Competing discourses of nationalisms and anti-Americanisms in Turkey: Iraq war as a case study

Abstract

Since the events of 9/11 in the USA, academic studies have questioned how the Islamic world perceives and imagines Americans and American foreign policy. In this context, Turkey comes into prominence among Muslim countries, with 90 percent of its population self-identifying as anti-American. This study argues that there are different versions of anti-Americanism in Turkey based on the power struggle of different discourses of Turkish nationalism. For a deeper understanding of why these anti-Americanisms exist, where they come from and how they relate to and challenge each other, it analyzes Turkish media representations of the USA’s war in Iraq by using a discourse-historical approach of Vienna School.