Elliott School of International Affairs| In-Person Event 

Description: In the 2010s, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) mobilized a global media system to counter international criticism of its authoritarian practices and to position the country as a rising great power. Bilge Yesil examines the AKP’s English-language communication apparatus, focusing on its objectives and outcomes, the idea-generating framework that undergirds it, and the implications of its activities. She also analyzes the decolonial and pan-Islamist message the AKP-backed outlets deploy to promote President Erdogan as the voice of oppressed Muslims around the world. As the AKP government wields this rhetoric to further its geopolitical and economic goals, its communication instruments pursue their own objectives by replacing facts with Muslim identity politics, cloaking populist commentary in humanist critique, and demonizing the West to aggrandize the East.

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