Posts Tagged ‘Turkish Media’

August 31st, 2010

The rise of “Islamic” broadcasting in Turkey

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Before the liberalization of broadcasting in Turkey, the state-owned broadcaster TRT considered Islam a “religion” that could be represented only in a limited, privatized form, rather than a way of life regulated by traditions and practices. However, the transformation of the political scene as well as the liberalization of the media industry in the 1990s have contributed to the reconfiguration of the concept of “religion” and its representation on TV.

August 21st, 2010

Secular representations of religion on Turkish television

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Television broadcasting has played a significant role in the creation of a public governed by norms of secular reason in Turkey. The state-owned Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) held a monopoly on broadcasting until the liberalization of television and radio broadcasting in the 1990s. . . . TRT represented “religion” only in the form of limited mosque sermon broadcasts on officially designated religious holidays, as well as a 15-30 minute show called “The World of Faith” (“İnanç Dünyası”) played every Thursday evening to mark the beginning of Islam’s day of special worship on Friday. The overall effect of TRT’s demarcating such programming as “religious”—and its dealing with issues only related to “personal faith” in these shows (as emphasized in its title)—was to subtract “religion” from other factors regulating the public lives of Turkish citizens (such as education, politics, high culture, and so on) and to reinforce the notion that Islam is primarily a matter of “faith.”

June 22nd, 2010

Letter from Istanbul

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I have come to Turkey at a time when discussions of a “shift in the axis” of Turkey’s foreign policy have reached their peak. The term “axis shift” was coined by some members of the mainstream Turkish media a couple of years ago to imply that Turkey was moving away from the secular West toward the Muslim Middle East. This term has been revived recently after the flotilla incident with IsraelTurkey’s “no” vote to UN Security Council’s sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program, and the 2nd Turkish-Arab Economic Forum.