Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 

About: Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication is an academic journal published by Brill. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Computer science. It has an ISSN identifier of 1873-9857. Over the lifetime, 258 publications have been published receiving 1640 citations.

Media and Democracy in Turkey: Towards a Model of Neoliberal Media Autocracy

Abstract: This paper reveals the ways in which media autocracy operates on political, judicial, economic and discursive levels in post-2007 Turkish media. Newsmakers in Turkey currently experience five different systemic kinds of neoliberal government pressures to keep their voice down: conglomerate pressure, judicial suppression, online banishment, surveillance defamation and accreditation discrimination. The progression of restrictions on media freedom has increased in volume annually since 2007; this includes pressure on the Dogan Media Group, the YouTube ban, arrests of journalists in the Ergenekon trials, phone tapping/taping of political figures and the exclusion of all unfriendly reporters from political circles. The levels and tools of this autocracy eventually lead to certain conclusions about the qualities of this media environment: it is a historically conservative, redistributive, panoptic and discriminatory media autocracy.

Between Nationalism and Women’s Rights: the Kurdish Women’s Movement in Iraq

Abstract: This article explores an aspect of the micro-politics of the 'new Iraq' by examining the understudied topic of the Iraqi-Kurdish women's movement. Drawing on interviews with women activists in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, we describe and analyze their activities, strategies and objectives in relation to Kurdish nationalism and feminism, focusing on the period since 2003. Rather than conceptualizing nationalism and feminism as either contradictory or compatible frames of reference for these activists, we understand debates among women activists as attempts to 'narrate' the Kurdish nation, particularly in response to the realities of the 'new Iraq'. We contend that nationalism per se is not an obstacle to women's rights in Iraqi Kurdistan. Rather, it is the failure, until now, of women activists to engage with the disjuncture between nation and state that could limit the achievements of their struggle.

Gendering the Arab Spring

Abstract: The article discusses the gendered implications of recent political developments in the region. It argues that women and gender are key to both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary processes and developments and not marginal to them. It explores the significance of women’s involvement, the historical context of women’s political participation and marginalization in political transition. Theoretically, developments in the region point to the centrality of women and gender when it comes to constructing and controlling communities, be they ethnic, religious or political; the significance of the state in reproducing, maintaining and challenging prevailing gender regimes, ideologies, discourses and relations; the instrumentalization of women’s bodies and sexualities in regulating and controlling citizens and members of communities; the prevalence of gender-based violence; the historically and cross-culturally predominant construction of women as second-class citizens; the relationship between militarization and a militarized masculinity that privileges authoritarianism, social hierarchies and tries to marginalize and control not only women but also non-normative men.

Gender in the Representations of an Armed Conflict: Female Kurdish Combatants in French and British Media

Abstract: The Syrian civil war has been, without doubt, the war most widely covered by international media in this millennium. Having engaged in an armed combat against the Islamic State ( IS ), Kurdish military troops, especially the female battalion, have received considerable international media attention. This study examines the gender dimension of national media representations of female Kurdish combatants belonging to the Protection Units ( YPJ ) in Syria. How have the female combatants been framed in British and French media? To what extent are these representations gendered? The overall data consists of news articles from national media outlets in France and in the United Kingdom between 2014 and 2015, and is analyzed with frame analysis. The results show that the juxtaposition of female combatants with IS fighters allows the depiction of the participation of the former as exceptional and heroic and as one that deconstructs the masculinity of its adversary. The role of female combatants in the ongoing conflict is represented in the British and French media through the construction of sexualized and modern-day heroine figures that are largely glorified.