Columnists as idea entrepreneurs in Turkey, 1983-2007 : conceptions of the state

Abstract

The omnipotence of the state has been a dominant theme of discussions in Turkey for a long time. Though they have been a major party to these discussions due the fact that it was newspapers and periodicals that filled the large crevice left by the late development and dissemination of scholarly books in Turkey, columnists have been sorely understudied. In an attempt to help fill this void, this study discusses ten eminent Turkish columnists’ conceptions of the state over a time period stretching from 1983 to 2007. Assuming columnists as ‘idea entrepreneurs’, who, create a sphere of influence with their ideas, and use this sphere to further create new ideas or transform existing ones thanks to networks provided by this sphere, this dissertation brings together three seemingly separate literatures on media, state and entrepreneurship. Data acquired from analysis of considerable number of columns and semi-structured elite interviews has been processed by using qualitative content analysis and archival document analysis. The data has been coded in reference to five themes: national security and survival of the state, order and stability, economy, the shrinking state, and the rule of law. This study contributes to the literature by bringing to the fore the following results: notwithstanding intensified emphasis on liberalizing state-society relations in that time period, it first shows that the statecentered ideas set the language of politics; the press deems itself as part of this statecentered language; considerable amount of columns still teetered between transcendentalism and instrumentalism in terms of their state perceptions