Communicative ethnocide and Alevi television in the Turkish context

Abstract

The attempted coup in Turkey in July 2016 provided a justification for the Turkish government to silence oppositional voices in the media and close down many television stations. Though the stated aim was to clamp down on the pro-coup Gulenist movement, the closure of TV channels has resulted in what I call a 'communicative ethnocide' silencing Alevi television in particular. Following Yalcinkaya, who builds on Clastres concept of ethnocide, I define 'communicative ethnocide' as the annihilation of the communicative capacity of a particular community by the state with the aim of destroying that community's cultural identity. Although the closure of TV stations was not confined to Alevi channels, it has particular implications for the Alevi community by destroying its communicative capacity, infrastructure, relations with the viewers, and representation regime which are driven by the community's political ambitions and attempts to sustain transnational connections. Parallels are drawn between Alevi and Kurdish TV to illustrate the Turkish context.

From resolution to resecuritization: populist communication of the AKP’s Kurdish peace process in Turkey

“…Existing research has addressed the misrepresentation and/or under-representation of the Kurdish question and Kurdishness in Turkish media over the years (see Sezgin and Wall 2005; Somer 2005), which has been bolstered under the AKP’s rule (see Akser and Baybars-Hawks 2012; Emre Cetin 2018; Tunç 2018; Yesil 2016; Yıldırım et al 2021). The current “media autocracy,” resting primarily on conglomerate pressure, judicial suppression, online banishment, and surveillance defamation (Akser and Baybars-Hawks 2012), consolidates the discursive techniques used by the main AKP leaders in their personal accounts, particularly in relation to Kurds, who have been their most important perceived national threat.…”