Ibrahim Efe | Lancaster University (original) (raw)
Papers by Ibrahim Efe
Higher Education Research & Development, 2015
This article presents findings from a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of mission and vision st... more This article presents findings from a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of mission and vision statements of 105 state and 66 private/foundation universities in Turkey. The paper combines a corpus-based approach with critical discourse analysis to interpret the data in relation to its institutional as well as socio-political context. It argues that the mission and vision statements are marked by a need for reassuring their legitimacy and the demands of a growing tertiary market. The historical and cultural backgrounds of the development of universities in Turkey, as well as political and economic conditions, are also decisive in the shaping of mission and vision statement of universities.
Middle East Critique, 2012
This article is based on an analysis of a two million-word corpus of news columns and op-eds in t... more This article is based on an analysis of a two million-word corpus of news columns and op-eds in two Turkish news websites, those of Today’s Zaman (TZ) and the Hürriyet Daily News (HDN). The TZ is Zaman’s English language sister newspaper, which is now Turkey’s best-selling English language paper with 5,783 copies per day. The HDN, which has been a window for many foreigners to Turkey for over 45 years, sells 5,483 copies a day. The articles considered, all of which relate to the Ergenekon case, are examined using a corpus-based discourse analysis to elaborate on the representations of the events and the social groups involved. The comparative analysis of the keywords in each corpus was aimed at highlighting the lexis that was used most significantly in Today’s Zaman articles, when compared with the Hürriyet Daily News, and vice versa. The occurrences of keywords, retrieved by using Corpus Linguistics, were analyzed qualitatively through concordances and more contextual information then was brought into the analysis to investigate the data further. It was found that the TZ and the HDN differ strikingly in their representation of the Ergenekon case, which unsurprisingly relates to their overall historical connection to the political powers in Turkey.
Gümüşhane Üniversitesi İletişim Fakültesi Elektronik Dergisi
Language in Society, 2016
Marmara Iletisim Dergisi, 2015
Critical Discourse Studies, 2014
LangUE 2010: Language at the University of Essex International Postgraduate Conference Supported ... more LangUE 2010: Language at the University of Essex International Postgraduate Conference Supported by the Dept. of Language and Linguistics. 16 Critical discourse analysis of Turkish news reporting on Secularism and Islamism Ibrahim Efe (Lancaster University, UK) This research project ...
Marmara Iletisim Dergisi, 2015
15 Temmuz Darbe Girişimi ve Batı Medyası, 2017
These paper analyses western media representations of the 15 July coup attempt in Turkey.
As the world increasingly faces the burden of wars, migration and economic crises, it is very rel... more As the world increasingly faces the burden of wars,
migration and economic crises, it is very relevant to discuss
the role of journalism and the media as a whole in the
structures of contemporary society
Turkey went through an extraordinary local elections process in March 2014. The local elections o... more Turkey went through an extraordinary local elections process in March 2014. The local elections of 2014 meant more than what it was supposed to, due to various significant events preceding the elections. Political parties carried this message to their electorate through their election campaign and party meetings. Perhaps, it was the ruling AK Party who had to carry most of the burden of this equivocal election process. Due to a series of corruption cases and leaked phone calls, the local elections were billed as a referendum for the legitimacy of the AK Party and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. On the other hand, the election campaign was a test for both the AK Party initiated peace process and autonomy demand for the Kurdish-majority region. Because the peace process was put into question by opposition parties, the 2014 local election was going to gauge popular support for the process. Also, several politicians of the main pro-Kurdish party, i.e., the BDP, embarked on a campaign that would represent the election results as their success in autonomy demands. In this policy brief we will analyze the votes in 16 Kurdish-majority provinces, firstly to find out whether the AK Party and Recep Erdoğan succeeded in reinstating their legitimacy in the region, and secondly to answer in what proportions the Kurdish constituency voted in favor or against regional autonomy.
Teoriden Uygulamaya Siyasal İletişim
İçerisinde yaşadığı dünyayı tarif, tanzim ve tasnif etme gayesi asırlardır devam eden insanoğlu, ... more İçerisinde yaşadığı dünyayı tarif, tanzim ve tasnif etme gayesi asırlardır devam eden insanoğlu, bu uğurda yaşadığı büyük kayıplara rağmen varoluşsal hedefinden asla vazgeçmemiş, kendi 'meşru' iktidarını oluşturabilmek adına her daim 'öteki' yaratmayı bilmiştir. Bu faaliyetler için en uygun araçlar ne ise onlar üzerinde denetim kurabilme yarışı, iktidara talip yapılar arasında süregiden bir rekabete yol açmıştır.
Bu kitapta da ifade edilen yarışta yer alan aktörlerin söylem ve eylemleri, olgusal tekabüliyetleri de göz önünde bulundurulmak suretiyle, çeşitli açılardan incelenerek siyasal iletişim alanında özgün bilgi üretmek amaçlanmıştır. Çalışmanın önemli noktalarından biri de hedefe giderken tek bir ekolün görüşlerinden faydalanmak yerine, okura farklı bakış açıları sunabilmek adına liberal çoğulcu paradigmadan, eleştirel yaklaşımın farklı sorgulamalarına kadar uzanan çok geniş bir çerçeve çizilmiş olmasıdır.
As was obvious almost to everyone keeping an eye on Turkish politics, the 2014 local elections we... more As was obvious almost to everyone keeping an eye on Turkish politics, the 2014 local elections were billed as a referendum for the legitimacy of the ruling Justice and Development Party. Among purported reasons are the antigovernment protests in the summer of 2013, the corruption allegations against the AK Party in the last month of 2013, and numerous leaked private phone calls and conversations among figures close to the AK Party. The wiretapped talks also targeted AK Party’s efforts and policy for a solution of decades-long Kurdish question in Turkey. This campaign aimed at derailing the process on two sides. On the Kurdish side, for example, a leaked conversation aimed to increase suspicion among Kurds that the Turkish state had been involved in the killing of three Kurdish activists in Paris at the beginning of 2013. On the Turkish side, more importantly, the leaked recordings of the conversations of Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK’s prisoned leader, with other prisoners aimed to imply that the AK Party government had reached an agreement with Öcalan on certain issues such as regional autonomy. Surely, the leaked recordings targeted the legitimacy of the resolution process between the government and Öcalan beginning from the late 2012. The 2014 local elections, therefore, was going to test whether the alleged involvement of the government in the Paris incident and Öcalan’s indiscretion were bought respectively by Kurdish and Turkish voters.
This paper will mainly seek to answer these questions: Is the approval of the regional autonomy really the case when the 2014 elections are considered? What do the 2014 elections tell us about the future of the peace process? While doing this, we will present a comparative analysis of the votes in Kurdish-majority provinces cast for the AK Party and Kurdish parties since the 2002 elections. We will limit the analysis to metropolitan cities and provinces which are populated by a Kurdish majority. At the end of the paper, we will also elaborate on the importance of the new Islamist Kurdish party, Hüda-Par, for the Kurdish question politics. Before going into detail, it is important to note that the local elections took place under a relatively peaceful climate, in the context of Kurdish problem, thanks to the resolution process.
Dominant self-complacent national narratives (not only) in Turkey have long silenced past wrongdo... more Dominant self-complacent national narratives (not only) in Turkey have long silenced past wrongdoings. Among these, the massacre of thousands of Kurds in Dersim during the 1930s, being part of the wider suppression of the Kurdish minority until today, is a particularly significant example. However, against the background of an almost global emphasis on recognising past crimes, the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan offered an apology on 23 November 2011. Erdoğan’s unexpected move has been both viewed as an opportunity for a more inclusive understanding of Turkish citizenship, as well as criticised for being a calculated manoeuvre in order to side-line political opponents. In this article, we investigate both this performance, as well as its public reception, arguing that it represents a missed opportunity for inner-Turkish reconciliation. Drawing on the discourse-historical approach to critical discourse analysis, we thus illustrate how Erdoğan instrumentalised an ‘apology’ for political gains.
This article is based on an analysis of a 2 million-word corpus of news columns and op-eds in ... more This article is based on an analysis of a 2 million-word corpus of news columns and op-eds in two Turkish news websites, those of Today’s Zaman (TZ) and the Hürriyet Daily News (HDN). The TZ is Zaman’s English language sister newspaper, which is now Turkey’s best-selling English language paper with 5,783 copies per day. The HDN, which has been a window for many foreigners to Turkey for over 45 years, sells 5,483 copies a day. The articles considered, all of which relate to the Ergenekon case, are examined using a corpus- based discourse analysis to elaborate on the representations of the events and the social groups involved. The comparative analysis of the keywords in each corpus was aimed at highlighting the lexis that was used most significantly in Today’s Zaman articles, when compared with the Hürriyet Daily News, and vice versa. The occurrences of keywords, retrieved by using Corpus Linguistics, were analyzed qualitatively through concordances and more contextual information then was brought into the analysis to investigate the data further. It was found that the TZ and the HDN differ strikingly in their representation of the Ergenekon case which unsurprisingly relates to their overall historical connection to the political powers in Turkey.
Conference Presentations by Ibrahim Efe
Bodies have long been sites signifying shared identities and struggles over symbolic boundaries. ... more Bodies have long been sites signifying shared identities and struggles over symbolic boundaries. The circumcision debate that originated in Germany in 2012 (and continued in Israel and Turkey) is an exemplary case of such struggles. This debate, which called to outlaw Jewish and Muslim boy circumcision, became a site for the negotiation of practices by ethnic and religious minorities vis-à-vis the state-Christian majority. Against this background, we claim that while the majority’s boundary work scrupulously avoided traditional anti-Semitism and racism, it has, following liberal-democratic assumptions, framed the criminalization of circumcision as a clinical, enlightened and humanistic response that can preserve the bodily integrity of innocent children.
We thus ask, first, how the majority’s clinical gaze constitutes bodies of others. Second, we inquire into the practice of ‘writing around’ the body, showing how proponents and opponents of circumcision made the debate’s centre, bodily integrity, meaningful through analogies to, e.g., other bodily harming (secular) practices such as ear piercing and similar practices in other times/places such as baptising. Third, by comparing Germany, Israel and Turkey, we reveal the interdiscursive dynamics of a debate that transgressed national and religious boundaries, a fact affecting all sides of the debate.
We analyse the coverage of the circumcision debate in broadsheets and tabloids in the three countries, drawing on discourse-analytical tools. We thus show how a subtle type of ‘otherness’ is constructed (but also opposed), and how the articulation of minority rights in terms of religious difference remains intact even in (self-perceived) modern, secular societies.
Other by Ibrahim Efe
This article presents findings from a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of mission and vision st... more This article presents findings from a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of mission and vision statements of 105 state and 66 private/foundation universities in Turkey. The paper combines a corpus-based approach with critical discourse analysis to interpret the data in relation to its institutional as well as socio-political context. It argues that the mission and vision statements are marked by a need for reassuring their legitimacy and the demands of a growing tertiary market. The historical and cultural backgrounds of the development of universities in Turkey, as well as political and economic conditions, are also decisive in the shaping of mission and vision statement of universities.
Higher Education Research & Development, 2015
This article presents findings from a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of mission and vision st... more This article presents findings from a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of mission and vision statements of 105 state and 66 private/foundation universities in Turkey. The paper combines a corpus-based approach with critical discourse analysis to interpret the data in relation to its institutional as well as socio-political context. It argues that the mission and vision statements are marked by a need for reassuring their legitimacy and the demands of a growing tertiary market. The historical and cultural backgrounds of the development of universities in Turkey, as well as political and economic conditions, are also decisive in the shaping of mission and vision statement of universities.
Middle East Critique, 2012
This article is based on an analysis of a two million-word corpus of news columns and op-eds in t... more This article is based on an analysis of a two million-word corpus of news columns and op-eds in two Turkish news websites, those of Today’s Zaman (TZ) and the Hürriyet Daily News (HDN). The TZ is Zaman’s English language sister newspaper, which is now Turkey’s best-selling English language paper with 5,783 copies per day. The HDN, which has been a window for many foreigners to Turkey for over 45 years, sells 5,483 copies a day. The articles considered, all of which relate to the Ergenekon case, are examined using a corpus-based discourse analysis to elaborate on the representations of the events and the social groups involved. The comparative analysis of the keywords in each corpus was aimed at highlighting the lexis that was used most significantly in Today’s Zaman articles, when compared with the Hürriyet Daily News, and vice versa. The occurrences of keywords, retrieved by using Corpus Linguistics, were analyzed qualitatively through concordances and more contextual information then was brought into the analysis to investigate the data further. It was found that the TZ and the HDN differ strikingly in their representation of the Ergenekon case, which unsurprisingly relates to their overall historical connection to the political powers in Turkey.
Gümüşhane Üniversitesi İletişim Fakültesi Elektronik Dergisi
Language in Society, 2016
Marmara Iletisim Dergisi, 2015
Critical Discourse Studies, 2014
LangUE 2010: Language at the University of Essex International Postgraduate Conference Supported ... more LangUE 2010: Language at the University of Essex International Postgraduate Conference Supported by the Dept. of Language and Linguistics. 16 Critical discourse analysis of Turkish news reporting on Secularism and Islamism Ibrahim Efe (Lancaster University, UK) This research project ...
Marmara Iletisim Dergisi, 2015
15 Temmuz Darbe Girişimi ve Batı Medyası, 2017
These paper analyses western media representations of the 15 July coup attempt in Turkey.
As the world increasingly faces the burden of wars, migration and economic crises, it is very rel... more As the world increasingly faces the burden of wars,
migration and economic crises, it is very relevant to discuss
the role of journalism and the media as a whole in the
structures of contemporary society
Turkey went through an extraordinary local elections process in March 2014. The local elections o... more Turkey went through an extraordinary local elections process in March 2014. The local elections of 2014 meant more than what it was supposed to, due to various significant events preceding the elections. Political parties carried this message to their electorate through their election campaign and party meetings. Perhaps, it was the ruling AK Party who had to carry most of the burden of this equivocal election process. Due to a series of corruption cases and leaked phone calls, the local elections were billed as a referendum for the legitimacy of the AK Party and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. On the other hand, the election campaign was a test for both the AK Party initiated peace process and autonomy demand for the Kurdish-majority region. Because the peace process was put into question by opposition parties, the 2014 local election was going to gauge popular support for the process. Also, several politicians of the main pro-Kurdish party, i.e., the BDP, embarked on a campaign that would represent the election results as their success in autonomy demands. In this policy brief we will analyze the votes in 16 Kurdish-majority provinces, firstly to find out whether the AK Party and Recep Erdoğan succeeded in reinstating their legitimacy in the region, and secondly to answer in what proportions the Kurdish constituency voted in favor or against regional autonomy.
Teoriden Uygulamaya Siyasal İletişim
İçerisinde yaşadığı dünyayı tarif, tanzim ve tasnif etme gayesi asırlardır devam eden insanoğlu, ... more İçerisinde yaşadığı dünyayı tarif, tanzim ve tasnif etme gayesi asırlardır devam eden insanoğlu, bu uğurda yaşadığı büyük kayıplara rağmen varoluşsal hedefinden asla vazgeçmemiş, kendi 'meşru' iktidarını oluşturabilmek adına her daim 'öteki' yaratmayı bilmiştir. Bu faaliyetler için en uygun araçlar ne ise onlar üzerinde denetim kurabilme yarışı, iktidara talip yapılar arasında süregiden bir rekabete yol açmıştır.
Bu kitapta da ifade edilen yarışta yer alan aktörlerin söylem ve eylemleri, olgusal tekabüliyetleri de göz önünde bulundurulmak suretiyle, çeşitli açılardan incelenerek siyasal iletişim alanında özgün bilgi üretmek amaçlanmıştır. Çalışmanın önemli noktalarından biri de hedefe giderken tek bir ekolün görüşlerinden faydalanmak yerine, okura farklı bakış açıları sunabilmek adına liberal çoğulcu paradigmadan, eleştirel yaklaşımın farklı sorgulamalarına kadar uzanan çok geniş bir çerçeve çizilmiş olmasıdır.
As was obvious almost to everyone keeping an eye on Turkish politics, the 2014 local elections we... more As was obvious almost to everyone keeping an eye on Turkish politics, the 2014 local elections were billed as a referendum for the legitimacy of the ruling Justice and Development Party. Among purported reasons are the antigovernment protests in the summer of 2013, the corruption allegations against the AK Party in the last month of 2013, and numerous leaked private phone calls and conversations among figures close to the AK Party. The wiretapped talks also targeted AK Party’s efforts and policy for a solution of decades-long Kurdish question in Turkey. This campaign aimed at derailing the process on two sides. On the Kurdish side, for example, a leaked conversation aimed to increase suspicion among Kurds that the Turkish state had been involved in the killing of three Kurdish activists in Paris at the beginning of 2013. On the Turkish side, more importantly, the leaked recordings of the conversations of Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK’s prisoned leader, with other prisoners aimed to imply that the AK Party government had reached an agreement with Öcalan on certain issues such as regional autonomy. Surely, the leaked recordings targeted the legitimacy of the resolution process between the government and Öcalan beginning from the late 2012. The 2014 local elections, therefore, was going to test whether the alleged involvement of the government in the Paris incident and Öcalan’s indiscretion were bought respectively by Kurdish and Turkish voters.
This paper will mainly seek to answer these questions: Is the approval of the regional autonomy really the case when the 2014 elections are considered? What do the 2014 elections tell us about the future of the peace process? While doing this, we will present a comparative analysis of the votes in Kurdish-majority provinces cast for the AK Party and Kurdish parties since the 2002 elections. We will limit the analysis to metropolitan cities and provinces which are populated by a Kurdish majority. At the end of the paper, we will also elaborate on the importance of the new Islamist Kurdish party, Hüda-Par, for the Kurdish question politics. Before going into detail, it is important to note that the local elections took place under a relatively peaceful climate, in the context of Kurdish problem, thanks to the resolution process.
Dominant self-complacent national narratives (not only) in Turkey have long silenced past wrongdo... more Dominant self-complacent national narratives (not only) in Turkey have long silenced past wrongdoings. Among these, the massacre of thousands of Kurds in Dersim during the 1930s, being part of the wider suppression of the Kurdish minority until today, is a particularly significant example. However, against the background of an almost global emphasis on recognising past crimes, the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan offered an apology on 23 November 2011. Erdoğan’s unexpected move has been both viewed as an opportunity for a more inclusive understanding of Turkish citizenship, as well as criticised for being a calculated manoeuvre in order to side-line political opponents. In this article, we investigate both this performance, as well as its public reception, arguing that it represents a missed opportunity for inner-Turkish reconciliation. Drawing on the discourse-historical approach to critical discourse analysis, we thus illustrate how Erdoğan instrumentalised an ‘apology’ for political gains.
This article is based on an analysis of a 2 million-word corpus of news columns and op-eds in ... more This article is based on an analysis of a 2 million-word corpus of news columns and op-eds in two Turkish news websites, those of Today’s Zaman (TZ) and the Hürriyet Daily News (HDN). The TZ is Zaman’s English language sister newspaper, which is now Turkey’s best-selling English language paper with 5,783 copies per day. The HDN, which has been a window for many foreigners to Turkey for over 45 years, sells 5,483 copies a day. The articles considered, all of which relate to the Ergenekon case, are examined using a corpus- based discourse analysis to elaborate on the representations of the events and the social groups involved. The comparative analysis of the keywords in each corpus was aimed at highlighting the lexis that was used most significantly in Today’s Zaman articles, when compared with the Hürriyet Daily News, and vice versa. The occurrences of keywords, retrieved by using Corpus Linguistics, were analyzed qualitatively through concordances and more contextual information then was brought into the analysis to investigate the data further. It was found that the TZ and the HDN differ strikingly in their representation of the Ergenekon case which unsurprisingly relates to their overall historical connection to the political powers in Turkey.
Bodies have long been sites signifying shared identities and struggles over symbolic boundaries. ... more Bodies have long been sites signifying shared identities and struggles over symbolic boundaries. The circumcision debate that originated in Germany in 2012 (and continued in Israel and Turkey) is an exemplary case of such struggles. This debate, which called to outlaw Jewish and Muslim boy circumcision, became a site for the negotiation of practices by ethnic and religious minorities vis-à-vis the state-Christian majority. Against this background, we claim that while the majority’s boundary work scrupulously avoided traditional anti-Semitism and racism, it has, following liberal-democratic assumptions, framed the criminalization of circumcision as a clinical, enlightened and humanistic response that can preserve the bodily integrity of innocent children.
We thus ask, first, how the majority’s clinical gaze constitutes bodies of others. Second, we inquire into the practice of ‘writing around’ the body, showing how proponents and opponents of circumcision made the debate’s centre, bodily integrity, meaningful through analogies to, e.g., other bodily harming (secular) practices such as ear piercing and similar practices in other times/places such as baptising. Third, by comparing Germany, Israel and Turkey, we reveal the interdiscursive dynamics of a debate that transgressed national and religious boundaries, a fact affecting all sides of the debate.
We analyse the coverage of the circumcision debate in broadsheets and tabloids in the three countries, drawing on discourse-analytical tools. We thus show how a subtle type of ‘otherness’ is constructed (but also opposed), and how the articulation of minority rights in terms of religious difference remains intact even in (self-perceived) modern, secular societies.
This article presents findings from a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of mission and vision st... more This article presents findings from a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of mission and vision statements of 105 state and 66 private/foundation universities in Turkey. The paper combines a corpus-based approach with critical discourse analysis to interpret the data in relation to its institutional as well as socio-political context. It argues that the mission and vision statements are marked by a need for reassuring their legitimacy and the demands of a growing tertiary market. The historical and cultural backgrounds of the development of universities in Turkey, as well as political and economic conditions, are also decisive in the shaping of mission and vision statement of universities.
Algılar ve Gerçekler Arasında: Türk Basınında Suriyeli Sığınmacılar, 2018
Suriyeli sığınmacı kimdir? Sığınmacı denilince aklımızda ne gibi anlamlar ve nasıl bir imge belir... more Suriyeli sığınmacı kimdir? Sığınmacı denilince aklımızda ne gibi anlamlar ve nasıl bir imge beliriyor? Bu imgenin ne kadarı medyada gördüklerimizden, okuduklarımızdan oluşuyor? Medyanın oluşturduğu "Suriyeli sığınmacı" kimliği bu insanları nasıl temsil ediyor? Onlar hakkında ne gibi anlamlar üretiyor? Suriyeli sığınmacı kimliği etrafında üretilen bu anlamlar toplumsal tartışmaları nasıl besliyor ve temsil edilen insanlar için ne gibi sonuçlar doğuruyor? Bu kitap, Suriyeli sığınmacıların Türkiye basınındaki temsillerini inceleyerek bu sorulara cevap vermeyi amaçlamaktadır.
Kitap; haber metinlerini ve fotoğraflarını, derlem analizi, eleştirel söylem analizi ve görsel semiyotik analiz gibi farklı yöntem ve yaklaşımlarla inceleyerek, metinsel ve görsel temsillerin farklı yaklaşımlarla araştırılmasına örnekler sunmaktadır. Kimlik ve anlam üretimini haberler ve fotoğraflar üzerinden irdeleyen kitap, medya ve iletişim çalışmaları ve kültürel çalışmalar alanlarında ve kimlik, farklılık ve temsil konularında çalışanlar için kaynak niteliğindedir.
