Greece’s portrayal by the Turkish print media

byTuğcan Durmuşlar and Ali Şevket Ovalı : a comparative study on conjunctural images, published in the book Greece and Turkey in Conflict and Cooperation: From Europeanization to De-Europeanization (2019)

[excerpts from the study]  The already existing and growing literature on the media framing of a particular country in Turkey makes valuable contributions to our understanding of Turkish media’s role in constructing and shaping the image of Greece in the minds of the Turkish people. Özgüneş and Terzis (2000 ) were amongst the first who conducted comparative research on how the mass media report national conflicts between Greece and Turkey. Erdoğan et al.’s (2008 ) media content analysis onTurkish–Greek relations with an emphasis on Europeanization has highlighted the contextual framing of Greece in Turkey. Tılıç (2006 , 19–24) conducted researchon how Turkish newspapers have reflected state-oriented views on Greece for the construction of Turkish national identity. Similarly, Yumul and Özkırımlı (2012 ) argue that the Turkish mass media both implicitly and explicitly promote “banal nationalism” through the use of a discourse equipped with religion and ethnicity. Balcı (2011 ), with an emphasis on the construction of the “Armenian threat” through the Turkish daily Milliyet in the 1990s, argues that the media’s portrayal of a country as the enemy also serves to strengthen certain power relations within the state.

What makes this study different from the previous research is, first, its comparative approach independent from the problematic traditional agenda of bilateral relations (e.g. airspace, minorities, territorial waters), focusing instead on three types of crises – political, economic, and diplomatic – and second, its emphasis on the Turkish print media’s framing of Greece during pre- and after-crisis periods to display continuing and changing patterns. The first case, Öcalan’s capture, turned out to be a political crisis between the two countries, which resulted in the resignation of three ministers in Greece. The second case, the 2009 financial crisis in Greece, was not an output of the turbulent relations between Ankara and Athens, and this case was chosen to measure the media’s framing of Greece independent from the agenda of bilateral relations. Lastly, the 2011 diplomatic crisis, which broke out after natural gas drilling had begun in the disputed exclusive economic zone around the Cyprus Island in the Mediterranean, was selected to display the trend in the Turkish print media towards Greece in times of a diplomatic crisis. [...]

Conclusion [phrases in bold by Turkey Today editors]

Our main argument that the Turkish print media are passively mirroring the government’s views on Greece is based on the general assumption that the government is still the most reliable source of information on foreign policy issues. In such a case, indexing the readily available news provided by the bureaucratic structures becomes a common and frequent practice in almost all media outlets, regardless of their ideological differences. However, the Turkish media’s conjunctural framing of Greece displays four additional inter-related factors, which are likely to affect the positive and negative framing dynamics.

First, without doubt, the earthquake diplomacy and the subsequent rapprochement between the two states had also influenced the attitude of the mainstream media in Turkey positively towards Greece (Tılıç 2006 , 21), and rather than displaying an entirely negative framing of Greece, indexing the readily available news packages provided by the elites has become much more prominent in the print media. Moreover, the Visa at the Gate Pilot Program that was initiated by the European Commission in 2012, if not ended, has helped to eliminate the legacy of bitterness between the Greeks and the Turks in the eyes of the Turkish public, and the Turkish media did not overlook this positive atmosphere. According to Elafros (2017 ) from the Greek daily Kathimerini , 2017 was a record-breaking year in the sense that “total arrivals from Turkey on the eastern Aegean islands of Chios, Lesvos, and Samos in the first six months of the year were up 50% compared to the same period last year – 28,000 in Chios, 13,624 in Lesvos and 13,558 in Samos”. As the rapprochement gained momentum, the Turkish market turned out to be dismissive towards what is taking place in the Turkish–Greek relations except in the crisis periods.

Second, throughout the rapprochement period between Turkey and Greece that reached its peak during the early 2000s, the Turkish print media has abandoned its negative framing towards Greece except in the crisis periods. Since 2010, Greece has not been ranked as one of the top security threats to national security, and this ranking was reaffirmed by the Turkish National Security Council (Dünya October 27, 2010 ). This tendency has also found resonance with the public. According to a recent survey conducted by Kadir Has University (2017), only 10.2% of the respondents said Greece is a threat and Greece ranked eighth in the “threat perceptions from the countries” list, in which the USA, Israel, the EU countries, Russia, Armenia, Syria, and Iran respectively occupied the ranks from first to seventh. For the print media, negative framing of Greece, except in the crisis periods, makes no sense for the audience that they are targeting.

Third, except Cumhuriyet and left-wing newspapers in the Turkish print media, almost all media holding companies have state contracts in different sectors such as energy, transport, and construction (Cork et al. 2014 , 5–6). This fact clearly enables the government to exert power on the print media for creating a rally around- the-flag effect and reconstructing the national identity. Along with this tendency, it needs to be emphasized that, during the 1990s military elites were much more influential on drawing the contours of how a neighbouring country was to be portrayed in the print media. Beginning by the late 2000s, they were replaced by the democratically elected political elites.

Fourth, and most recent, the civil war in Syria and the subsequent developments in the region have dominated not only the agenda of the Turkish foreign policy but also the columns in the print media to the extent that even the recent tensions between Turkey and Greece regarding the status of the islets in the Aegean, territorial waters, airspace violations, and dog fights have not drawn considerable attention, as was the case in the mid-1990s. Even the recent collision between the Turkish and Greek coast guard patrol vessels off the disputed Kardak/Imia islets in the Aegean was mostly overshadowed by Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch in Syria’s Afrin.

It is plausible to argue that the rapprochement between Athens and Ankara in the aftermath of the Öcalan crisis has not only changed the perceptions of the Turkish people on Greece in a positive manner but also fostered dialogue on the two sides of the Aegean. Even the escalation of tensions could not reverse the positive shift in the climate of bilateral relations. However, structural obstacles such as the lack of an independent foreign policy news network and pressures on the print media, as well as the limited number of reliable sources of knowledge on foreign policy matters, are likely to influence the Turkish print media’s framing of Greece in the foreseeable future.