Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 13:1 (2014) ► pp.98–119

Discursive strategies of instrumentalizing history in mainstream Turkish political discourse

The case of the negative other presentation of the CHP

| Lancaster University |

This article explores how specific narratives of the past can be functionalized/instrumentalized as discursive strategies in order to gain political power. To investigate this issue, four relevant governmental and non-governmental texts about the main opposition party in Turkey are analysed. The Republican People’s Party (CHP), which played a historic role by becoming a state party between 1923 and 1946, and which later adopted a social democratic position in the political system, has frequently been criticized by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for its historical identity. The article illuminates how discursive strategies of argumentation, nomination and predication are used to portray the CHP as an enduring bureaucratic-militarist state party and the ways in which these strategies are functionalized by AKP politicians as well as by public intellectuals in favour of the government.

Keywords: discursive strategy, CDA, discourse-historical approach, AKP, CHP
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology and data
  • 3.CHP (Republican People’s Party): The historical context
  • 4.Analysis
    • Text 1
    • Text 2
    • Text 3
    • Text 4
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Appendix
  • References
Published online: 15 May 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.13.1.05kuc
References
Ahmad, Feroz
1993 The Making of Modern Turkey. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Alkan, Türker
2006 Halkımızın yüzde kaçı aptal ve hırsızdır? Accessed March 7, 2012. [URL]Google Scholar
Ayan, Pelin M
2010 “Authoritarian Party Structures in Turkey: A Comparison of the Republican People’s Party and the Justice and Development Party.” Turkish Studies 11 (2): 197–215. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barlas, Mehmet
2011 Derin CHP için rejim esastır ve demokrasi teferruattır. Accessed December 15, 2011. [URL]Google Scholar
Bayramoğlu, Ali
2010 İşte CHP’nin Mirası ve Kılıçdaroğlu’nun İş Listesi. Accessed December 15, 2011. [URL]
Celep, Ödül
2010 “Turkey’s Radical Right and the Kurdish Issue: The MHP’s Reaction to the ‘Democratic Opening’”. Insight Turkey 12 (2): 125–142.Google Scholar
Coşkun, Bekir
2007 Göbeğini kaşıyan adam. Accessed March 6, 2012. [URL]
Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip
2011 Adıyaman Mitingi Konuşması. Accessed 2 February 2012. [URL]
2010 AK Parti Grup Toplantısı. Accessed January 16, 2011. [URL]
Ergün, Hüseyin
2009 CHP solcu bir parti değil, resmi bir devlet partisidir. Accessed January 16, 2011. [URL]
Esmer, Gülsüm T
2008 “Propaganda, Söylem ve Sloganlarla Ortanın Solu.” Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi 10 (3): 69–85.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman
2003 Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1992 Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
1989 Language and Power. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Goatly, Andrew
1997 The Language of Metaphors. London and New York: Routledge.. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Güneş-Ayata, Ayşe
1995 “Türkiye’nin Demokratikleşme Sürecinde Ortanın Solu Hareketi.” Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi 50 (3): 79–88.Google Scholar
Ilıcak, Nazlı
2010 Kılıçdaroğlu’nun Zincirleri. Accessed November 19, 2011. [URL]
Kahraman, Hasan B
2011 CHP Dönüşmeyi Düşünüyor mu? Accessed December 15, 2011. [URL]
Karpat, Kemal
2004 The Studies on Turkish Politics on Society: Selected Articles and Essays. Boston: Brill.Google Scholar
Andreas, Malycha, and Peter J. Winters
2009 Geschichte der SED: Von der Gründung bis zur Linkspartei. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung.Google Scholar
Nachtwey, Oliver
2009 “Die Linke and the Crises of Representation.” International Socialism 1241. Accessed December 16, 2012. [URL]Google Scholar
Öniş, Ziya, and Ioannis N. Grigoriadis
2010 “Europe and the İmpasse of Centre-left Politics in Turkey: Lessons from the Greek Experience.” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 12 (3): 260–275. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Özdil, Yılmaz
2007 Bidon kafa. Accessed March 6, 2012. [URL]
Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak
2001 “The Discourse-Historical Approach.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 87–119.Google Scholar
Şen, Mustafa
2010 “Transformation of Turkish Islamism and the Rise of the Justice and Development Party.” Turkish Studies 11 (1): 59–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Peter
2009 “The German Left, the Berlin Wall and the Second Great Crash.” Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 17 (1): 41–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toprak, Binnaz
2011 O ayet sinir bozucu. Accessed March 3, 2012. [URL]
Van Dijk, Teun A
1993 “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis.” In Studies in Discourse Analysis, ed. by Teun A. Van Dijk. Special İssue of Discourse & Society 4 (2): 249–283.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth
2002 “Aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis.” Redaktion der Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik. (ZfAL) 361: 5–31.Google Scholar
2009 The Discourse of Politics in Action. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 “Suppression of the Nazi Past, Coded Languages, and Discourses of Silence: Applying the Discourse-Historical Approach to Post-War Anti-Semitism in Austria.” In Political Languages in the Age of Extremes, ed. by Walter Steinmetz, 351–379. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Gertraud A. Borea
(eds) 2009 Justice and Memory: Confronting Traumatic Pasts. An İnternational Comparison. Wien: Passagen Verlag.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Rudolf De Cillia
2007 “Commemorating the Past: The Discursive Construction of Official Narratives about the ‘Rebirth of the Second Austrian Republic’.” Discourse & Communication 1 (3): 315–341. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer
(eds) 2001 Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, Rudolf de Cillia, Martin Reisigl, and Karin Liebhart
2009 The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Zürcher, Erik-Jan
2003 Turkey: A Modern History.London: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Aydın-Düzgit, Senem
2016. De-Europeanisation through Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis of AKP’s Election Speeches. South European Society and Politics 21:1 ► pp. 45 ff. DOI logo
Küçükali, Can
2016. Stages and new conceptual tools for legitimizing military intervention. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 4:2 ► pp. 274 ff. DOI logo
Rheindorf, Markus
2019. From Synchronic to Diachronic Perspectives: Mapping Change Across Time. In Revisiting the Toolbox of Discourse Studies, ► pp. 173 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2015. Discursive Strategies and Political Hegemony [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 64], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.