capitan China is lazy and silent;
Abong Mia and Datu Naraja stupid.... I may here state my motives
for being a spectator of, or participator (as may turn out) in, this
scene. In the first place, I must confess that curiosity strongly
prompted me; since to witness the Malays, Chinese, and Dayaks in
warfare was so new that the novelty alone might plead an excuse for
this desire. But it was not the only motive, for my presence is a
stimulus to our own party, and will probably depress the others in
proportion.”
Besides swords and spears and muskets and some sort of
artillery, both parties availed themselves of other favorite Bornean
arms, including the ranjow; “these ranjows are made of bamboo
pointed fine and stuck in the ground; and there are, besides, holes
about three feet deep filled with these spikes and afterwards lightly
covered, which are called patabong. Another obstacle consists of a
spring formed by bending back a stiff cane, with a sharp bamboo
attached to it, which, fastened by a slight twine, flies forcibly against
any object passing through the bush and brushing against it: they
resemble the mole traps in England. The Borneans have a great
dread of these snares; and the way they deal with them is by
sending out parties of Dayaks during the night to clear the path of
such dangers. “The Sambas Chinese (adherents of the Brooke
party) were wretchedly armed, having no guns and scarcely any
muskets; but swords, spears, and shields, together with forty long
thin iron tubes with the bore of a musket and carrying a slug. These
primitive weapons were each managed by two men, one being the
carrier of the ordnance, the other the gunner; for whilst one holds the
tube on his shoulder the other takes aim, turns away his head,
applies his match, and is pleased with the sound. Their mode of
loading is as curious as the piece and its mode of discharge. Powder
is poured in, the end knocked on the ground, and the slug with
another knock sent on the powder without either ramming or
cartridge. Indeed it is difficult to imagine any weapon more rude,
awkward, or inefficient. The Borneans in fighting wear a quilted
jacket or spenser which reaches over the hips, and from its size has
a most unserviceable appearance, the bare legs and arms sticking
out from under this puffed-out coat like the sticks which support the
garments of a scarecrow.”
Setting sail with a fleet of vessels containing his gallant army, in
course of time the enemy’s neighbourhood was reached and a fort
built about a mile from the stronghold of their foes. It should be
stated that to supply themselves with materials for this fort another
near home was taken down and the timbers loaded into spare boats.
No opposition was offered. The ground was cleared of jungle; piles
driven in a square about fifteen yards to each face; and the earth
from the centre, scooped out and intermixed with reeds, was heaped
up about five feet high inside the piles. At the four corners were
small watch-houses, and along the parapet of earth a narrow walk
connecting them. While some of the army was thus employed
another portion of it surrounded this the main body of the defence by
an outer work made by slight sticks run into the ground, with cross
binding of split bamboos, and bristling with a chevaux de frise of
sharpened bamboos about breast high. The fastenings of the entire
work were of ratan, which is found in plenty. The entire fortress was
commenced and finished within eight hours.
Knowing the weakness of the enemy, Sir J. Brooke now proposed
that they should sally out and attack them, and in case of pursuit or
severe repulse it was only a matter of ten minutes’ run to regain the
fort, where they could defy further molestation. But the proposition
took the army aghast. What! walk right up to the brass guns? Surely
the English Rajah must be mad. The attack must be made from
behind a wall, or not at all; and why not, when to build forts was so
easy? and it was only a matter of so many seven hours’ labour to
build fort after fort as they advanced and until they had arrived within
convenient musket range of the enemy. So the Grand Army retired to
bed.
Next morning they were up and doing, hammering and tinkering at
the new stockade. In the midst of the work, however, there was a
tremendous commotion—the enemy was advancing. There could be
no mistake about it: you could hear their shouts and the banging of
their war gongs approaching nearer and nearer. The Brooke army,
nothing daunted replied with yells just as furious and defiant, and by
way of refreshing their courage, several charges of powder and shot
were expended in the air. The enemy approach within hail, and the
excitement is grand. “We are coming! we are coming!” shouted the
rebels; “lay aside your muskets, and come out and fight us with
swords.”—“Come on,” replied the others; “we are building a stockade
and want to fight you.” Things having arrived at this critical pass,
there is no knowing what might have been the result, when merciful
nature, to avert the horrors of blood and carnage, interposed with a
heavy shower of rain, before which the rebels retreated, followed by
the derisive shouts of the Borneans, who were under cover, and
whose leaders immediately proceeded to offer a fervent thanksgiving
for the victory gained, the soldiers responding with edifying
earnestness, and then all retired to rest calmly as on the preceding
night.
Next morning, however, Sir J. Brooke, whose curiosity was long
since satisfied, and who began to grow tired of witnessing this novel
mode of warfare, encouraged the troops to make an advance, to
proceed indeed to within three hundred yards of the enemy’s
stronghold, and there to erect a new stockade, backing his urging
with the promise to send aboard for two six-pounder carronades with
which to mount it. During the progress of this work Sir J. Brooke took
occasion to inquire of the Dayak commander, Macota, if this was the
way a battle was always conducted in these parts. Macota was very
eager to set our countryman right on a point that so closely affected
the honour of his nation. The enemy, he declared, during his last
campaign were much more courageous than now. Stockade was
opposed to stockade, and the fighting constant and severe; and so
ably had Macota generalled his troops, that during two months he
had not lost a single man, while five of the enemy were stretched
upon the field.
By the time the fort was finished and the guns arrived, the Brooke
army had been reinforced, so that it numbered five hundred men of
one sort and another. While the guns were being fixed the enemy
opened fire, but were speedily checked, and in a quarter of an hour
had to bewail a breach in the walls of their fortress large enough to
admit several men together. “Seeing the effect,” says Rajah Brooke,
“I proposed to Macota to storm the place with one hundred and fifty
Chinese and Malays. The way from one fort to the other was
protected. The enemy dared not shew themselves, for the fire of the
grape and canister, and nothing could have been easier; but my
proposition caused a commotion as difficult to describe as forget.
The Chinese consented, and Macota, the commander-in-chief, was
willing; but his inferiors were backward, and there arose a scene
which shewed me the full violence of Malay passions, and their
infuriated madness when once roused. Pangeran Houseman (one of
the leaders) urged with energy the advantage of the proposal, and in
the course of a speech lashed himself into a state of fury; he jumped
to his feet, and with demoniac gestures stamped round and round,
dancing a war dance after the most approved fashion. His
countenance grew livid, his eyes glared, his features inflamed, and
for my part, not being able to interpret the torrent of his oratory, I
thought the man possessed of a devil, and about to ‘run a muck.’ But
after a minute or two of this dance he resumed his seat, furious and
panting, but silent. In reply, Subtu urged some objections to my plan,
which was warmly supported by Illudeen, who apparently hurt
Subtu’s feelings; for the indolent, the placid Subtu leapt to his feet,
seized his spear, and rushed to the entrance of the stockade with his
passions desperately aroused. I never saw finer action than when,
with spear raised and pointing to the enemy’s fort, he challenged any
one to rush on with him. Houseman and Surrudeen (the bravest of
the brave) like madmen seized their swords to inflame the courage

The Transformation of The Media System in Turkey Citizenship Communication and Convergence Eylem Yanardagoglu Full Chapter PDF Scribd

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Transformation of The Media System in Turkey Citizenship Communication and Convergence Eylem Yanardagoglu Full Chapter PDF Scribd

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Transformation of the Media

System in Turkey: Citizenship,

More information about this series at

ISSN 2634-5978 ISSN 2634-5986 (electronic)

Cover illustration: Idealink Photography / Alamy Stock Photo

“Exploring the transformation of Turkey’s mediascape historically through the

This book is a culmination of my research over the last 15 years. My PhD

catalysers to wrap myself in a cocoon to complete the manuscript. Writing

but without their insight, comments, observations and experiences this

2 Nation, Media and Communicative Space 29

3 Politics, Media and Citizenship in Modern Turkey 59

4 Europeanisation Reforms and Early AKP Era 91

5 New Media and Politics of Communicative Citizenship125

6 Restructuring of the Media System and New Media

Eylem Yanardağoğlu is an associate professor and head of the New

At the beginning of the millennium, the premises upon which Turkish

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

for citizens, civil society representatives, activists, journalists, artists and

into a presidential system (Kaptan, 2020: 3986). Erdoğan won a second

With similarities to non-Western systems, the Turkish media system was

and showing (albeit weak) authoritarian tendencies (Somer, 2016). Under

1.1 The Media in Turkey: A Brief Overview

communication policies (Kejanlıoğlu, 2004). In 1964, Turkish Radio and

significant aspect of global neo-liberal economic transformation. They also

the 2000s, and the momentum of Europeanisation significantly declined

By the time of Gezi’s first anniversary, journalists were under increasing

implemented. In June 2016, a new law enabled the government to sus-

1.2 Theoretical Framework and Methods

citizens to voice their viewpoints via various forms of communication

Although citizenship is mainly viewed as a form of political member-

nation state’s capacity to control the representations of linguistic and cul-

significant power and agency can be conferred upon ‘ordinary citizens’ in

connected with media production in Turkey. These interviews began as

1.3 The Structure of the Book

bottom-up and participatory media practices (Jenkins, 2006); these

1.3.1 Chapter 2: Nation, Media and Communicative Space

1.3.2 Chapter 3: Politics, Media and Citizenship

1.3.3 Chapter 4: Europeanisation Reforms and Early AKP Era

1.3.4 Chapter 5: New Media and Politics

1.3.5 Chapter 6: Re-structuring the Media System

Deuze, M. (2007). Convergence Culture in the Creative Industries. International

Kasaba, R., & Bozdoğan, S. (2000). Turkey at a Crossroad. Journal of International

Mediabarometer. (2014). Media Barometer, A Home Grown Analysis of the Media

Academy of Political and Social Science, 681(1), 42–61. https://doi.org/

Waisboard. (2020). https://www.compol.it/rivista/special-­issue/interrogating-­

Yılmaz, G. (2016b). From Europeanization to De-Europeanization: The

Nation, Media and Communicative Space

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 29

The symbolic and cultural formation of national identity necessitated

Habermas’s original theoretical framework is considered to explain the

amateurs—to enact some kind of agency regarding the omnipresent mes-

mongst the most warlike savages on the face of the

You might also like

2 Nation, Media and Communicative Space 29

3 Politics, Media and Citizenship in Modern Turkey 59

4 Europeanisation Reforms and Early AKP Era 91

5 New Media and Politics of Communicative Citizenship125

6 Restructuring of the Media System and New Media

Waisboard. (2020). https://www.compol.it/rivista/special-issue/interrogating-