While conspiracy theories have traditionally received attention from the Turkish public and political elite, recently, however, they have proliferated when explaining complex situations. This paper ...examines conspiracy theories in Turkey and the role of entertainment media, specifically the popular period drama, Payitaht: Abdülhamid, in mainstreaming conspiracy theories. Payitaht: Abdülhamid, as an ideological state apparatus, repurposes anti-Semitism as salient conspiracy theories by creating scapegoats and existential others. This paper argues that the state uses entertainment media to disseminate conspiracy theories and, in effect, endorses anti-Semitism. As a result, anti-Semitism has transformed from a marginal movement to a mainstream movement.
Image and reputation are key factors in how nations are perceived by global audiences. Current and historical issues can pose as challenges to a nation’s reputation prompting the need to save face. ...The Armenian genocide is one of the most critical issues the Republic of Turkey has had to manage in terms of its global image and reputation. While the vast body of literature on the subject borrows from history and political science focusing on the mechanism of denial, this paper offers a communication framework to understand the rhetoric of Turkey’s image repair. Turkey’s crisis communication strategies vis-à-vis the centennial of the Armenian genocide are analyzed by employing Benoit’s image repair theory through a content analysis of official statements and declarations by the heads of state given in 2014 and 2015. In response to the emerging political crisis, the Turkish government primarily employed image repair strategies of evading responsibility and reducing offensiveness with the aim to appeal to international audiences.
Since the mid-2000s, Turkey has incorporated a soft power discourse into its foreign policy agenda and shifted its attention toward building up its soft power infrastructure. Up until 2013, Turkey ...was applauded as a regional powerhouse, an important player in the soft power arena, and a beacon of democracy and stability within an unstable region. However, the restrictions on free speech, media censorship, and the crackdown on the opposition have impacted Turkey’s current soft power ranking. While expanding its diplomatic network and public diplomacy apparatus to wield soft power, Turkey’s global reputation has seen a downward spiral. This article investigates the role that political leadership and political values play in determining Turkey’s soft power capacity. This article’s main contention is that while Turkey increases its global engagement and capacity to appeal non-Western audiences, its capacity to attract international audiences particularly in the West has diminished due to its democratic backsliding.
Turkish television series gained their presence in the global entertainment market being dubbed as Turkey's soft power asset. However, in more recent years, together with increasing government ...control over Turkey's media landscape and rising authoritarianism, historical television series depicting the Ottoman Empire have flourished primarily on Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) public broadcasting. This paper argues that historical television series on TRT reflect the political elite's populist-nationalism and are in line with the AKP's (Justice and Development Party) political discourse. Therefore, television series aired on TRT are operationalized by the AKP government to advance their political agenda and are thus employed as propaganda tools in disseminating a populist-nationalist discourse.
Turkish drama series aired on state network TRT (Turkish Radio and Television) connect Ottoman history with contemporary events in Turkey and have been instrumental agents in the government's ...attempts to shape the political reality in accordance with its political agenda. This article examines the narrative cultivated by the popular historical drama Payitaht: Abdülhamid (2017) by using the dramatistic process framework. In doing so, it analyzes the overlapping narrative of historical and contemporary in-groups and out-groups. Payitaht: Abdülhamid recreates the current political divides on screen in Turkey by assigning guilt and redeemer statuses to certain characters in the drama series and by providing a longitudinal perspective of Turkish history. Payitaht: Abdülhamid is, therefore, a political tool used by the ruling AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi Justice and Development Party) government to cultivate and propagate a worldview that connects the Ottoman past to contemporary politics. Furthermore, Payitaht: Abdülhamid feeds the existent divisions within Turkey by reinforcing the AKP's political discourse on key domestic and foreign policy issues and helps to push its agenda to the fore.
This paper examines the role of government-controlled media in provoking the current wave of religious/nationalism in Turkey. We use Friedman’s concept of the Soldier’s Matrix and Volkan’s large ...group identity as analytical lenses to explain how Turkey’s society is propped up in a constant state of fear driven by an imagined existential threat and promised glory. We argue that the Erdoğan administration fuels polarization instrumentalizes the Sevres trauma and promised glory of the Ottoman Empire. In turn, these imagined fears and promises rationalize populist domestic and foreign policies. Through the example of entertainment television content drawn from Payitaht: Abdülhamid, this paper exemplifies how media facilitates the activation of Turkey’s soldier’s matrix.
Turkish Jewish culture is largely unknown within Turkey due to various reasons, including demographic and historical factors. Negative stereotypes about Jews in Turkish film and television have ...further contributed to this lack of understanding. The ground-breaking television series, The Club, produced for Netflix, showcases Turkish Jews as its main characters and highlights their Sephardic heritage. We believe that media plays an important role in educating the public and shaping perceptions. To explore this, we conducted thirty in-depth, semi-structured interviews using the snowball method to investigate the impact of the series on the audience's knowledge of Turkish Jews. Our findings suggest that The Club has helped raise awareness about Turkish Jews, Sephardic culture, and Judaism among the research sample, as it presents a non-stereotypical portrayal of its Jewish characters.
The retina-specific ATP-binding cassette transporter protein ABCA4 is responsible for properly continuing the visual cycle by removing toxic retinoid byproducts of phototransduction. Functional ...impairment caused by ABCA4 sequence variations is the leading cause of autosomal recessive inherited retinal disorders, including Stargardt disease, retinitis pigmentosa, and cone-rod dystrophy. To date, more than 3000
genetic variants have been identified, approximately 40 percent of which have not been able to be classified for pathogenicity assessments. This study examined 30 missense
variants using AlphaFold2 protein modeling and computational structure analysis for pathogenicity prediction. All variants classified as pathogenic (n = 10) were found to have deleterious structural consequences. Eight of the ten benign variants were structurally neutral, while the remaining two resulted in mild structural changes. This study's results provided multiple lines of computational pathogenicity evidence for eight
variants of uncertain clinical significance. Overall, in silico analyses of ABCA4 can provide a valuable tool for understanding the molecular mechanisms of retinal degeneration and their pathogenic impact.
The retina-specific ATP-binding cassette transporter protein ABCA4 is responsible for properly continuing the visual cycle by removing toxic retinoid byproducts of phototransduction. Functional ...impairment caused by ABCA4 sequence variations is the leading cause of autosomal recessive inherited retinal disorders, including Stargardt disease, retinitis pigmentosa, and cone-rod dystrophy. To date, more than 3000 ABCA4 genetic variants have been identified, approximately 40 percent of which have not been able to be classified for pathogenicity assessments. This study examined 30 missense ABCA4 variants using AlphaFold2 protein modeling and computational structure analysis for pathogenicity prediction. All variants classified as pathogenic (n = 10) were found to have deleterious structural consequences. Eight of the ten benign variants were structurally neutral, while the remaining two resulted in mild structural changes. This study's results provided multiple lines of computational pathogenicity evidence for eight ABCA4 variants of uncertain clinical significance. Overall, in silico analyses of ABCA4 can provide a valuable tool for understanding the molecular mechanisms of retinal degeneration and their pathogenic impact.
Music to a Diplomat’s Ears…If They Listen Çevik, Senem B.; Piliposyan, Hasmik
Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern studies,
09/2020, Letnik:
22, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The growing agency of non-state actors empowered grassroots diplomacy between Turks and Armenians until the centennial genocide commemorations in 2015. However, rising authoritarianism in Turkey ...resulted in the clampdown of non-governmental actors, thus, further restricting room for engagement in post 2015. Under the hostile environment for non-state actors an Armenian pop song, Mi Gna (Don’t Leave) by Super Sako, gained mainstream access in the Turkish music market. This paper contextualizes that unintentional actions and music can be catalysers in complimenting the long-term policy goals by permeating into the public sphere, thus providing space for cross-cultural awareness in undemocratic regimes.
PDF
