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, vol.5, no.1, pp.1-20, 2010 (ESCI) identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 5 Issue: 1
  • Publication Date: 2010
  • Doi Number: 10.1080/17447140903197233
  • Journal Name: JOURNAL OF MULTICULTURAL DISCOURSES
  • Journal Indexes: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Scopus
  • Page Numbers: pp.1-20
  • Keywords: cultural identity, language use, identity construction
  • Anadolu University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

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.