Peace journalism in Turkish-Greek relations: A dream or a goal?

Abstract

Several studies in the literature analysed the media coverage of Turkish-Greek relations both in Turkish and Greek press. However, only a few attributions were made to the notion of peace journalism and its meaning in Turkish-Greek relations. This paper focuses on the notion of peace journalism and tries to define it both in literature and in practical terms. To do this, the paper also seeks to understand what is meant by pro-war journalism and what are its differences compared to peace journalism. The paper also presents the critiques on peace journalism and discusses if this type of journalism can be really useful in practice. Besides, the empirical work of the paper is based on the Turkish press coverage of Turkish-Greek relations. The news items focusing on Turkish-Greek relations and including the word “peace” will be examined by using content analysis. The time sample of the research will be between 2004 and 2017. As it is technically not possible to focus on all news items throughout the period, the news items will be chosen from different important political events related to Turkish-Greek relations (e.g. The Annan Plan period, bilateral visits of politicians). The papers selected from the Turkish press for this study are Cumhuriyet, Hürriyet, Milliyet, Sabah, and Türkiye. One can argue that the papers can represent different political stances and different media company ownership. All in all, the paper seeks to answer this main research question: “How does the notion of ‘peace’ is being used by the Turkish press in the news items about Turkish-Greek relations”. As this paper presents the preliminary findings of the research, the findings in the paper are limited and do not represent the complete research.