The representation of Turkey in British trade publishing after 15 July 2016. An analysis conducted on the translations from Turkish to English published in the UK

Michele Spinicci

doi:10.14324/111.444.2398-4732.1212

Abstract

After the 2016 failed coup, the Turkish government implemented a series of measures that strongly restricted democratic freedoms in the country. This caused the UK media to propose a representation of the country in which the coup and the government reaction, together with the concepts of authoritarianism and censorship, played a central part. The present article aims to understand which role British trade publishing played in this new representation, analysing all the translations of trade titles from Turkish to English, published by British publishers in the UK, comparing the periods before (from 1 January 2012 to 15 July 2016) and after the coup (from 16 July 2016 to 31 December 2019). It tries to understand if some central socio-political events of contemporary Turkey, as the coup and its aftermath, the Kurdish issue, and Turkish intervention in the Syrian war, have had more space in the translations published in the UK after the coup. It also investigates if, after the coup, the choice of titles and authors to translate has been influenced, and if given paratextual elements (specifically, books’ descriptions on the British publishers’ websites) have shown a tendency of being linked to Turkey’s contemporary socio-political situation. It then presents an evaluation of the behaviour of British trade publishers toward the coup and their new focus on the state of Turkish democracy.

Highlights

During the night of 15 July 2016, in Turkey, a faction of the army unsuccessfully attempted a coup d’état.2 As a reaction, the government, led by the conservative, nationalist, and Islamist3 Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, implemented a series of measures that strongly restricted democratic freedoms in the country,4 notably the freedom of speech and of expression.5 The Turkish ‘democratic breakdown’6 caused more tense relations between Turkey and the main Western democracies.7 the perception of the former in the latter’s public discourse was impacted, with the concepts of authoritarianism and censorship more often associated with Turkey.8 In the UK, the representation of Turkey offered by the media was remarkably influenced by the coup and its aftermath
Turkey’s democratic breakdown and the Kurdish issue received a much wider representation than the country’s involvement in the Syrian conflict. This was one of the key events highlighted by BBC according to Cansun and Arik, but it was almost dissociated with the representation of the country in British trade publishing, or at least through the translations
It can be said that the translations from Turkish into English after 15 July 2016 seem influenced—even if not dominated—by Turkey’s image as an increasingly illiberal country and its difficult relationship with the Kurdish minority

Summary

Introduction

During the night of 15 July 2016, in Turkey, a faction of the army unsuccessfully attempted a coup d’état. As a reaction, the government, led by the conservative, nationalist, and Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, implemented a series of measures that strongly restricted democratic freedoms in the country, notably the freedom of speech and of expression. The Turkish ‘democratic breakdown’ caused more tense relations between Turkey and the main Western democracies. the perception of the former in the latter’s public discourse was impacted, with the concepts of authoritarianism and censorship more often associated with Turkey. In the UK, the representation of Turkey offered by the media was remarkably influenced by the coup and its aftermath. During the night of 15 July 2016, in Turkey, a faction of the army unsuccessfully attempted a coup d’état.. The Turkish ‘democratic breakdown’ caused more tense relations between Turkey and the main Western democracies.. The perception of the former in the latter’s public discourse was impacted, with the concepts of authoritarianism and censorship more often associated with Turkey.. In the UK, the representation of Turkey offered by the media was remarkably influenced by the coup and its aftermath. These events received significant coverage in the UK, but they contributed to changing the image British media conveyed of Turkey. The concepts of conflict and oppression became dominant in the British public description of the country.

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