Dissonant Voices

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DISSONANT VOICES

A Discourse Analysis of Turkish Language Media in Germany

by

Can Soysal

Thesis submitted to the

Faculty of Culture and Society

in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the

Degree of Master of Arts

in

International Migration and Ethnic Relations

at

Malmö University

January 2012

Supervisor:

Anna Sofie Roald

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Abstract

On the 50th anniversary of the labour recruitment agreement between Germany and Turkey, Turkish migrants in Germany continue to occupy a central position as the objects of the on-going public discussions on immigration and integration. This study explores, with a transnational perspective, how the discourses on migrant integration are formulated in the transnational Turkish language media in Germany, as well as, if and how those discourses differ from, comply with or resist the dominant integrationist discourse in Germany. To reach this aim, discourse analysis on empirical material consisting of 97 articles from the European editions of newspapers Zaman and Hürriyet, has been conducted within the theoretical perspective informed by the ideas of Michel Foucault. The study concludes that there are conflicting and overlapping discourses on integration manifested in the Turkish language media in Germany, which are in varying degrees resisting to and in conformity with the dominant integrationist discourse in Germany. The resistance and compliance occurs in a complex and transnational way, in the reflection of the political and ideological fault lines in Turkey.

Keywords

: immigration, integration, media, discourse, Turkish, Germany, Zaman ,Hürriyet

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1. INTRODUCTION

2011 marked the official celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the labour recruitment agreement between Turkey and Germany. Through most of the last 50 years immigrants in Germany , and Turks specifically, has been a central element of continuous discussions, struggles, plans , policies, measurements, restrictions , negotiations, identity and cultural formations, thus over half a century ,millions of Turkish immigrants in Germany became an important part of the contemporary history of Germany. Not only of Germany, with the transnational world they created, Turks in Germany have also had an important role in the contemporary history of Turkey.

While the second half of 2000s in Germany was marked with the proclamation of the ‘death of multiculturalism’, the record high sales of a controversial anti-immigrant book, the reveal of extreme-right violence and the growth of the far-right parties, it has also been the period that more Turks started to move to Turkey than the Turks coming to Germany. Many of those coming to Turkey were born in Germany. German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out about this new trend and claimed that young Turks who received good education in Germany and have multi-lingual skills are utilizing the job opportunities in Turkey (04.10.2011).

In the shadow of the central position of migrants in contemporary histories of host societies and the recent anti-immigration movements, what is striking about the discussions on the topics like migration, immigrants or integration is that the voice of the people who are the topic of the discussions are usually absent in the discussions, and Germany is no exception for this. There is often a deliberate neglect of migrants’ transnational affiliations and ethnic media (Kosnick 2007:17). But of course the absence in the discussions in mainstream media does not mean that the Turks are not discussing these issues. Along with the varieties of print media, the rise of internet media and availability to more than 50 TV stations, including

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Turkish language TV stations specific to Europe besides the regular Turkish TV stations, creates a massive transnational space where ideas and counter-ideas are produced and shared on the issues related to migration, as those issues are central to the lives of Turkish migrants in Germany.

1.1. Aim of the Research, Research Questions

The aim of this research is to understand how discourses on migrant integration in Germany are formulated in the transnational Turkish language media in Germany, and, if and how the discourses differ from the dominant integrationist discourse in Germany. To reach this aim, the study will analyse, with a transnational perspective, articles from Turkish language newspapers that are prepared and printed in Germany, with the goal of identifying common themes of argumentations and comparing them with the arguments of the dominant integrationist discourse in Germany.

The following research questions are formulated to reach the aim of the study:

 What are the common themes of argumentation in Turkish language print media on the topic of migrant integration?

 If and how do the discourses differ among Turkish language print media on the topic of migrant integration?

 If and how do the discourses in Turkish language print media on migrant integration differ from the dominant discourse in Germany?

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2. BACKGROUND

In order to be able to place the object of analysis in a broader socio-political contexts, under this section, a detailed background of Turkish migrants in Germany, the Turkish language press in Germany, the background information on Zaman, with a focus on transnational political Islam, and the background information on Hürriyet, with a focus on its place within the political struggles in Turkey, will be given.

2.1. Turks in Germany

While the year 2011 marked the official celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the labor recruitment agreement between Turkey and Germany, it has also been the year in which heated public debate was sparked by the arrest of a member of a neo-Nazi organization, which is accused of being responsible for the infamous “Döner Killings” that took place between 2000 and 2007, targeting 8 small business owners of Turkish origin , and by the possible links of German domestic intelligence service ,BfV (The Guardian ,15.11.2011).

Even though Turkish migration to Germany goes back centuries with Ottoman elites establishing trade relations and training at educational institutions, Turkish labour migration to Germany is commonly considered to have started with the bilateral labour recruitment agreement signed between Turkey and Germany in 1961 (Kosnick 2007:7; Mueller 2006:420).

After the World War II, the Federal Republic of Germany was experiencing a post-war economic boom and labor power became a scarce resource by the mid-1950s, a situation which was similar in other West European countries. This labour shortages was tried to be eliminated by recruiting temporary workers from Mediterranean countries and after the agreements with Italy(1955),Spain(1960) and Greece(1960), in 1961 Turkish and German governments concluded a labour recruitment agreement (Schönwälder, Ohliger&Triadafilopoulos 2003:168).The recruitment of so-called Gastarbeiter (guestworkers) was not only aimed to sustain the economic

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expansion but also to be a useful industrial “reserve army” that would keep labour union demands at bay (Kosnick 2007:7).

The first train full of Turkish workers arrived at Munich train station.Following the decision of the GDR in August 1961 on closing the all remaining border checkpoints and thus leaving the factories of West Berlin without employees1 as many of them were stuck on the Eastern side of the wall, when the newly opened Istanbul branch of the West German Federal Employment Office (Bundesanstalt für Arbeit or BFA) began to recruit workers, Berlin became a prime destination (ibid).

German employers seeking workers had to apply to the BFA and pay a fee, then the BFA selected suitable workers, tested their health condition and checked their police and political records2 (Kaya 2005:220). Even though in the early stages of the migration Turkish migrants were mainly young men with above average skills and education, in the second half of the 1960s the recruitment primarily consisted of rural workers (ibid).From 1961 until November 1973, when the recruitment process stopped by the German government due to oil crisis and related economic stagnation, more than 700.000 workers were recruited from Turkey, initially on short-term contracts that usually lasted 2 years (Kosnick 2007:8). The “rotation principle” (Rotationsprinzip), which was forcing the immigrant workers to return to Turkey after 2 years, was abandoned by the government in 1964 due to successful lobbying activities by the employers who realized that the principle was disrupting productivity (ibid).

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After the USSR gave the authority of East Berlin to civilian government in 1955, in 1956 the GDR government restricted virtually all travels to the West. However with the absence of no physical barrier, measures such heavy penalties were ineffective. Until 1961 an estimated number of 3.5 million people ,which was about %20 of the whole GDR population, migrated to West Germany through West Berlin (Dawty 1989:122).On Saturday, 12 August 1961, the GDR State Council chairman Walter Ulbricht signed the order to close the border and erect a wall. At midnight, the East German army began to close the border and, by Sunday morning, 13 August, the border with West Berlin was closed (Burkhard 2011).

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For a detailed story and photographs of the labour migration to Federal Republic of Germany see the book of Berger et al. 1975, A Seventh Man.

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After 1973, even though around 400.000 Turkish workers returned to Turkey, family reunions remained as a legal migration route for Turkish people since many workers decided to bring family members to Germany rather than returning to Turkey (ibid).Consequently the period 1973-1989 was characterized by a very large increase in the number (from 700.000 to 1.7 million) of Turks in Germany (Gülcicek 2006:5; Kaya 2005:220). This was followed by a wave of political migrants in the form of asylum-seekers, mostly Kurdish, due to instability and armed conflict in the south east region of Turkey, and by the mid-1990s the number of Turkish citizens Germany reached 2 million (Kaya 2005:220).

This number has been gradually falling since then as from 1994 on Turkish citizens started to acquire German citizenship in growing numbers, reaching from yearly 13.000 in 1993 to the peak number of 100.000 in 1999 (SBD, Federal Statistical Office 2011) . Since the beginning of 2000s the number of naturalization has been falling and to 26.000 in 2010. Now just above 1.6 million Turkish citizens and in total around 3 million people with Turkish origin live in Germany, constituting around %4 of the German population (ibid). Even though there is no official statistics on the number of electors with Turkish origin, according to Sahilyol there were an estimated number of around 600.000 people with Turkish origin who voted in the elections in 2009 (2011:1).

Since 2009 there is a growing trend of returning to Turkey, mostly among young educated people, with yearly net emigration to Turkey numbering from 10.000 to 20.000. Recently German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out about this new trend and claimed that young Turks who received good education in Germany and have multi-lingual skills are utilizing the job opportunities in the growing economy on Turkey and Germany failed to provide good job opportunities for these people (euroaktiv.com.tr, 04.11.2011).

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2.2. Turkish Print Media in Germany

According to the president of Europe Turkish Journalist Union (ATGB) Gürsel Köksal, Turkish press in Europe has grown on two historical traditions (Köksal 2004). The first is the revolutionist newspapers that were produced, mostly in France and Britain, by the Young Turks in the end of 19th century, which later on constituted the political and intellectual basis in the establishment of the Republic and the modernist reforms (Akkaya 2006:58).The second tradition is the Turkish labour migration.

In the years following the arrival of the first Turkish guest-workers in Germany, major Turkish newspapers were brought from Turkey by plane, with a couple of days of delay. The first newspapers brought in this way were Hürriyet, Milliyet and Tercüman (ibid). This was followed by the first newspaper, Aksam, to have been printed in Munich in 1970 and later the other newspapers also started to be printed in Germany (Heinemann&Kamcili 2003:105). Thus, the Turkish newspapers passed through three stages : in the first stage they were brought by plane ; in the second stage the newspapers established offices in Germany and the news material from Germany was sent to Turkey, and the printed edition was brought again by plane to Germany; and in the last stage the news material were sent from Turkey and the newspapers were prepared in Germany as a mix of news from Turkey and Europe , printed in Germany and distributed in Europe 3_{(Akkaya 2006:72).}

It is argued by Akkaya that seemingly low sales numbers of Turkish newspapers in Germany are partly due to the fact that since 1960s it has been common for one newspaper to be read by many, and the habit of newspaper sharing has been continuing in coffee houses, cafes, associations etc. (2006:59). On the other hand , the rise of internet media and availability to more than 50 TV4 stations including

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Zaman has separate editions printed in different locations for the U.S.,Germany(Zaman Avrupa), Austria,Scandinavian countries, Netherlands,Benelux countries,Bulgaria,Romania and Macedonia.

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There are both European editions of Turkish TV stations, such as EuroD (European edition of KanalD, which is owned by Dogan Media Group) , Samanyolu Avrupa ( European edition of

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Turkish language TV stations specific to Europe besides the regular Turkish TV stations, and the weak Turkish language skills of younger generations can also be counted as reasons that keeps sales numbers under pressure (Genel 2011:49).

2.3. Zaman

and Hürriyet

This section will be a brief discussion on the transnational ideological and political movements in Turkey that Zaman and Hürriyet are affiliated with. Broadly speaking, it would not be wrong to say that while Zaman mostly represents the ideological standpoints of contemporary political Islam in general and views of Gülen Movement in particular, Hürriyet represents the standpoints of modernist ideology. To be able to better understand the discourses on integration of the Turkish language newspapers in Germany, it is necessary to at least have an introductory level familiarity with the Turkish political scenery. This necessity appears clearer when it is considered how an analysis of the contemporary Turkish politics cannot be complete without considering the Turkish political movements in Europe, for example, the Kurdish political movement, or the Milli Görüs movement, which the current governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) has its roots in. Both have been two important elements of the Turkish politics in the last 15 years.

Kosnick claims that there is often a deliberate neglect of migrants’ transnational affiliations in Western European integration discourses and ethnic media policies with the aim of encouraging local identifications, and Turkish case is not different (Kosnick 2007:17). However a bulk of studies on Turkish language media in Europe reveals the importance of cross-border ties and orientations that link migrants to people and institutions, conflicts and debates in Turkey (ibid).

Samanyolu TV , which is owned by Feza Media Group) , ATV Avrupa ; and TV stations which are established and producing all their content in Germany such as TD1, Kanal Avrupa, Düzgün TV, Dügün TV (Wedding TV) and SU TV .

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Before moving on to each newspaper in detail, to acquire an overview of the political and ideological fissures of the Turkish media landscape, Murat Somer’s study appears to be useful.

Somer’s study on the “elite values” as represented in the Turkish newspapers reveals interesting insight on how different the two newspapers, Zaman and Hürriyet, are. Somer applies content analysis to track the relative attention to, and different views and judgments in the three “religious-conservative”, including Zaman and two “pro-secular” newspapers with respect to 13 categories (electoral democracy, liberal democracy, social pluralism, political pluralism, secularism, human rights, the Islamic headscarf controversy, group identity and grievances, nationalism, modernization, market economy, the western world, and foreign news) between 1996 and 2004 (2010:560).

According to Somer’s analysis, both “religious” and “secular” press viewed liberal democracy as an insurance of themselves and their ideological interests. The idea that “liberal democracy is a means for Muslims to protect themselves through rights and freedoms” was approved in the religious press in %83 of all the times this idea was coded. Similarly, the idea of liberal democracy “as a system protecting and insuring universal rights and freedoms, secularism and the seculars” was approved %85 percent (Somer 2010:564).

However ,in his analysis Somer found that more than one third of the codings in religious newspapers about social pluralism was critical, thus he argues that the religious newspapers are more divided on, and on average considerably less open to, the expression and coexistence of different religious, cultural, philosophical, or sexual preferences in social life (2010:571).Another important difference that Somer found in his analysis, which is also relevant for my analysis, is about how the newspapers approach the question of national identity. The two types of newspapers gave similar weight to territorial base (Anatolia or Turkey) in defining national identity, however , “with respect to the importance of Islam versus Turkishness, the religious newspapers emphasized the former much more than the other”(ibid: 568).

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Even though European editions of both Zaman and Hürriyet features similar sections , such as news, politics, economics, family, health, culture, columnists, there are two sections that differs in Zaman and Hürriyet : while Hürriyet features a paparazzi section Zaman features a section called “Kürsü (Pulpit)” where articles of Fettullah Gülen, who is the leader of Gülen Movement, is published.

2.3.1. Zaman and Political Islam

Zaman

Zaman is the flagship newspaper under Feza Gazetecilik (Feza Media Group), a news corporation that started operating in 1986, which now produces Turkey’s most circulated news daily ,Zaman5.

According to Zaman, in their newspaper “news and comments are clearly separated. Zaman is against discrimination on the basis of race,religion,language and gender. It embraces the

acquisitions of democratic, secular Turkish Republic. It advocates human rights and freedoms” (22.03.2011).

According to a founding journalist at Feza Media, the motivation to start a newspaper was to “correct fake news….Journalists [in Turkey] were totally leftist, atheist people…so, there were aspirations to do something about this” (Hendrik

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According to the distributor company YAYSAT , Zaman has a weekly circulation of 977.000 and Hürriyet has 422.000 in Turkey( YAYSAT,2011).The circulation of Zaman has increased from around 100.000 in the mid 1990s to almost a million in 15 years. However there has been a continuing debate about these numbers: Zaman is sold only 20.000 in stores but 956.000 copies are distributed as subscription, while the other newspapers are only sold in stores. It is not uncommon to find free copies of Zaman at the doorsteps in the mornings, thus it is widely argued that the subscriptions were financed by the members of Gülen Movement, and distributed to Gülen affiliated dorms, schools, businesses but also in the last years to public organizations and police stations (Arioglu 2008:194; Kaya&Cakmur 2010:537). Zaman and the government repeatedly rejected the accusations. Zaman claims that they are controlled by independent auditors and there are no free copies given out, and the government claims that public institutions purchase various publications in accordance with the law.

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2011:44). In the mid-1990s, at Fettullah Gülen’s request, a handful of young men, who met at a Gülen Movement dorm in Istanbul in the early 1990s, attended journalism school in the U.S.A. to elevate Zaman’s journalism to “global standards” and upon their return in 2001, Zaman underwent what one interviewee in Hendrik’s study described as a ‘rebirth’ (ibid). Now in their mid-forties, these men are executives at Feza Media, and are considered by inner-circles to be the architects of the Gülen Movement’s renovated presentation (ibid). The English language Today’s Zaman ,the European edition Zaman Avrupa (Europe) ,which is one of the publications that this study uses as analysis material, and the other editions for different countries and regions are the direct products of the above described process of change that Gülen affiliated media has undergone.

Zaman Avrupa, although started as a single European edition printed in Germany, now has 7 sub editions printed in 7 different locations: Zaman Europe for Germany, Zaman Scandinavia, Zaman England, Zaman Benelux, Zaman France, Zaman Austria, Zaman Switzerland. Thus although European edition of Zaman has divided into 7 parts, the main part, Zaman Europe has been focusing mainly on the news of Germany.

Transnational Political Islam

Since 2002, Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi) which is led by Tayyip Erdogan is governing Turkey. When the party won the elections in 2002, it was a new and untested party. However the leading cadre of the party and Erdogan was well known, as Erdogan was the mayor of Istanbul from the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) and the leading cadre consisted of well-known figures of the Welfare Party and of the Milli Görüs movement.

Welfare party was from a tradition of religiously oriented conservative parties which were led by Necmettin Erbakan. In 1987, he established the Welfare Party along the same line as the two former parties he led, which were closed down by the military interventions of 1971 and 1982. Erbakan described his parties’ ideology as one with a National Outlook (Milli Görüs), describing all the other parties as simply mimics

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of the West (Erbakan 1975 in Mecham 2004:342).Major themes of Welfare Party's campaigns included the importance of social justice, Turkey's exploitation by the West, religious freedom, creation of an interest-free6 “Islamic economy” and denunciations of an “imperialist Zionist system” that threatened Turkey's national independence (Mecham 2004:342).

The leading politicians who established the AKP in 2001, were the reformist wing in the Welfare Party and in the Virtue Party, which was established after the Constitutional Court ruled for the closure of Welfare Party in 1998 on the grounds of performing “actions against the principles of the secular Republic” (Mecham 2004:345).The new party made it clear early on that it would support a market economy and push for Turkey's admission into the European Union (Mecham 2004: 344).

The transnational Milli Görüs Movement, similar to Muslim Brotherhood, can be considered as a part of the Islamist movements in Europe, which, under the pressure from secular or authoritarian states in the Middle East and North Africa, fled to Europe in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to escape the political repression they were subject to, reorganized among the immigrant population and created transnational ties (Boubekeur 2007:17). Following the closure of Necmettin Erbakan’s National Order Party in 1971, members of the Milli Görüs Movement organized themselves in Germany, with headquarters in Cologne, primarily as mosque organizations. Mosque played an important role in the community life of Turkish migrant workers who came with the first wave of immigration in the 1960s (Andrews 2011:516). Starting from Germany the movement grew to a European wide organization bringing together more than 30 associations and a network mosques and over 250.000 members in many European countries, possessing banks , businesses and media institutions (Boubekeur 2007: 25,26).

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Islam forbids charging interest for a loan: “Those who consume interest cannot stand [on the Day of Resurrection] except as one stands who is being beaten by Satan into insanity. That is because they say, ‘Trade is [just] like interest.’ But God has permitted trade and has forbidden interest” (Quran 2:275-276).

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The transnational Milli Görüs’s network has become an important element on the economic transformation of Turkey and the struggle of religious conservative political movements, which carried Erdogan’s AKP to power. Extensive network of banks, businesses and charity organizations has financially supported the Anatolian bourgeoisie during 1980s and 1990s, which constituted the economic base for the success of AKP and Gülen Movement (Hendrick, 2009:350).

Hosgör identifies different waves of industrialization in the inner regions of Anatolia: in the initial stage in 1960s, the then governments had first channeled the remittances of the Turkish immigrants in Europe to village cooperatives (Hosgör 2011:344). Two developments in the 1980s created opportunities for a second wave of industrialization in Anatolia: The first was the growth of the Middle Eastern economies, and the second was the remittances of Turkish guest workers in Europe (Hosgör 2011:345). The savings were initially collected to finance religious and cultural services for migrant communities in Europe, and they were later directed in investments back in Turkey, both through Islamic interest free banks and through informal relations of kinship, since the market deregulation and export orientated neo-liberal economic policies created new opportunities for them (ibid). Thus, the migrant remittances constituted an important source of capital for the second wave of industrialization in Anatolia (ibid).

Unlike the central state sponsored economic elite in Istanbul, the new economical elite received no subsidies from Ankara, most of them framed their enterprises in accordance with their religious leanings, which led to their collective recognition as Turkey’s emergent ‘Islamic bourgeoisie’(Hendrick 2009:350). The political consciousness and the financial support of the Turkey’s “new capitalist” was central to Milli Görüs Movement’s success in 1990s and the success of the coalition of AKP and Gülen Movement in 2000s (Hendrik 2009:350; 2011:344).

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Gülen Movement

Fettullah Gülen was a state appointed imam in the western coastal city of Izmir during 1960s, where he attracted devoted students who were drawn to his unique ability to synthesize a religious identity within 20th century Turkish nationalism and by the late 1970s Gülen was attracting thousands to his sermons (Hendrik 2009:345).7

Contrary to Erbakan’s Milli Görüs Movement’s anti-system rhetoric, Gülen Movement tried to stay relatively close to the system during late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. For example in an article of Fettullah Gülen , named “The Last Outpost” (referring to the last remaining part of the Ottoman Empire, that is Anatolia),which was published in Gülen Movement’s periodical Sizinti (‘Trickle’), he complained about the conflicts during 1970s and praised army for the 1980 military coup (Gülen 1980).8

Hendrik clarifies this possibly confusing difference between Milli Görüs’s and Gülen Movement’s relationship with the Turkish State, by suggesting that Gramsci’s concept of “passive revolution”, which refers to the process of antithetical social groups moving patiently through the hierarchy of institutions that comprise the production centers of a society’s super-structure, is useful to understand the

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After the 1980 military coup, Gülen’s followers turned the existing dormitories of the movement into private education institutions, so that military could not take the dormitories (Hendrik

2009:345).After the return to civilian rule, these institutions provided a model for the emergence of similar learning institutions throughout the country. In order to avoid state suppression, the

curriculum at these schools was careful to follow the requirements in secular education. By the mid- 1990s, the Gülen Movement owned and managed schools in Russia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Australia, the USA, Western Europe, and Latin America.

8_{“Against the colorful elusiveness of the stage, the hypnosis of the loud waltz and the eye-binding}

face of the costume, who detected the brutality and the real face of the game was the heroic guardians of the last outpost. This detection provided us with the regathering of our hope world and the understanding of ourselves...And now, in endless hope and joy, we see this resurrection of century of waiting that we take as sunrise, as a proof to the existence and future of the last outpost; we salute once again our soldiers who rescued us at the point where our hopes had been exhausted” (Gülen , 1980).

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relationship between the state and Gülen Movement (2009:344). However, after the memorandum of the army on 28 February 1997 about the protection of secularism, so-called “post-modern coup”, which resulted in the collapse of Necmettin Erbakan’s government, in 1999, Fettullah Gülen was charged with being the leader of an organization that aimed to destroy the Turkish state. The primary evidence was a video leaked to the press in which Gülen instructed his followers to “move in the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers ...”9_{.Around the time the clip aired on Turkish TV stations, Gülen had}

flown to the USA for health reasons and he has been living in a remote residence in the state of Pennsylvania ever since. In 2006 he was acquitted of all charges against him.

In conclusion, the political struggles in Turkey can hardly be separated from the social and political processes of Turkish migrant population in Germany. It was through the transnational connections of Turkish immigrants in Europe that religiously oriented social and political movements could be free from the suppressive state control in Turkey , organize, accumulate capital and develop , establish global ties, and most importantly reformulate its discourse from a global perspective to include the notions of human rights, democracy etc. In return, the political struggles in Turkey and the rise of political Islam also shaped the Turkish immigrants’ lives in Europe and the way issues on migration and integration folded out in the last 15 years. This perspective is important when the integration discourse of Turkish language media in Germany is being analysed.

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The full text is widely published online and video is available for viewing with English translation at YouTube: http://youtu.be/8DDq7o0FYXc

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2.3.2. Hürriyet and Media Wars

Hürriyet

Aydin Dogan’s purchase of the back then center-left newspaper Milliyet in 1979 marked the beginning of the change in media ownership in Turkey from “journalist families” to big corporations. With the help of neo-liberal economic policies ,during 1980s

and 1990s, Dogan Inc. maintained a steady growth in horizontal, cross and vertical dimensions by buying seven other newspapers, such as Hürriyet in 1994 , producing 48 weekly and monthly magazines and operating news agencies, publishing centers ( also in Germany) radio stations and eight TV stations .Thus , Dogan Inc. became as the largest media group in Turkey, which also operates within various sectors ranging from finance and agriculture to energy

Hürriyet belongs to Dogan Inc. and is positioned as a center-right, ‘mainstream’ newspaper, which in the context of Turkey often also means nationalistic , especially in relation to the Kurdish issue (Özyürek 2006:197; Demir&Zeydanlioglu 2010:19; Bayindir 2007:156). In their studies on Hürriyet’s reportings about Kurds in Turkey and in Northern Iraq during the 1990s and 2000s ,Demir&Zeydanlioglu and Bayindir show that Hürriyet strictly followed the official state discourse on the issue ; in the periods that the Turkish state softened its approach , Hürriyet published several news series on problems of the region and interviews with the Kurdish people and the Kurdish politicians in the region, while in the periods when the armed conflict intensified and the State got harsher, especially in the second half of 1990s, Hürriyet stopped these kinds of reports and “reproduced state’s discourse of ‘first [end of] terror then reform’ by disregarding human rights violations in the region as topics of news reports” (Bayindir 2007:156). Hürriyet also followed the AKP government’s “Kurdish Opening” project in 2009, yet not without a degree of hesitation. However when the “Opening” project failed and violence intensified , Hürriyet did not closely follow the nationalistic turn of the Government and has

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often published opinion pieces criticizing the AKP’s pressure on Kurdish political movement and the KCK10 arrests.

In their study Demir&Zeydanlioglu concluded that Iraqi Kurds were overwhelmingly portrayed negatively in the reporting of Hürriyet, as in the news pieces they analysed the newspaper deployed an orientalist mode of binary representation in which Iraqi Kurds were considered as backward and enemy ‘others’(2010:19). Demir and Zeydanlioglu does not see the Hürriyet's deployment of orientalist discourses as separate from the modernization project of Turkey: “... the construction and representation of the dangerous, barbaric, tribal Kurd, contributes to the identity construction of the modern ‘European Turk’ “, thus , such an identity construction defines both the borders of ‘Europeanness’ and ‘Turkishness’ (ibid). Thus, their study suggests a positioning of Hürriyet within the modernist, Westernization ideology in Turkey.

The logo of the newspaper includes a Turkish flag, a portrait of Atatürk and the slogan “Turkey belongs to Turks”. According to the marketing leaflet of the newspaper, “democracy and laicism are core values of Hürriyet” (13-10-2011).11

Hürriyet is printed in six cities in Turkey and in Frankfurt, Germany. The European edition of Hürriyet is printed in Germany and it defines itself as “an important component of the European media landscape” which “appears seven days a week and reaches the Turkish community all over Europe with news from home and the region they live and work in”, thus,”...caters to the needs of the Turkish first, second and the younger third generation in Germany and other parts of Europe” .11

10_{An alleged umbrella organization from which both armed (PKK) and political (BDP) wings are}

controlled with the aim of establishing a Kurdish State in the Southeast part of Turkey. At the beginning of October 2011 the numbers of detentions since April 2009 was given as 3,895 by BDP spokesman Bestas (06.10.2011).Most of them were members and politicians active in the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), including 13 mayors from the same party. Trade unionists, publishers, human rights defenders and academicians have also been among the detainees. The government declared the number of detainees as 485 (08.10.2011).

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For the English language leaflet see

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Regarding the Turkey’s position and the Turkish migrants in Europe, Hürriyet claims that “the Turkish culture has been an integral component of the European culture for centuries and Hürriyet supports the full membership of Turkey in the EU. It therefore supports for the rights of the Turkish community in Europe and encourages their integration”.11

Media Wars

The appeal of AKP to big corporations and liberal intellectuals rested primarily on its pro-European stance. When AKP became government in 2002, TÜSiAD, the organization of big corporations based in Istanbul, which Dogan Inc. is a member , voicing the viewpoints of the big business and in quest of political and economical stability, did not withhold its sympathy and embraced AKP, yet not without suspicion (Kaya&Cakmur 2010: 531). The reason of the acceptance was that the party seemed to be only political actor with considerable popular support that can bring single-party rule, thus the economic stability, while being capable of complying with the “Copenhagen Criteria” and carrying forward integration to the EU (ibid).

The “flag-ship” of Turkish mainstream media, Hürriyet , seeing the formation of the AKP “as an antidote to the Islamists” and shrinking political center, often emphasized the fact that the new party described itself as “conservative-democrat” rather than as “Muslim Democrat” (ibid). Although AKP favored the development of a conservative capital of “Anatolian Tigers”, it had also to make concessions to big capital in general, especially to the members of TÜSiAD, thus the indirect consent of the mainstream media has paid off, and “AKP turned out to be the most successful privatizer of public companies” and Dogan Inc. was one of the main beneficiaries of these privatizations (ibid).

However over time the relations between the AKP and TÜSiAD turned sour due and the first confrontation came when in 2008, which was the year that the political tension increased because of a case of closure against the AKP by the Constitutional Court. Aydin Dogan alleged that the AKP government attempted to block a number

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of his company’s expansion projects, namely construction of an oil refinery on the Mediterranean coast and an addition to the Hilton hotel in Istanbul. The former project, Dogan alleged, was refused to him as Erdogan told him that the permission had been awarded to “our Calik” meaning the Calik Holding, a firm which was known to have connections to Gülen Movement’s schools ,Gülen-controlled media in Turkmenistan and to have economic relations with interest-free ‘Bank Asya’ of Gülen movement , in addition to the detail that the firm’s expanding media branch was led by Erdogan’s son-in-law (Hendrik 2011:43 ;Kaya&Cakmur 2010: 532). Dogan Group’s media outlets immediately began voicing criticisms against the government and in the course of events Dogan’s newspapers covered a court case in Germany that dissolved Light House (Deniz Feneri),an Islamic charity foundation, for the illegal transfer of funds to Turkey and reported its alleged connections with names close to the AKP (Hendrik 2011:43).The German court ruled against the ‘Light House Foundation’ and found the organization’s administrators guilty of funneling charity revenue to various corporate, media and political recipients back in Turkey (ibid).

Opposing comments of Tayyip Erdogan and Aydin Dogan quickly elevated to harsh threats of revealing each other’s dirty secrets and soon Erdogan publicly called for a boycot of Dogan Inc. publications with the accusation of biased reporting. Soon the tax authorities heavily fined the Dogan Inc., which was beyond the corporation’s market value, amounting to $ 3.7 billion, and prison sentences were demanded for Aydin Dogan and the editor-in-chief of Hürriyet, Ertugrul Özkök for alleged tax frauds (Kaya&Cakmur 2010:532). One of the accusations of tax fraud was about the sale of %25 of Dogan Inc. to the largest publishing company of Europe, the German Axel Springer, which is the publisher of German newspapers Bild and Die Welt and which is often criticised for obvious bias of its publications towards Israel. This case by itself illustrates the complexity of the transnational linkages.

Two newspapers, Calik Group’s Sabah and Gülen affiliated Zaman, were especially very critical of the fraud allegations about Light House Foundation and the Dogan Inc. media’s claim that there is political pressure on press in Turkey and the support

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Dogan Inc. received from international journalist associations (Hendrik 2011:44). For example, Bülent Keles commented as follows in the English language Today’s Zaman :

Had it adopted an impartial look of Turkey, it [the World Association of Newspapers] could have seen that what really threatens freedom of the press in Turkey are the military, the judiciary and influential groups that cooperate with them. I am sure [the Association] would then realize that the Dogan group’s newspapers and TV channels would lend unconditional support to all anti-democratic military interventions... ( 2009)

In the years following this event the relationship between Dogan Inc. and AKP seemed to have improved. The tax fraud case against Aydin Dogan and Hürriyet’s editor-in-chief Ertugrul Özkök has resulted partly in favour of Dogan Inc., Aydin Dogan stepped down from chairmanship of Dogan Inc., Ertugrul Özkök stepped down from his editor-in-chief position, Zaman is being distributed by YAYSAT

which is the distribution company of Dogan Inc., the chief political consultant to Erdogan started to write opinion columns in the liberal-left Radikal newspaper of Dogan Inc. and in general the level of criticism in Dogan Inc. publications against the government have decreased.

However , Hendrik (2011) suggests that this “media war” illustrates that the debate in Turkey is not a simple contest between “Islam” and “secularism” as both “sides” in Turkey’s media war claim that the threat posed by the other is a threat to the continuation of Turkish democracy and they effectively use the same signifying codes (democracy, free speech, liberalism) and the same methods (specifically framed stories, over-reporting, under-reporting) to achieve the same goal: manufacturing public consent ; the effect is a deeply divided Turkish political public and a deeply confused international audience (44).

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3. THEORY AND METHODOLOGY

This study takes Michel Foucault’s approach on power-knowledge relationship as its general theoretical starting point. The ideas of Foucault on the relationship of power, knowledge and discourse make it possible to analyse and to understand the ways discourse on integration shapes in the Turkish language media in Germany. To be able to successfully position the research theoretically, first I will go into the historical and philosophical origins of the discourse analysis in general, and ideas of Michel Foucault in particular. Then I will discuss Foucault’s conceptual framework on discourse, institutional apparatus and power-knowledge, their relations with the concepts of ideology and resistance.

Discourse analysis as a general methodological approach is employed in the study. To start with, on the most elementary sense, discourse analysis can be defined as the close study of language in use (Taylor 2001). It rests on the assumption that language occupies primary role in understanding society. However to be able to discuss this better, and so to be able to position this study better, I will need to investigate how language came to be accepted as focus of analysis to explain social phenomena. And for this it is necessary to go back to the fundamental debates and review the key ontological and epistemological positions.

3.1. Theoretical Background

3.1.1. Language and Reality: Modernism, Structuralism and

Post-Structuralism

Modernism

Central to the Enlightenment and Modernism lays the ‘reason’. Enlightenment ideology sees the world as constituted by natural laws. The objective and rational knowledge of the world can be discovered by reasoning and the humankind has the

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intellectual capacity to do that. The view on how the physical world exists and operates by the rational laws of nature is directly translated to the study of humankind and the society. Since the rational knowledge of the world is there to be discovered by intellectual reasoning, as opposed to traditional and irrational worldview which existed in the past, the objective knowledge is seen as cumulative. With the ideas of enlightenment philosophers, humankind is seen as moving beyond its primitive, egoist core and creating a social contract as the base of its society, which is to be the constituting base of the State. Thus the State represents the idea of progression that is established by the humankind who rationally created the state to provide better life and happiness for the collective society. In that way, the progressive modern social world is the product of rational human thought, rational human is the subject. This view replaced the divine subject, God; outside humankind by the divine subject of human which was capable of reasoning. It is by reasoning only that we can reach the objective truth that is the reality out there. The realist ontological position is at the center of modernism.

Glyn Williams explains the role of nation state in modernism. He, through the example of the ideas of Condorcet on political systems and social progress, unfolds a relationship with the modernist notions of reason, progress, the Nation, the State and the theory of social evolution. For him, in modernism, reason is rooted in the very nature of the State:

… As a consequence of this harnessing of reason by the State, humanity , living in accordance with the law proclaimed by the State, … , with legal rationality being the basis of the market economy in the construction of modern society. Superimposed upon the theory of evolution involving inevitable progress was the claim that the most recent form held to be the closest to perfection, which was the end phase of evolutionary progress. Other forms were treated as the antithesis of this perfection...The domination which derived from the equation of the State and the reason was exercised liberally, even though in an authoritarian way, addressing the freedom of the subject, but in a context where each submits to the interest of all...The whole was equated with the State itself, an abstract notion which was there to serve the interest of all ....The idea of progress was linked

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with the spirit of a people (Volkgeist) by Herder, a pupil of Leibniz. Thus reason and nation were linked much in the same way as was implied in the Durkheimian notion of national culture (Williams, 1999: 19).

Hence, modern nation state formation has the reason in its core, which Williams thinks disproves the usual tendency to create a distinction between the German inclination to see the nation as a community of destiny and the French way of seeing it as community of freedom and national sovereignty (Williams, 1999: 20).

The view of modernism on language is similar to the view on rationally constructed societal organization of state and the idea of progression. It is no coincidence that the modern state is extremely concerned about the language. At the practical level, it would not be wrong to say that modernism penetrated into the political realm through a form of language control. In France, Glyn Williams argues, instead of just extending the political right to various language groups living in state territory, one of the first productions of the Revolution was an elementary textbook to be used by all children living in France, to make sure that every citizen understood French, which was seen as the language of reason and democracy (Williams, 1999:22). Enlightenment view on the difference of humans from animals is the capacity of humans to reason and their ability to reason. Not every human use reason but all humans use language. Thus modernism separates language and mind, which brings along the idea that different languages might enable human mind to use the capacity to reason in different ways. With this logic, French Enlightenment philosopher Condorcet could place those humans who had a language that allows them to use their reason above those who did not in the drive for progress (Williams, 1999: 22).

In the modernist view, the knowledge is real, and it is out there. It already exists, waiting to be discovered, through rational reasoning, experiment and observation, as the objective truth. Language is only a reflection or expression of the objective truth, thus social knowledge exist prior to and independent from language.

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This view was challenged by Ferdinand de Saussure in his work Course in General Linguistics (1916), a compilation of the Saussure’s lectures at the University of Geneva between the years 1906 and 1911, which is generally regarded as the starting point of Structuralism. Saussure challenged the idea that language is only a reflection or expression of the objective reality. He claimed that if the orthodox linguistic theories, which argued that meanings came from things which were ‘represented in words or meanings derived from universal ideas which were ‘expressed’ in words and given specific form by each speaker, were true, “words would have exact equivalents in meaning from one language to the next”(Saussure 1916, trans. 1974:116 in Macdonnel, 1986:9). However this was not true, the meanings vary from one language to another.

Saussure developed a theory of sign and signifier, where the term signified refers to the mental representation of the meaning, and the signifier, the psychological imprint of the sound (Williams 1999: 35). This separation brings profound changes with it, as it sees sign consisting of two parts, signifier and signified, none of which is directly related to the objective reality. The word ‘car’ is connected to the concept of car, not the physical object of car in real world which corresponds to that concept. The ideas of Saussure influenced many thinkers, like Levi-Strauss and Lacan, and had revolutionary effect upon the general perspectives that meaning of a word resides external to the language and the human subject is the conscious source of the meaning.

Though leading post-structuralist like Althusser and Foucault did not try to directly integrate the work of Sassure into their perspective, post-structural thought shared the core idea that language exists prior to reality. The division between structuralism and post-structuralism is perhaps lying on the difference of orientation towards language and the subject (Henry 1990 in Willams 1999: 63). William suggests that while structuralism broke the idea that human subject is the source of meaning by presenting language as arbitrary and autonomous, it still retained the idea of human

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nature as a specific object and remained entrenched in the Enlightenment philosophy (1999: 63).

Post-structuralism questioned the way in which structuralism had assumed that although meaning was not guaranteed by an external world, it was nevertheless held in place by the consent of a speech community. As Gee (1993) puts it, ‘ a sign system operates not because it is inherently natural or valid, nor because it is universal, but simply because some people have engaged in the past and continue to engage in the present in a particular set of social practices that incorporate that sign system. The sign system is a social and historical tool in terms of which groups of people carry out their desires and claim and contest power. It is not a disinterested reflection of a historical and a social reality’ ( Pennycook 2002: 21).

Through the works of structuralist and post-structuralist thinkers, drawing on the ideas of Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger , Freud and others, the modernist assumption that social reality exist prior to and independent from language has been shaken in a great degree. Moreover, mostly through so called post-structuralist turn came the view to think of language as something that constructs reality. Thus rather than rational human subject guaranteeing meaning, our subjectivities are produced by it; we are not so much authors of the words as authored by them (Pennycook 2002:20).

It is surely beyond the scope of this study to make a detailed survey of post-structural thought and post-post-structural critique of modernism. However, it has seemed necessary to remember the basic discussions, to be able to provide the study a substantial basis and perspective.

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3.1.2. The Power of Words: Discourse, Power, Knowledge, Ideology

and Resistance

Discourse

Foucault took the concept of discourse away from being purely a linguistic concept to entail a broader meaning which includes both language and practice. By discourse Foucault would mean “the general domain of all statements, sometimes as an individualizable group of statements, and sometimes as a regulated practice that accounts for a number of statements” (1972:8), which defines and produces the objects of our knowledge, governs the ways that a topic can be meaningfully talked about and limits and restricts other ways of talking (Hall 2001:73).

According to Foucault discourse is productive in a specific historical context. It produces forms of knowledge, objects, subjects and practices of knowledge, which differed radically in different periods (Hall 2001:75). For example ‘madness’ is not a universal objective fact that has same meaning or definition in different times and cultures, but discursive construction which only has a meaning within a specific historical context and discursive formation, which was “constituted by all that was said ,in all the statements that named it, divided it up, described it, explained it, traced its development, indicated its various correlations, judged it, and possibly gave it speech by articulating , in its name, discourses that were to be taken as its own” (Foucault 1972:32). Thus only after a certain definition of ‘mental illness’ is produced, ‘madman’, as an appropriate subject, emerges. ‘Migration’ and ‘immigrant’ can also be thought in a similar way. Through the ‘knowledge of immigration /integration’, the subject of ‘immigrant’ is constituted , through all the statements that named him, described him, explained him, traced his development and categorized him (Foucault 1982).

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Power and Knowledge

In his analysis of power, Foucault rejects the classical notion of power as ‘capacity to act’. For him power is dispersed, decentralized and diffused throughout society: it may run through the prison or the mental asylum, or through different discourses such as psychiatry or sexuality (Newman 2005:51). Power constitutes the subject, and applies to the everyday life of individual, by categorizing him, marking him by his own individuality, attaching him his own identity, imposing a law of truth on him which he must recognize and which others have to recognize in him (Foucault 1982:210 in Newman 2005:52).

Thus for Foucault, ‘power is everywhere...because it comes from everywhere’ (Foucault 1978:93).

Foucault focused on the relationship between power and knowledge. He argued that not only knowledge is always a form of power, but power is also implicate in the question of whether and in what circumstances knowledge is to be applied. He identified how power is put into operation within institutional apparatuses and its technologies (dispositif) (Hall 2001:76).

Foucault’s concept of apparatus includes diverse elements, such as;

… discourses, institutions, architectural arrangements, regulations, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophic propositions, morality, philanthropy, etc. … The apparatus is thus always inscribed in a play of power, but it is also always linked to certain co-ordinates of knowledge (Foucault 1980:194 in Hall 2001:76).

According to Agamben, Foucauldian concept of apparatus can be anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings (Agamben 2009:14). Not only, therefore, prisons, madhouses, the panopticon, schools, confession, factories, disciplines, judicial measures, and so forth,…, but also the pen, writing, literature, philosophy, agriculture, cigarettes, navigation, computers,

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cellular telephones and even the language itself can be considered as apparatus (ibid).

According to Foucault, there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations (Foucault 1979:27).

Knowledge, as social sciences, and power relations constitute each other by shaping the social world into a form that is knowable and also governable, each being interdependent. Thus, according to Foucault, power can only be exercised over something that techniques of knowledge and procedures of discourse were capable of investing in (Simons 2006:190).

For Foucault, modern power disguises itself by presenting the truths of the human sciences as advances in objective knowledge about human beings. He denies that such progress occurs, arguing instead that certain forms of knowledge are replaced by others as discursive arrangements and power/knowledge regimes shift (Simons 2006:189).

Ideology

To see power as ‘subjectifying’ is a radical break from the conviction central to the politics of emancipation that there is a human essence whose interests are restricted by power. It is rather the opposite, the ‘human essence’ is constructed by power (Newman 2005:52).This is exactly the point where post-structuralist view of Foucault separates from the concept of ideology. Foucault is reluctant to use the concept of ideology on the ground that ideology in Marxism refers to a false consciousness which prevents the subject to see where his real interest is. As he explains in an interview:

The notion of ideology appears to me to be difficult to make use of, for three reasons. The first is that, like it or not, it always stands in virtual opposition to something else that is supposed to count as truth … The second drawback is that the

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concept of ideology refers, I think necessarily, to something of the order of a subject. Thirdly, ideology stands in secondary positions relative to something that functions as its infrastructure, as its material, economic determinant, and so on (Foucault 2001:118).

However, another view of ideology is possible where it does not stand for an illusion or a distortion of the truth. According to this view, rather than distorting the objective truth ideology operates through that truth. What it conceals is not the essential interests of the subject, but rather a particular position of power from which it is articulated (Newman 2005:64). Thus ideology does not conceal a ‘true objective reality’, what it conceals and covers is this non-existence, this lack of true reality. In Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis theory, a fantasy is constituted around what Lacan calls ‘object petit a’, which is the illusion of having a true reality, a fullness (Newman 2005:64). The identity of the subject emerges in suspension between the lack of truth/reality, the symbolic reality - constituted by structures of representations - and the fantasy of fullness or having a real constitution. The ideology sustains the fantasy, and through this it conceals the lack of reality, the lack of real constitution of the subject.

One concrete example of this is given by Žižek: Nazi ideology operated at the figure of the Jew to be able to constitute a consistent identity.

‘The Jew’ is just the embodiment of a certain blockage - of the impossibility which prevents society from achieving its full identity as a closed, homogeneous totality … Society is not prevented from achieving its full identity because of the Jews: it is prevented by its own antagonistic nature, by its own immanent blockage, and it ‘projects’ this internal negativity onto the figure of the ‘Jew’ (Žižek 1989:127). Thus the figure of ‘the Jew’ was used by the Nazi ideology to sustain the fantasy of a lost state of fullness. “Symbolization makes us believe that what was impossible was prohibited and thus can also be recaptured” (Stavrakakis 1999:52).The subject, the Nazi, is created around the lack of essence, the symbolic representations of Nazism (language, art, uniform, swastika, etc.), and the fantasy of harmonious, pure

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German race which is sustained by the Nazi ideology, for example by creating the figure the ‘the Jew’.

Resistance

If power is everywhere and it constitutes the subject wholly, as Foucault suggests, then how is resistance to power possible? Even though Foucault does not see resistance to power as impossible and he thought that resistance is possible when power pushes to its limits (1978:95). It is rather problematic how subject, who was constructed by power/knowledge, can resist to power in a way that such resistance, without verifying the power even more, results in the disappearance of its subjectification by the power.

Inspired by Lacan, we can say that, unlike Foucault’s claim that the subject is fully constituted by power, the subject cannot be fully constituted by power, and it is around this constitutional failure, this non-complete constitution or this void that the subject comes to emerge. The subject emerges in its not having been fully constituted by power, and this ‘failed construction’ is a reflection of the failed order of power. A complete construction of the subject is the impossibility.

Moreover, as Newman suggests, the very structure that determines the subject is itself indeterminate. Thus this leaves room for certain freedom or radical indeterminacy in the identity of the subject which makes resistance to power possible (Newman 2005:59).

In this study, I am committed to a notion of power which is incomplete in itself, and which, through the operations of ideology, discourse and knowledge, indeterminately and incompletely constitutes and controls the subject. This incompleteness, in the end, opens up the possibility of resistance.

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3.2. Methodology

3.2.1. Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis is described by Taylor et al. as a set of methods and theories for investigating language in use and language in contexts which usually involves interpretation as the main analytic activity (2001:1).Discourse analysis is employed by various disciplines, through different traditions and approaches, and each approach certainly does not come with specific templates on how to conduct a research mostly due to its multidisciplinary character (Jörgensen& Philips 2000:9). One common approach is conversation analysis where the researcher focuses on the language itself and tries to discover how it varies. Another common approach is socio-linguistics and corpus analysis where the analyst is more interested in the use of the language than the language itself.

A third broad approach, which is also employed in this study, is when researcher look for patterns in much larger social context to identify patterns in language and related practices and to show how these constitute aspects of society. Such an analysis draw attention to the social nature and historical origins of the world ‘out there’ which is generally taken for granted, and involves the power and resistance, contests and struggles (Taylor 2001:9). Among the sub-approaches, such as Critical Discourse Analysis or French Discourse Analysis, a common assumption is the all-enveloping nature of discourse as a fluid, shifting medium in which meaning is created and contested and where the language user is not a free agent but as one who is heavily constrained in her or his choice of language and action (ibid).

The discourse analysis studies which are conducted within this third approach are qualitative in nature. Resulting from the underlying social constructivist epistemological assumptions, the knowledge obtained by this kind of research is partial, situated and relative (for example to the discourse analyst’s world view and value system) (Taylor 2001:12).

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Taylor points out several critical issues about the discourse analysis and the epistemological tradition that most discourse analysts belong (ibid). Discourse analysis is criticized, often from positivist epistemological positions, for being short of representation, as the researcher cannot claim to offer ‘objective’ knowledge; and for being short of legitimation, as there are no well-established procedures for evaluating the knowledge obtained (ibid). Another common criticism, stemming from the interpretative character of discourse analysis, is that the identity of the researcher is influencing the results of the study, firstly throughout the selection of topic or the collection of data and secondly throughout the analysis and interpretation (ibid). These issues, which are mostly related to having different epistemological assumptions, are not rejected by discourse analysts, yet for the quality of the study Taylor suggests that the researchers should be “self-aware” of his or her not being outside of the social processes and constantly employ ‘reflexivity’ (2001:17,18).

As a qualitative method, nature of discourse analysis is relatively open-ended and iterative , in which the researcher looks for patterns in the data but is not sure what these will look like (Taylor 2001:38). As possible patterns emerge, the researcher employs some kind of sorting and categorizing, which has been conventionally called ‘coding’ (Taylor 2001:39). However the principle difference between discourse analyses and other data analyses is not this initial process of ‘coding’ but the use of theoretically informed analytical concepts; the discourse analyst searches for patterns in language in use, building on or referring back to the assumptions she or he is making about the nature of language, society and the interrelationships between them (ibid). The final presentation of the analysis is not a record of the process but a summary of selected findings, which are presented for a reader so the most interesting or complete patterns can be seen (ibid).

Dissonant Voices