THE APPROACH OF TURKISH PRESS TO PATRIOT BATTERIES DEPLOYED ON SYRIA BORDERS OF TURKEY

Abstract

There have been bloody clashes among opponents and Syria government for two years in Syria. Insurgents in Syria continue persistently their struggles which aim to overthrown Basher Al-Assad’s government and establish Independent and Democratic Syria State. Although these struggles and clashes are accepted as internal problem of the country, sometimes they can affect neighbor countries of Syria negatively. The most affected country from these internal problems is Turkey. The most well-known event proving this proposition is that 5 citizens of Turkey were killed in Akçakale in Urfa because of shell fired from Syria. Consequently, Turkey started to implement some precautions in order to prevent these kinds of unwanted situations and events. Beside diplomatic precautions, Turkey applied to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to make a more secure its Syria borders by deploying patriot missile batteries on that region. First news about deploying patriot batteries on Syria borders of Turkey was presented in American and European presses. Initially, Turkey rejected this news but after a while it accepted truthfulness of the information. Patriot demand of Turkey from NATO was confirmed by some groups but it has become an international topic criticized by national and international political actors. Why Patriots are criticized persistently in Turkish and world public opinion is that they are most effective antiaircraft and missile defense system. Another topic criticized comprehensively in public opinions that for which purpose Turkey will use patriots. According to some point of view Patriots will be used for a military intervention to Iran. In this study it is aimed that how Turkish press reflected the topic of Patriot missile systems which were demanded from NATO by Turkey in order to deploy its Syria border. Properly with purpose of the study, newspapers from different political and ideological perspectives were selected in order to analyze. Purpose of the study focusing on how different newspapers from different point of views reflected this important event makes it so important. The study also focuses on time period in which public opinion criticized the situation intensively. That is why, time period among 20 November- 20 December 2012 were analyzed because of so many news published in Turkish press about the event. In order to analyze these news, discourse analyze method of Teun v. Dijk was used in content of the study. Discourse Analyze Method is so suitable and beneficial method for analyzing the meaning and discourse of news produced in different political and ideological contexts.