The role of the mainstream newspapers in the consolidation of the Turkish national identity: 1934-1937

Abstract

This dissertation examines the role of the press in the consolidation and dissemination of the Turkish national identity in the single-party era with a social constructionist approach. Within the context of press-government relations and in line with the main peculiarities of Kemalist nationalism, the research takes a cross section and demonstrates how the Turkish national identity that was manufactured by the Kemalist powerwas represented, discursively reproduced and disseminated via the newspapers in the mid-1930s. The research is primarily based on a sample of newspaper articles retrieved from the archives of the Beyazıt State Library. The sample consists of articles published in Cumhuriyet, Akşam, and Son Posta, between 1934 and 1937. Data are analyzed complementarily by content analysis to describe the intensity, and discourse analysis to obtain an in-depth understanding of the framing of nationalist representations.It is observed that newspapers displayed very limited dissociations from the Kemalist arguments. The conclusion of this dissertation is that newspapers played a significant role in the dissemination and consolidation of the Turkish national identity in the single-party period, by mediating the underlying framework of the nation and by employing discursive practices that mostly ratified, reproduced, and diffused the discourses of Kemalist nationalism.