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Turkish International Media and the Middle East: The TRT between Political Communication and Public Diplomacy
Abstract
Does the Turkish Radio Television (TRT) Corporation reflect, contribute, and represent Turkish political communication, public diplomacy, foreign policy, or neo-Ottomanism; if so, how and what is the message? This research explores TRT’s international media networks, communication, and messages in the Middle East. It draws on two TRT networks and languages; TRT Arabi for Arabic and TRT World for English. It selects four different events in relevance, features, and implications, including Turkish military operations in Syria, Turkish military operations in Iraq, the Sheikh Jarrah incident in Jerusalem and the Gulf Crisis. The research argues that the TRT networks represent a Turkish model competing in the realm of the international media arenas with specific but distinctive roles, reflecting a state approach, priority, and perspectives on different events in the Middle East. While the research borrows from mixed quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches including content analysis and textual analysis of news articles, and interviews of journalists, it offers a comparative analysis of the selected two networks and four events. The findings show that the TRT networks in this study had similar attitudes, angles, frames, and roles, however, while reflecting state positions and narratives, they had different volumes of news coverage of events in both languages, indicating changing political communication and public diplomacy. The results reflected more news coverage about the Turkish military operations in Syria over other events; topics about international relations and/or public diplomacy, frames about the role of Turkey in fighting terrorism, sources and quotes mostly from the Turkish government. Moreover, while the research finds that messages of news reflected the Turkish foreign policy and public diplomacy in some events over others, it did not find any significant reference to neo-Ottomanism, but more so to Turkish and Arab history. Overall, the research unveils the Turkish model of international media networks with a focus on events related to the Middle East. The findings and analyses implicate the prevailing understanding of international media as merely Western, Global North models and usher a rising phenomenon unlike the formers – a Turkish model, priority and focus. Furthermore, though international media networks may have different outlets and languages, the findings show that the TRT Arabi and TRT World presented similar coverage, reflected state priority, and overall echoed a Turkish narrative regionally and globally.
Discipline
Communications
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Turkey
Sub Area
None