From the wrath of Allah to divine judgment: natural disasters in the Islamist press in Turkey

ERGÜL H., GÖKALP E., CANGÖZ İ.

JOURNAL OF MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSES, cilt.5, sa.1, ss.1-20, 2010 (ESCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 5 Sayı: 1
  • Basım Tarihi: 2010
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1080/17447140903197233
  • Dergi Adı: JOURNAL OF MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSES
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Scopus
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-20
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: cultural identity, language use, identity construction
  • Anadolu Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

This study is designed to analyze the discursive strategies through which the Islamist dailies (re) construct meaning of natural disasters in Turkey, including two massive earthquakes and a drought. The news narratives and columns were gathered from five Islamist dailies and were textually analyzed. The earthquake in 1999 was represented as a warning against those who did not obey the divine rules, while the earthquake in 1976 and the drought in 2007 were divine judgment. During the drought the national-local governments were Islamist. This has caused a significant (re) turn in the discourses of the dailies. The Islamist press did not represent the drought as an event rooted in cause-effect relation in the social/political sphere, while the 1999 earthquake was represented as a divine 'answer' to the dominant political actors.