Imagining the Periphery: The Construction of Orientalist Discourse in Turkish Airlines Advertisements


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Nas A.

İleti-ş-im Galatasaray Üniversitesi İletişim Fakültesi Dergisi, sa.24, ss.145-164, 2016 (Hakemli Dergi)

Özet

Critical studies on Orientalism interrogates the hierarchies of power constructed between the East and the West. It has been stated that orientalist discourse has been instrumentalized by the West as a vehicle to sustain hegemony over the East. Approaching the notion of Orientalism from a national perspective, this article aims to critically analyze the manifestation of Turkey's center-perphery relations in the advertising discourse. For this purpose, this article undertakes a critical discourse analysis of two Turkish Airlines advertisements about the opening of Iğdır and Ordu-Giresun Airports in Turkey's peripheral provinces. Accompanied by the discourses of nationalist and consumerist ideologies, this article argues that advertisements constitue an orientalist discourse that situates the peripheral other vis-à-vis the Western self, represented by the technological, modern, developed and civilizational values of Turkish Airlines.