Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Post-Ataturk National Identity Reconstruction

• In Event: ICA Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Poster Session: Political Communication Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

Many of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s speeches are transcribed and published online. This paper analyzes a speech that he gave at the Fifth Religious Congress (5. Din Şurası) that is central to his Islamist ideology but was not transcribed and published.

In this paper, by conducting a political discourse analysis (PDA) of Erdogan’s speech, I answer how Erdogan taps on the victimized religious identity of the conservative populace to maintain his power, why Ottoman Turkish is the next logical step in his agenda and why emphasizing Ottoman Turkish as present-day Turkish is vital.

Author

• Yasemin Y. Celikkol, Annenberg School for Communication / U of Pennsylvania