A Critical Analysis of the Turkish Press Discourse against Non-Muslims: A Case Analysis of the Newspaper Coverage of the 1942 Wealth Tax

Author： Akan Aysun

Publisher： Routledge Ltd

ISSN： 0026-3206

Source： Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.47, Iss.4, 2011-07, pp. : 605-621

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Abstract

This article deals with press coverage of the 1942 Wealth tax and focuses on the Turkish press's use of a discriminatory discourse against non-Muslim minorities to designate non-Muslims as other than Turkish. More specifically, this article analyses linguistic and discursive strategies adopted by the press in reporting on the Wealth tax. The press attempted to explain the tax on non-Muslims that aimed to liquidate non-Muslims' wealth as a tax that would establish social justice by making war profiteers and black-marketeers pay the government what was due. By adopting various linguistic devices and discursive strategies, the press played a significant role in the construction of meaning through a related set of assumptions about non-Muslims and Turkishness embedded within news reports on the Wealth tax. This critical analysis of power and inequality in language reveals the dominant discriminatory discourse of Turkish nationalism as manifested in the coverage of the Wealth tax and the role of the press in the reproduction of the hegemonic discourse connected to Turkish national identity and the criteria governing exclusion from it.