A Mediatized View of Self-Orientalist Islamophobic Discourse: The Example of Kizilcik Serbeti TV Series

Abstract

Islamophobia, which expresses hatred and opposition towards Islam and Muslims, constitutes one of the significant international and national problems that Muslims are exposed to today. Islamophobia, which continues to feed on the opposition between East and West in the historical process, has started to increase its influence in Western countries, especially after the September 11 incident. On the other hand, the Islamophobic view, fueled by prejudice, discrimination, and hostility, has also begun to appear in countries where the vast majority of the population consists of Muslims, such as Turkey, and there has been an increase in Islamophobic actions and discourses in social/ political and economic spheres. These actions and behaviors in question usually find media coverage with a narrative style in which Muslims are excluded, marginalized, discriminated against, and criticized. This expression bears the traces of a self-orientalist perspective and causes Islamophobia to be internalized as a global problem. This research also focuses on the Islamophobic discourse produced by the visual media in Turkey. In this context, the study also aims to identify Islamophobic narratives that carry a self-orientalist view in the television series "Kizilcik Serbeti" sample. In the study, which includes questions about how Islam and Muslims are represented, what concepts they are framed with, and what form of expression they are presented with, the qualitative -oriented content analysis method, which allows exploring the meanings in visual content, was preferred. As a result of the examination, it was determined that the series internalizes orientalist discourses and produces contents /narratives that may lead to Islam/Muslim hostility, contributing to the production of negative language about Islam and Muslims.