Research Information System
European Journal of Research on Social Studies, vol.volume1, no.1, pp.141-145, 2014 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
This study stems from a leading article published in the British daily, The Independent (2 June 2012): It is time for Turkey to take the lead on Syria. This article argued that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan -set too much store by the laudatory press clippings about the rise of the new Ottomans and exaggerated his government‘s influence in Damascus.? This argument is very important for Turkey‘s foreign policy. The term -Neo-Ottoman? depicts a foreign policy that draws part of its legitimacy from Turkey‘s experience as a once imperial power in its wider neighbourhood. Social and political life acquires its meaning through discourse, especially through the articulation of meaning and identities. The process of establishing meaning is a political process, entangled by pluralism and struggles for power. Post-marxsist discourse theory uses political power to fix the meaning of a subject and refers this process as articulation. The argument in this paper looks into the effect of the national and international press on political communication; more precisely, into how the -Neo-Ottoman? discourse was projected in the press, production and reproduction of neo-ottoman vision and how it was brought to the forefront by the international media in assessment of Turkey‘s foreign policy. Therefore, we will be focusing on different views of prominent national and international figures illustrating their views on this issue. While doing so, we will cover articles published in Turkey, the Middle East, Europe and the USA.