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Scholars, Intellectuals, and the Media: The Armenian Issue and Making History in Turkey
Abstract
Traditionally, the media has acted as the main mechanism in the intellectual field whereby intellectuals establish themselves as public figures. However, studies in the sociology of intellectuals tend to take the intellectual’s media capital as an unproblematized constant. This paper argues that the media not only plays a significant role in the formation of the intellectual subject but also shapes, directs, and constrains the space of the intellectual and knowledge produced in the intellectual field. In order to highlight this interventionist role played by the media that confines the voice of the intellectual within a narrow discursive space, this paper visits the discussions on the Armenian Genocide in Turkey. The historical narrative of the Turkish state on the issue rejects that the mass killings of Armenians during the last years of the Ottoman Empire amount to a genocide. This narrative has been challenged by scholarly works of a group of ‘revisionist’ Turkish historians since the beginning of 1990s. This challenge took an ‘intellectualist turn’ when a group of highly renowned intellectuals took up the cause to revise the hegemonic discourse on history in mid-2000s, in a series of events (such as the 2005 conference in İstanbul, the 2008 apology campaign, and the activism related to the assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007) that were awarded immense coverage in the national media. By analyzing the discourses conveyed by the intellectuals over the print media throughout these events, it will be demonstrated that in the Turkish case, the consequence of the dependency to the national media has been the transposition of the discourses into a pragmatic, quasi-nationalistic tone that presents the recognition of the Genocide and reconciliation with Armenians as advantageous for the nation for this or that reason. Co-existence of such discourses with more universalistic and detached ones created an ambiguity in the content, which has not been helpful in a setting in which intellectuals have also failed to create new forms to by-pass their dependence to the media. All in all, the argument will be that the media is the answer to the question of why the scholars and intellectuals’ project to replace the hegemonic discourse in Turkey remained a story of limited success.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
None