Abstract
This study examines the Eurovision stage as a cultural space that cultivated an affective-discursive terrain forging Turkish national identity. It draws upon the media texts as a heuristic to examine how an image of âTurkishnessâ was created and negotiated. Focusing in particular on four specific cases (Semiha Yankı in 1975, Ăetin Alp in 1983, Ćebnem Paker in 1997 and Sertab Erener in 2003), this study suggests that the Eurovision stage was a space where âTurkishnessâ encountered an imagined âEuropeannessâ. In these cases, affective discourses gave meanings of national allegories of âTurkishnessâ to performing bodies on the Eurovision stage. The affective registers generated a discursive formation shaping the contours of âTurkishnessâ in relation to Europe. Yet these discourses did not generate fixed and stable meanings. In particular, the construction of national success was negotiated and contested in terms of the appropriateness of the national embodiment.
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