The International History Review (original) (raw)

The Peace Corps in The Memories of the Volunteers and of Turks

Across A Broad Horizon: A Festscrift in Honor of Belma Ötüş Baskett, 2021

This article aims to provide a retrospective view of the Peace Corps in Turkey. It is based on a number of books and articles written by returned Peace Corps Volunteers as well as personal and email interviews and correspondence with some of the surviving volunteers who are now in their late seventies or early eighties. It also includes the ideas of a number of Turkish academics and educators, whom this author interviewed, on the Peace Corps and the volunteers they met.

Reflections of Turkey's Middle East Policy on the Press in the 1950s

Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 2020

ABSTRACT: Democrat Party (DP) era is one of the contested periods in terms of politics, economy, society and foreign policy in Turkey. Particularly, the government-press relations and Turkey’s Middle East policy especially in the late 1950s consist serious challenges and crises. Initially, the DP government conducted a liberal press policy, but in the second half of the decade government-press relations strained. Similarly, Turkey’s Middle East policy can be regarded as a success story in the first half of the decade, while Turkey faced serious crises and challenges in the region in the second half. Despite several studies on government press relations in the 1950s in the literature, there is a shortage of specific studies analyzing positions of the press towards DP’s Middle East policy. As a result, this paper aims to fill this gap and analyze the positions of the press regarding Turkey's Middle East policy throughout the decade in order to show divergence and convergence between the government and the press. Selected newspapers and journals published in this period will be used as primary sources. This paper concludes that the press in Turkey, regardless of their positions towards the government, supported DP's pro-Western and anti-communist Middle East policy despite some exceptions. // ÖZET: Demokrat Parti (DP) dönemi siyaset, ekonomi, toplum ve dış politika alanlarında en çok tartışılan dönemlerden biridir. Bu dönemde özellikle hükümet-basın ilişkilerinde ve Türkiye’nin Ortadoğu politikasında önemli krizler ve meydan okumalarla karşılaşılmıştır. 1950’li yılların başından itibaren görece liberal bir basın politikası uygulayan DP hükümeti, on yılın ikinci yarısında daha baskıcı bir politika izlemiştir. Benzer şekilde on yılın ilk yarısında görece başarılı bir Ortadoğu siyaseti güden hükümet, dönemin ikinci yarısında bölgede önemli krizler ve meydan okumalarla karşılaşmıştır. Literatürde bu dönemdeki hükümet-basın ilişkileri üzerine çalışmalar bulunsa da Ortadoğu siyaseti özelinde basını inceleyen bir çalışma bulunmamaktadır. Bu çalışmanın amacı, basının Türkiye’nin Ortadoğu politikası ile ilgili duruşunu analiz ederek hükümet ve basın arasındaki gelgitleri ortaya koymaktır. Seçili gazete ve dergiler çalışmanın birincil kaynaklarını oluşturmaktadır. Bu çalışmada ulaşılan sonuç basının hükümete karşı duruşu ne olursa olsun DP'nin Batı yanlısı ve komünizm karşıtı Ortadoğu politikasını bazı istisnai durumlara rağmen desteklemiş olduğudur.

Insights of the Turkish Association of Peace-Lovers on the Cold War

The Turkish Yearbook of International Relations, 2021

1950s are an important historical point for Turkish foreign policy literature and researches on Turkish political thought. There is a general opinion in academia and Turkish Foreign Affairs that the main drive for Turkey’s participation in the capitalist bloc led by the US after the war was due to its reflex for protecting national interests against “Soviet expansionism”. This is deep-seated in the minds of scholars and is a mainstream approach in the literature. Such interpretation implies an approach that reduces the Cold War to a mere competition between two superpowers. There is a growing number of studies which are critical to this mainstream reading of the Cold War. This study examines contributions of the Turkish Association of Peace-Lovers to the efforts towards explaining the political atmosphere in 1950s that succeeded in devising an alternative reading of relations of Turkey with the world.

The analysis of Turkey's approach to peace operations

2007

This dissertation aims at analyzing the motivations that lie at the roots of Turkey's involvement in peace operations, mostly organized under the leadership of the United Nations in the post-Cold War era. The main contention is that participation in such operations has been an identity-constructing activity in the sense that Turkey has tried to reinforce its eroding western identity in the 1990s through this particular way. This dissertation also discusses alternative motivations behind Turkey's involvement in peace operations, such as security-related considerations in a neo-realist vein and domestic influence of ethnic and religion pressure groups, but argues that these accounts fail short of offering convincing explanations. Methodologically, the research for this dissertation will be thematic, not theoretical. The purpose of this study is not to make value judgments concerning Turkey's participation in peace operations, but instead to describe, understand, and explain its role. Based on Turkey's experiences in peace operations, this dissertation reaches the following conclusions. First, Turkey's western image has improved. Second, Turkey iv could transform its security identity and interests in line with the changing security conceptualizations in the West. Third, the modernization process of Turkish armed forces has become much easier following Turkey's presence in such operations. Fourth, the prospects of Turkey's membership in the EU have increased following Turkey's cooperation with EU members in various peace operations in different regions of the world. Fifth, participation in peace operations has contributed to the improvement of Turkey's relations with the United States which have gradually deteriorated in the post-Cold War era.

Analysis of the News Published Regarding the Turkish World in the Context of Public Diplomacy

Lournal of Selcuk Communication, 2022

Mass media is one of the primary environments in which public diplomacy, which is seen as a way of creating a positive image of the peoples and intellectuals of different countries and cultural attraction between countries, is maintained. Online news platforms, which are among these tools, are at the center of news production and distribution activities at the international level. While online news platforms allow the execution of journalism activities beyond the boundaries of time and space with their network infrastructure, they are preferred by the readers for reasons such as speed, the structure that allows interaction, easy accessibility and variety of content. The aim of this study are to reveal the framing of the news in Turkmen, Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Kazakh on the TRT Avaz's website in the context of public diplomacy. In the content analysis for the news in four languages on the TRT Avaz's website; It has been concluded that general news frames are about human and place interest and responsibility, and news about political/military and cultural public diplomacy are mostly included. In addition, the news intensely conveys monologue and short-term developments to disseminate information about countries.

NGOs in Turkey’s Media Field: Causes, Sources and Potentials for Development

Markets, Globalization & Development Review, 2017

This study elaborates on the non-governmental organizations in Turkey that operate within the broadly defined media field, where a wide variety of organizations, associations, movements and platforms are observed. Focusing on the two most disputed subdomains of the media in Turkey, namely news and information technologies, this descriptive research, at the first level, examines the causes or existence reasons of the NGOs along with their strategies, operations and achievements or failures. Their organizational forms and resources are studied at the second level. Third level of the study investigates their relations with a particular focus on their operational context. It has been found that the socio-political environment in the country or ongoing crises of different sorts, multiply the number of issues, and the existing complications impede mobilization.

Turkish newspapers' peace journalism exam: Gezi Park protests

The basic aim of this study is to explore Turkish newspapers' news coverage of the ''Gezi Park protests'' in 2013. These newspapers are published under Dogan Media Group (DMG) conglomerate. The main aim of this study is to examine peace journalism principles in practice in the context of three DMG newspapers. The study examines the news coverage of the protests in order to formulate a peace journalism approach for journalists. Coverage on the protests, the framing analysis was used as a method. Gezi stories have been analyzed from the front pages of newspapers between 29 May and 30 June 2013. In Turkey, many newspapers have distorted the reality, emphasized marginality and did not pass the test of democratic examination while covering protests came to ignore the peaceful actions. However, peace journalism assumption should be used by journalists while covering the peaceful actions or protests. In democratic dispensation, representation of the electorate should continue both in public spheres and in media. The role of the media is becoming more and more important. The media should not only focus on the violence, but should give voice to nonviolence and peace protests as well. Results show that these three newspapers give more voice to former Prime Minister R.T. Erdogan than other official sources and tend to use the voices of elite authorities. This research found that, Posta quoted more elite sources in relation to the protests than Hurriyet and Radikal. At the end of this research DMG's ''Written Press Publication Principles'' have been found to have little effect on coverage of newspapers.