A Comparative Study Oriented Tourism Advertisements in Turkey: The Internality of the Oriental-Self

Introduction

The concept of Orientalism constitutes a broad academic discussion ground, starting with colonialism and extending from subalternation and globalization to postcolonialism. The concept first emerged as an academic discipline aimed at exploring Eastern and Islamic world. Over time, as a result of the colonialism of Western civilization in the Age of Discovery, it has transformed into the need to define and represent Eastern civilization with its own perspective and concepts. This situation, which the West sees as a right in itself, has opened the way for many academic studies since the publication of Edward Said’s book with the same name in the late 1970s.

Orientalism includes many fields of study such as orientalism, language, thought, religion, and literature. Determinants such as social life, politics and media are also included in these areas. Blended with the cultures of the civilizations geographically in the East, the attraction of their products is always covered by the media. The indicators of the concept in question can be encountered in various forms in mass media. Novels and film adaptations, animations, documentaries, television series can often feature or use images of events and people in geographies outside Europe. Even the representation of the East can be processed by the Western news media within stereotypes. However, beyond that, it may be possible for the East to use the same stereotypes in self-representation or the way they enable the Westerners to produce their media content - what Edward Said describes as modern Orientalism.

Although there have been harsh criticisms to both Edward Said and the theory of Orientalism by scholars such as Bernard Lewis (2014) and Robert Irwin (2006), it is still a topic worth studying as the internalized Orientalist lifestyle, which forms a synthesis with Western culture, surrounds the individual. An individual can only miss details in an effort to catch the rhythm of daily life. Therefore, he either makes his own representation taught or allows others to represent himself. The interest of this research is in this direction as well.

Studies determining Orientalist factors in the media content in Turkey are not enough. In order to eliminate this deficiency, whether Orientalist stereotypes are still valid today and whether they contain epistemic violence were determined as the starting point of the study. Based on this problematic, some of the advertisements used in the promotion of tourism in the last 20 years within the framework of official government policy of the Republic of Turkey are selected as goal-focused. Advertisements including orientalist elements prepared by the Ministry of Tourism and a Turkey-themed short film prepared by a European director are analyzed using comparative case study. It is aimed to find out whether the situation defined as self-orientalism in tourism promotion advertisements overlaps with Western orientalist stereotypes. Thus, it is thought that a new perspective will be provided to researchers working on this subject and meta-analysis data can be presented.

Theoretical Framework

Orientalism, according to Edward Said (1979), is a cognitive process. When this approach is taken into account, it can be understood better how the human consciousness will be dominated by language, representation and culture. Language is one of the elements that makes of human beings as human. Stuart Hall (1997: 1) points out that language is one of the media in which thoughts, ideas and feelings are represented in a culture. As a representational system, language is a functional tool in popularizing collective images and thus public affairs as well as commercial attitudes, media practices and content. Because, thanks to language, concepts, ideas and emotions can be represented to other people by using sounds, written words, electronically produced images, musical notes and symbols created by objects. Therefore, representation is central in the field of sense production.

There is a great variety of sense in cultural production. In diversity, there is the possibility to interpret and represent them very differently. This is not just because cultural senses are in minds. It also organizes social practices, influencing individual behavior. The fact that people are cultural participants giving meaning to objects and events increases the diversity of meanings (Hall, 1997: 2-3).