As part of the research project between Al Jazeera Centre for Studies and the University of Cambridge entitled, “Media in Political Transition: The Case of Turkey”, these studies present the findings of the original research conducted in the second phase of the project on the impact of political transition on media in Turkey and the mutual relations between them. This dossier comprises research on various issues in this context carried out by academics and researchers specialised in media and communications.
The first phase of the project, which was launched in 2013, covered media in Tunisia under the title, “Media in Political Transition: Focus on Tunisia”, exploring the changes and transformations that the Tunisian media system has experienced after the revolution. The findings of this phase were published in The Journal of North Africa Studies as well as in a book published in Arabic by Al Jazeera Centre for Studies. In 2016, however, the second phase of the project, “Media in Political Transition: The Cases of Turkey and Morocco”, looked into the structure, function, and agency of media in Turkey and Morocco.
Using Turkey, Morocco and Tunisia as case studies, the research project aimed to conduct a comparative study of the media systems in Mediterranean countries by focusing on three broad areas of investigation, namely, structure (the relationship of the media with laws and practices of government), function (the media as a commercial sector in relation to the market, both private and public), and agency (the media as an instrument of the public square, in terms of audience engagement and the construction of national narratives, including security, identity and religious practice). However, the study of Turkey and Morocco provides a more thorough picture that reveals how state media in the region responded to political tensions and changes in popular discourse as a result of the events that occurred in 2011 and 2013.
Based on the hypothesis that all of these areas are interrelated and interact with one another consistently, the project sought to dismantle them in order to explain how and why they developed and became what they are today. It also sought to explain how the link between them contributed to the findings pertaining to the relationship between media and politics in the post-2011 era.
The chapters comprising the study on Turkey are as follows:
| Chapter | Author | |
| 1 | Guest Editor's Introduction | Roxane Farmanfarmaian |
| 2 | The Turkish Media Structure in Judicial and Political Context: An Illustration of Values and Status Negotiation | Roxane Farmanfarmaian, Ali Sonay & Murat Akser |
| 3 | Local Media in Turkey: The Growth of Islamic Networks in Konya's Radio Landscape | Ali Sonay |
| 4 | All is Flux: A Hybrid Media Approach to Macro-Analysis of the Turkish Media | Asli Tunç |
| 5 | Social Media in Turkey as a Space for Political Battles: AKTrolls and other Politically motivated trolling | Erkan Saka |
| 6 | Understanding 'New Turkey' Through Women's Eyes: Gender Politics in Turkish Daytime Talk Shows | Yesim Burul & Hande Eslen-Ziya |
| 7 | Negotiating Values in the Islamist Press after 2013 | Michelangelo Guida |
| 8 | Representation of Terror and Ethnic Conflict in the Turkish Press: An Analysis of the Peace Process in Turkey | Ayse Seda Yuksel-Pecen |