More national less European? The comparison of the last two general elections in Turkey

Abstract

This article will examine how the media reported the 2011 election campaign in Turkey in comparison to the 2007 elections. In order to reflect the different ideological segments within the society (pro-secular, nationalist vs religious-conservative), four newspapers – Zaman, Cumhuriyet, Hürriyet and Posta – are chosen. The empirical evidence suggests that there are similarities between the analysis of the 2011 elections and the previous research findings of the 2007 elections with regard to the topics garnered, the main themes and the absence of the European Union-membership-related narratives. Yet, we also observe a major difference in the 2011 elections. The themes of the contestation between competing party programmes, values, and issue positions have shifted away from the secularism and Islam to the daily politics such as the economic progress, the military operations, the terrorist attacks, the corruption allegations and the Kurdish issue.

Keywords

Election European Union political actors Turkish media

Introduction

The mass media are essential to the conduct of democratic elections.¹ A free and fair election is not only about casting a vote in the appropriate conditions, but also about having adequate information about parties, policies, candidates and the election process itself. Therefore, the election period requires full and accurate coverage by the media. Parties and candidates are entitled to use the media to get their messages across to the electorate. The media, themselves, have a right to report freely, and to scrutinize the whole election process. In this regard, monitoring and analysing the election-related coverage is an important issue for both political scientists and the media researchers.

In June 2011, general elections were held in Turkey. According to the election results, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) won 49% of the votes. This landslide victory enabled the party to maintain its absolute majority in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA). For the first time in the history of the Turkish Republic, one party won the parliamentary elections three times in a row, constantly increased its share of votes, and constituted the government. This makes the 2011 elections historically important and worthwhile for further research.

This article assesses how the media reported the general elections in Turkey held in June 2011. The specific focus of the analysis is the coverage of European Union (EU) news in the election discourse. The findings are also compared with the results of 2007 elections. The empirical evidence suggests that the analysis of the 2011 elections shows similarities with the 2007 elections with regard to the absence of the EU-membership-related issues in the election agenda. Although for many decades, the EU-related issues have become an inseparable part of the political agenda in Turkey, in the last two elections, the EU has, to a great extent, vanished from the electoral discourse of the parties. This contradicts the expectations of many, since Turkey is a country on the road to accession and has an institutional relationship with the EU for more than a half century² (Huszka, 2010).

In contrast to 2007, in the 2011 elections, major themes of the contest between competing party programmes, values, and issue positions have shifted away from secularism and Islam to daily politics such as the military allegations, the corruption accusations of political parties, the tape scandals and the terrorist attacks. Yet, contrary to the temper of the political and current affairs pages, the economy pages were full of good news about the economic situation of the country, which to a great extent shaped the voting decisions of the electorates.

The article is structured as follows: the next part explains the theoretical background concerning the relationship between media, politics and EU-related news with a special focus on the agenda-setting theory; after stating the data and methodology, the background of the electoral context will be provided. The last part of the article presents the results of the media analysis of the 2011 election results in comparison to the 2007 elections survey and summarizes the main findings.

Theoretical framework

In the contemporary world, our lives are persistently being bombarded by news about wars, economic crisis, and domestic and international politics. Knowledge about the world has become important and necessary in an increasingly globalized and complicated world (Besova and Cooley, 2009: 220; Lippmann, 1922: 9–18). Although some researchers argue that focusing on politicians or political parties alone fails to capture the ideas and values from which they emerge (Somer, 2011: 512) in a world where mediated political communication is central to the politics and public life of democracies (Bennett and Entman, 2001: 1). It is widely acknowledged that the political discourse carried by the mass media is a key location for public discourse.

News is the most vital element of mass media and a channel for disseminating the mediated communication. Therefore, it is the critical intermediaries for translating important international politics into forms easily distributed to and understood by the public. Relying on news, people discuss with each other, have opinions and make judgments about the world and relate them to the domestic politics. The influence of news media on audience perceptions, attitudes and voting behaviours in the realm of politics has been extensively documented (De Vreese and Boomgarden, 2006; McCombs and Shaw, 1972; Scheufele, 1999). The mass media, especially newspapers, are the most common source of information about election campaigns, which are high points for political communication in the lives of democracies. In terms of the sheer volume of the information available to citizens via the media on issues, political parties and leaders, the political communication often is at its peak during national election campaigns (Semetko, 2008). The media coverage of the election topic is a well represented research area in many countries.

The news coverage of EU issues is important in the member states and candidate states given its potential impact on citizens’ support for future European integration efforts (Eurobarometer 56, Eurobarometer 162, Eurobarometer 73). The democratic and communication deficits of the EU (e.g. Anderson and McLeod, 2004; Eriksen and Fossum, 2000; Katz and Wessels, 1999; Meyer, 1999) call for a more informed citizenry of the Union (Boomgaarden et al., 2010: 506; Karp et al., 2003). Furthermore, researches and debates about a common public space in Europe highlight the central role of news media (De Vreese, 2007; Koopmans, 2007; Trenz, 2004). Newspapers in particular are consistently listed as the most important sources of information about the EU for citizens in Europe (Alarcon, 2010).

The vast majority of agenda-setting researches have found support for the idea that the public learns the relative importance of issues from the amount of coverage given to the issues in the news media. According to the related theory, by making some issues more salient in people’s mind (agenda setting), mass media can also shape the considerations that people take into account when making judgments about political candidates or issues (priming) that will affect their opinions, and literally this can cause ‘change in the standards that people use to make political evaluations’ (Iyengar and Kinder, 1987: 63). News selection is at the heart of the agenda-setting process since the issues that fail to pass through the gatekeepers of the news also fail to give salience cues regarding the relative importance of the issues. This is especially true of political news events that happen beyond the direct experience of most news consumers. Understanding the nature of political news coverage by the news media is of great importance when considering its possible implications. Agenda-setting effects vary depending on the public’s familiarity with an issue. This is particularly pertinent in the case of the EU. Indeed, as the study by Robbins (2011) confirms, the less direct experience or contact the public has with a given issue, the more it must depend on the news media for information. Because most issues dealing with the EU are relatively removed from people’s daily lives, the media become the main agents through which people can find information or explanations.

For many decades, the EU-related issues have become an inseparable part of the political agenda in Turkey (Barysch, 2007; Gencel-Bek, 2004: 255–259; Kejanlıoğlu and Taş, 2007; Koenig et al., 2006; Negrine et al., 2008; Ruiz-Jiménez and Torreblanca, 2007). Especially after the commencement of the accession negotiations, the EU became the main frame of reference in politics, economics and other aspects of life via Copenhagen criteria.

Based on this, as well as the accession negotiations with the EU, one would expect the news coverage of the election agenda to include EU-related issues substantially. The significant reforms in line with liberal democratic values under the impact of the EU’s political conditionality have taken place mainly in the period of the governing party, including nine legislative packages adopted by the TGNA between February 2002 and July 2004. However, one must also note that due to the EU’s problematic approach to Turkey and the increase in PKK (Kurdish acronym for ‘Kurdistan Workers’ Party’) terrorism starting in the mid-2000s, the democratization reforms have already slowed down after 2005.

Data and method

This article presents a systematic study of 2011 general election news coverage of the Turkish media for the last 3 weeks prior to the elections (23 May through 11 June 2011), with particular consideration given to EU-related news. A similar study (Balkir et al., 2008) was conducted for the 10 weeks prior to the previous 2007 general elections; thus, it will be possible to compare and analyse the findings of the two election periods. In the previous study, four newspapers and three TV channels were selected as the outlets for the coding of media content.³ Like the preceding study of 2007, in this study also four Turkish newspapers, namely, Cumhuriyet, Zaman, Posta and Hürriyet, were chosen with reference to the level of circulation, ideological stance (pro-secular versus religious-conservative press), and format (quality versus tabloid) criteria.⁴ Posta was chosen according to the level of circulation which is the highest in Turkey. Hürriyet is the mainstream daily and a reference newspaper in Turkey. Both Hürriyet and Posta are liberal and pro-secular dailies. Zaman and Cumhuriyet represent quality press with different ideological stance. Zaman is the reference newspaper for the Islamist and conservative segments of the Turkish readers, whereas Cumhuriyet, pro-secular newspaper, which is positioned on the opposite end as representing the left-wing and Kemalist readers in Turkey. All the newspapers under the scrutiny have broadsheet format and nationwide distribution. However, existing investigation is limited only to the front page of each newspaper for election news, although for the EU-related news, the search was not limited to the front page but also in pages on foreign news, economic news and current news.

As in the preceding 2007 study, the news story is the unit of the analysis. Each story is coded for characteristics, such as length and placement, a primary and secondary topic, and whether any news regarding the elections are mentioned. In addition to measuring the issue agenda during the campaign, up to 10 actors are coded for every story. Actors include the party leaders, candidates, EU actors, European political actors, civil society actors, economic actors, bureaucrats, military actors, citizens, and actors related to culture, art and sports. The tone towards these actors,⁵ whether positive, negative or neutral, is also coded. Last but not least, aspects of campaign themes are coded – for example, whether the campaign is portrayed as a contest between secularists and Islamists or between traditional left-wing and right-wing parties.

Overview of the political situation in the country between the two elections (2007–2011)

The political situation in the country prior to the 2011 elections has been mostly marked by the stalemate in the EU accession negotiations, economic stability and the change in the foreign policy approach.

As Turkey started negotiations, conditionality rather than incentives dominated the negotiation process and became the main determinant behind the reform process. In December 2006, Turkey’s reluctance to apply the Additional Protocol to the 1963 Ankara Agreement to Cyprus led the European Council to suspend negotiations with Turkey on eight Chapters and stipulated that no chapter could be provisionally closed until Turkey fulfils all of its commitments. While the domestic reform process in the country, to a great extent, halted since the EU membership perspective lost its credibility (Aydın-Düzgit, 2012: 330), the public support for the EU membership also drastically decreased. The harsh reactions against Turkish membership from dominant members such as France and Germany also decreased EU’s credibility in the eyes of the Turkish public. According to the Eurobarometer results of 2010, only 42% believed that EU membership would be a good thing, 32% believed it would be a bad thing, whereas in 2004, 62% of the people supported EU membership and only 20% were opposed (Eurobarometer 78, 2010). However, we observe the continuation of the reforms in several policy areas in the country, mostly driven by the preferences of the government and shaped by the internal dynamics in the country (Börzel and Soyaltin, 2012).

On the economic side, the AKP government managed to maintain economic stability, high growth and low inflation during the 2002–2006 period. Having emerged from a deep financial crisis in 2001, the Turkish economy has experienced one of the most successful phases in its post-war economy. While AKP’s strong commitment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme helped the process of economic recovery (Öniş, 2009a: 418), the party’s initial commitment to the EU membership process helped to inspire confidence within the international financial arena (Keyman and Öniş, 2007: 180).

On the international stage, the AKP government has started to play a more pro-active role in its neighbourhood, especially inspired by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ahmet Davutoglu. Many scholars argue that there is shift of the axis of Turkish foreign policy away from the EU (Öniş, 2009b; Terzi, 2010) moving towards a multi-dimensional and cooperative approach and strengthening its role as a regional power in the Middle East (Müftüler-Baç, 2011; Öniş and Yılmaz, 2009).

Briefly, it was under these circumstances that around 50 million voters, an impressive 87% of the electorate, went to the polls on 12 June 2011 to elect the new parliament. Although 15 parties competed for the 550 seats in the Parliamentary Assembly, the media mostly covered stories concerning three of them, the ruling ‘Justice and Development Party’ (AKP), the main opposition ‘Republican People’s Party’ (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi – CHP) and the ‘Nationalist Movement Party’ (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi – MHP), while the independent candidates united under the name of Labour and Democracy Bloc (Emek ve Demokrasi Bloğu).⁶ After the elections, only 29 of them became a ‘Peace and Democracy Party’ (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi – BDP) member, several of them stayed as independents.⁷ The independents have immediately announced themselves as a parliamentary bloc in the parliament. None of the smaller parties were expected to pass the 10% threshold for parliamentary representation. BDP had succeeded the Democratic Society Party (DTP) following the closure of the latter party for its alleged connections with the PKK.

The political environment preceding the 2011 Turkish elections was very hostile, and characterized by intense debates between AKP and the remaining three major political parties. Examples can be cited such as the death of an anti-government protestor during police raids shortly after the Prime Minister Erdoğan’s visit of Artvin Hopa, (a student dormitory in Cizre set on fire for political reason) and the election convoy was attacked 32 times in the month of May. Moreover, much of the election campaign consisted of a highly personalized feud between AKP Chairman Erdoğan and CHP Chairman Kılıçdaroğlu.⁸ Yet, the contestation between the parties was mostly shaped by three issues: Kurdish rights, military–civilian relations and corruption.⁹ We will briefly touch upon the main themes, which strongly shaped the election environment.

The Kurdish issue

In the last several years prior to 2011 elections, discontent and pressure for greater political and cultural rights have visibly increased within the Kurdish community. Since the 2002 elections, the Kurdish issue has moved to the top of the political agenda, and the AKP government has introduced a number of reforms designed to the Kurdish rights.¹⁰

Furthermore, as the electoral law has not been changed, the 10% threshold which any party must reach at the national level in order to gain access to the Parliament remained as a serious obstacle to the political representation of any Kurdish political party, even though they may win more than 50% of the votes in the Kurdish populated regions. This forced Kurdish members of parliament (MPs) to stand as independent candidates. Thus, before the elections, the Turkish political sphere appeared to be polarized not only between the Kemalist-pro-secular and Islamic-conservative front, but also between the Turkish and Kurdish society (Çarkoğlu and Kalaycıoğlu, 2009: 95–97). However, unlike the 2007 elections, the Kurdish issue was accepted as a more legitimate issue in the 2011 elections. While Erdoğan referred to the ‘Kurdish people as brothers and underlined the necessity to solve their problems’, MHP and CHP also organized election meetings in Diyarbakır for the first time after many years. This was a proof of political change concerning the Kurdish issue. The statements of political parties all gave messages on freedom of rights and the Kurdish problem in their election campaign.¹¹ Thus, for the first time in Turkish election history, the political parties accepted the Kurdish reality.

The AKP mostly based policy approach with regard to the Kurdish issue on economic development, whereas CHP discussed issues such as poverty and the problem of Eastern Turkey. Even in the election speeches of MHP chairman, the Kurdish electorate was promised that MHP would provide a solution. BDP, representing the Kurdish population, voiced the three changes demanded at the constitutional level. These were the recognition and safeguarding of education in Kurdish as a mother tongue; amendment of the definition of citizenship based on the ‘Turkish’ ethnic identity and its replacement with a constitutional citizenship that stands at an equal distance to all ethnic identities; and the empowerment of local administration.

Military–civilian relations

Turkish Armed Forces had always exerted their influence on politics through tutelary powers and reserved domains for a long time. Although the EU reports criticized the Turkish military for playing a dominant role in political life,¹² in the early years, the AKP government mostly remained focused on economy and social services rather than confronting military and the secular establishment. The civilian authority also did not intervene in the promotion process within military ranks as well as in the security policies implemented. However, with the coming of the sixth harmonization package, the role of the military in politics began to be reduced step by step.¹³

A major confrontation happened between the government and the military during the Presidential Elections of 2007 where the military publicly rejected Abdullah Gül as a president. In the face of the military’s ultimatum, the AKP government rejected the intervention, and Abdullah Gül was elected as president in the Parliament. This was both symbolic and instrumental in assuring the superiority of civilian authority over the military.

The exposure of alleged coup plots in 2007 had already shaken the guardian role of the Turkish military in politics.¹⁴ Furthermore, the year 2011 was marked by the high-profile court case Sledgehammer (Balyoz) where alleged coup plotters were tried. This bore considerable importance for civil–military relations in Turkey. Thus, the election campaign period was dominated by developments related to the case. The primary reason Sledgehammer proceedings attracted public interest was the number and ranks of the arrested military personnel.¹⁵ During the 2011 election campaign, Bilgin Balanlı, the Commander of Military Academies, became the first general to be taken into custody on 31 May 2011.

Another military-related issue which was covered during the 2011 election campaign period was the commencement of the trial of 1980 coup d’état. The two surviving leaders of the 1980 coup d’état, Generals Kenan Evren and Tahsin Şahinkaya, went on trial for the overthrow of the civilian government and the subsequent heavy suppression of political rights and freedoms throughout the early 1980s.

Media heavily covered Ergenekon, Balyoz, and the 1980 coup d’état trial-related news in the 2011 election period, and nearly everyday people read and watched new arrests of the military. The trials and accusations became part of the election agenda used by the political parties during their campaign.

Corruption

Corruption was another major issue of contestation during the 2007 elections (Şarlak and Bali, 2008) The previous governments’ failures with regard to fighting corruption had become an integral part of the AKP’s electoral discourse (Yilmaz and Soyaltin, 2014), and the 2011 election was no exception. All the political parties accused the other political party leaders as corrupt. The most important corruption was the tape scandal of MHP, which caused serious turmoil shortly before the elections. The anonymous release of several video files resulted in a complete overhaul of the party’s leadership prior to the elections.¹⁶ Moreover, the MHP chairman, Devlet Bahçeli, attempted to focus on economic issues by criticizing the relative poverty of ordinary Turks. However, Prime Minster Erdoğan was able to thwart these remarks by simply pointing to the country’s continuous economic growth under the AKP government.

AKP, CHP and MHP continuously accused each other under different corruption themes. CHP accused AKP and its former ministers for economic power for the benefit of their family members, such as supporting the business endeavours of the Prime Minister’s son. And AKP accused CHP leader for using his power in the placement of his relatives as public employees. Besides these political and military corruption-related accusations, the higher education and exam authority ÖSYM (Student Selection and Placement Centre) has been the most criticized institution and accused of allegations of mass cheating related to the university entrance exam.

2011 elections in the media

This research examines 399 articles from four Turkish newspapers (Cumhuriyet, Zaman, Posta and Hürriyet) which were collected during the 3 weeks prior to the June 2011 elections (23 May through 11 June 2011). In this study, all the news on the front page of each newspaper were analysed for each day as well as the stories from a selective second page covering the economy, domestic politics and foreign politics were also coded concerning EU-related issues. The next section will explore the media coverage of the 2011 elections in more detail by focusing on the main themes and the actors.

Main themes/issues

In total 399 articles were analysed to investigate the 2011 elections, and 247 articles were investigated for the 2007 elections. According to the findings, 85% of the data were collected from the front page in 2011, while only 31.2% of the data were collected from 2007 (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The placement of the news in the elections.

Figure 2 shows that the stories in the 399 (35%) articles in the four newspapers were mainly about the upcoming elections. Generally speaking, the coverage of the elections focused on the horserace, conflicts, and impeachments between the AKP, CHP and MHP. Although AKP gained a landslide victory in the previous two general and local elections and also in two referendums, this issue was surprisingly not mentioned in the election campaigns. Instead, the election campaigns were full of scandals. In general, there were only a few instances during the election campaign in which the politicians mentioned their plans and projects to be pursued when elected, such as AKP’s Family Support Programme, CHP’s Family Insurance Scheme, MHP’s Crescent Card, and BDP’s Promotion of Associations. Just like in local elections, city-specific projects were more highlighted. Among the remaining newspaper stories that did not focus on the upcoming elections, the main topics of coverage that stood out were Ergenekon and Balyoz operations, in which high-ranking military officials were arrested. As can be seen from the Figure 2, the conflicts and terrorist activities at the international level, particularly with regard to the Arab Spring, ranked higher in receiving media attention than the ones at the national level.

Figure 2.

Main themes in the 2007 and 2011 elections.

Several results of the research show resemblance to the 2007 election study (Balkir et al., 2008). First, the EU membership issue was almost absent in the election campaigns as it was in the previous 2007 general elections. In 2007, the EU accession as an election discourse constituted at least 12.8% of the 1499 news items (Balkir et al., 2008: 204). The same consistent finding was also visible in another broad research which compares 2007 and 2011 elections (Toker, 2013). Yet, during the 2011 election campaign, the EU accession was almost absent from the electoral discourse with the coverage of only 2.3%. None of the political parties addressed the EU membership objective, though none openly opposed accession. Only 9 stories out of 399 (2.3%) were on the accession process; however, 20% of the stories about the EU referred to the economic crisis in the EU countries, more specifically in Greece. During an interview with Euronews channel, the Minister for EU Affairs and the chief negotiator Egemen Bağış argued that the political parties in Turkey did not abuse the EU membership process as a campaign instrument, although the lack of reference to the EU in the election campaigns seems to be more related to the current stalemate of the relations. As mentioned before, the stalemate in the EU accession negotiations, as well as the EU demands concerning sensitive issues such as the cultural rights to the minorities and the Armenian issue, paved the way for a reactionary nationalism (Patton, 2007: 345). Coupled with decreasing public support for the EU membership, the increasing political discomfort prevented the political parties from even mentioning the ‘EU membership’ in their election campaigns.

Consequently, the EU discourse of the political parties was nothing more than a printed statement in their party programmes. While the AKP promised to continue pursuing the objective of EU membership, in the elections, there were only two references to the EU within its 160-page election manifesto. Here, the party promised to continue pursuing the objective of EU membership while voicing disappointment and even criticism at the EU for its stand on the Cyprus issue and refusal to negotiate chapters in the accession process (AKP Election Manifesto, 2011). However, AKP did not present a strategy within the election manifesto to overcome the current EU–Turkey stalemate. Similar patterns are observed in the three parliamentary opposition parties. The CHP declared its support of Turkey’s membership to the EU. Yet, the election campaign remained focused on internal politics with hardly any specific reference to the EU (CHP Election Manifesto, 2011). This was also the case for the BDP which had a strong pro-EU stand in the previous elections to support the EU’s role in promoting minority rights in Turkey. Finally, the MHP which became subject to a serious overhaul due to tape scandal was severely critical of the EU with regard to its attitude towards Turkey’s sensitive issues such as national unity and integrity; terrorism and separatism; and Cyprus, Greek and Armenian problems (MHP Election Manifesto, 2011: 188–189). As for the parties on the fringes such as the Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi) and Turkish Workers Party (Türkiye İşçi Partisi), they had an unmistakable negative stance towards the EU membership (see Figure 2).

News on the economy also had low visibility as in the case of the 2007 elections. It was only covered in the economy pages of the newspapers, and mainly as stories related to global export shares and growth rates. The increase in economic prosperity, which was the primary expectation of politics by the average voters in Turkey (Aydın-Düzgit, 2012: 340; Kalaycıoğlu, 2009: 62), was frequently underlined by the Prime Minister during the election speeches. However, these statements were mainly represented in the economy pages of the newspapers not in the pages of the election coverage. When the MHP chairman Bahçeli made an attempt to spotlight economic issues by criticizing the relative poverty of ordinary citizens, this was overshadowed by Erdoğan’s speeches concerning Turkey’s strong economic performance with an annual growth of 8.9% in 2010. CHP, on the other hand, focused on the increased level of state corruption and promised a publicly funded ‘family insurance’ as a solution to the wide-spread poverty.

As previously mentioned, the election propagandas have taken place under the shadow of the Balyoz and Ergenekon cases.¹⁷ Resembling 2007 elections in which the conflict between military and the government garnered significant media coverage, the military was again one of the top topics in the 2011 elections. Yet, the government has mounted an unprecedented challenge to the autonomy and prestige of the military by the above-mentioned operations. The harshest blow to the military was struck in May 2011 when the War Academies Commander General Bilgin Balanlı was arrested by the court within the scope of the Sledgehammer coup plan. Yet, the link between all these operations and democratization of the country was missing in the news, although the majority of the progress reports were very satisfied with the constitutional amendments and harmonization packages that significantly diminished the military’s political power and increased the civilian control of the military. The only occasion in which the military actors were coded with a positive tone was in the stories related to the paid military service.

The clash between secularism and Islam was the main theme in the 2007 election campaigns. The elections were mostly portrayed as a contest between secularists and Islamists (36.3% of total news) in which the traditional left/right division based on social class or economic cleavages was less pervasive (Balkir et al., 2008: 210). Yet, in the 2011 elections, it seems like the secularism/Islam as an analytical frame has lost its relevance with only three news items devoted to this topic, while nationalism/liberalism has appeared as a notable feature of the coverage with 54 news items out of 186 election-related news. Two other common themes were conservatism/liberal democracy with the coverage of 52 news items and social democracy/liberal democracy with 34 news items (see Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Main campaign themes in news: election-related cleavages.

For many, it has become clear that this rhetorical position was not working against AKP and in favour of the opposition (Cengiz and Hoffmann, 2012: 61). CHP also distanced itself from previous campaigns that centred almost exclusively on the threats raised with reference to the secular structure of the Turkish Republic.

Actors

Besides the main items on the news agenda, the actors and the tone towards them in the press have also been important factors in analysing how media cover the general elections in 2011. The analysis of the trends in the party visibility over the campaign period reveals that the AKP or AKP politicians and candidates have been the most visible actors in newspaper coverage. As it was in the 2007 election period, the MHP and the CHP were the next most visible parties in the press coverage but were well below the visibility of the AKP. This may indicate the ‘emergence of a dominant or predominant party system in Turkey’ (Çarkoğlu, 2011: 44; Kalaycıoğlu, 2011).

As was expected, the ruling party AKP (3.8%) and the Prime Minister Erdoğan (14.5%) were the most visible actors in the media. The actor-related findings show us that both the AKP and CHP chairmen were frequently mentioned actors in the news coverage (14.5% and 9.8%, respectively), which supports our hypothesis that the election campaign consisted of a highly personalized feud between these two figures (Figure 4). Total AKP-related actors comprised 21.6% of the coverage and CHP-related actors comprised comparatively less at 11.6%. Even with tape scandals and resignation of MHP politicians, the coverage was only 7.1% in the selected media outlets. Furthermore, the coverage of BDP actors and independent candidates was just 3.3% of the total news.

Figure 4.

The actors of the 2007 and 2011 elections.

Besides political actors, media focused on mostly Ergenekon and Balyoz investigations, and therefore military actors comprised 11.3% of the total coverage, making them the next most visible actor category after Erdoğan (14.5%) during the election campaign.

As we argued, the EU membership was not a heated debate in the election agenda. The EU was mentioned not based on the actors (EU Commission 2.5%, EU Parliament 0.8%) but mostly in general (5%). The other EU-related institutions, such as the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Central Bank, were also weakly covered with 1.3%. The European countries in financial crises (e.g. Greece, Spain) were another category with 1.3%. In total, the EU-related actors and institutions had a share of 9.6% in the total coverage. The International actors (the United States, the IMF, the Council of Europe, etc.) were also an important category and accounted for 4.8% of the coverage. The international actor-related finding also supports the argument regarding Turkey’s growing ambition to become a powerful regional player in its neighbourhood.

The analysis reveals the fact that AKP-related actors were heavily covered during the election campaign. However, strong visibility did not provide a positive tone for the AKP; on the contrary, the tone towards the AKP and AKP actors was highly critical and negative in the 2011 election coverage of some newspapers, such as Cumhuriyet. Being highly critical and negative towards the AKP and AKP actors, particularly towards Erdoğan, its tone towards CHP and Kılıçdaroğlu was positive. The overall tone of the coverage in Zaman is quite the opposite. More specifically, the newspaper coverage had an extremely negative tone towards military chiefs, CHP and Kılıçdaroğlu, while Erdoğan and AKP were covered with a considerably positive tone (Figure 5).

Figure 5.

Tone towards main (first mentioned) actors.

Despite different ownership structures and ideological leanings, it may be notable that there is consistency across the newspapers in terms of certain aspects. For example, the MHP and military actors have received negative tone in almost all the newspapers. While the former was hit by the tape scandal, the latter was hit by the Balyoz and Ergenekon allegations. Yet, there is some variation across newspapers. With regard to stories related to the EU, the tone was mainly negative; however, they were more visible in Zaman. Although the AKP’s leadership and core membership are rooted in earlier Islamist parties, the recruited secular members and voters have adopted a socially conservative yet politically liberal, reformist and pro-EU discourse. The politics and the society became polarized between the AKP’s supporters and sceptics (Somer, 2011: 514). The media (Cumhuriyet, Zaman) also supported this polarization. Figure 6 shows the tone towards the actors in Posta, a tabloid enjoying the highest readership in Turkey, and like Hürriyet, it is also owned by Doğan media group which is the largest media conglomerate in Turkey with a share of more than 70% of the media. Totally opposite to the 2007 election results, Posta contained both negative and positive tone towards AKP in general, and Erdoğan in particular, while Hürriyet, mainstream newspaper with a high level of circulation, displayed very high negativity.

Figure 6.

Tone towards main (first mentioned) actors.

Conclusion

This study analysed how the media reported the general elections in Turkey held in June 2011 with a special focus on the EU-membership-related news. The analysis covered 646 articles from four leading newspapers of Cumhuriyet, Zaman, Posta and Hürriyet in the time frame of the 2007–2011 elections. The empirical findings illustrate that the EU-membership-related news was almost absent during the media coverage of the 2011 elections as in the case of the 2007 elections. None of the political parties openly addressed Turkey’s EU membership objective or declared their political vision for the country’s reform path towards accession. Although for many decades, the EU-related issues have become an inseparable part of the political agenda, in the last two elections, the EU has, to a great extent, vanished from the electoral discourse of the parties. Yet, it should also be mentioned that conclusion of the findings as ‘EU is no longer a priority in the Turkish political agenda’ or ‘the EU has lost its leverage on Turkey’¹⁸ is too strong since none of the political parties openly opposed the EU accession process.

Contrary to the 2007 elections, major themes of the contest between competing party programmes, values, and issue positions have shifted away from secularism and Islam to the domestic politics such as military allegations, the corruption accusations of political parties, tape scandals, and terrorist attacks in the 2011 elections. Furthermore, the political environment in the 2011 election period had been much more hostile and the language of politics was highly negative. Yet, contrary to the political and current affair/politics pages, the economy pages were full of good news about the economic growth of the country, which, to a great extent, shaped the voting decisions of the electorates.

Our results not only show significant differences between partisan newspaper groups in terms of coverage of political parties, but also depict how it is formed within the election campaign. We already found fragmented, volatile and ideologically polarized election coverage similar with the Turkish media sector and politics. Çarkoğlu reached the same conclusion in his research and stated that if the situation remains unchecked, such polarization and parallelism can potentially decrease voters’ trust in the institution of journalism/media, and furthermore, polarize the political sphere, creating a ‘vicious circle of press-party parallelism and political polarization’ (Çarkoğlu et al., 2014).

Although this research mainly compares the 2007 and 2011 election period, we should also mention the Gezi Protests (Daba-Buzoianu, Tosun and Toker) and 2014 local election debates which definitely support the findings of this research. Both the democratic street protests and the local elections were undertakne in a tense, negative atmosphere in Turkey which are the obvious results of political divisions, and hate speeches of the 2007 and 2011 election periods. Although claims about what factors shaped individual voters’ decision processes cannot be made relying on the empirical findings of this research, it should be emphasised that the media influence the voters or prime them to think about particular issues. The findings of this research clearly support the statement that EU–Turkey relations are not on the current agenda of Turkish politics and the media. Turkey lost its societal commitment to EU membership and became occupied with its internal conflicts too. The researchers should evaluate these social outbursts with a wider perspective to understand the whole picture.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

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