The presentation of the woman's story in Turkey at the intersection of populism and media: The sample of Atiye (The gift)

The populist reason presents itself as if it is a direct and natural representation of the people due to its political logic, and this causes it to be easily internalized by the society and easily integrates into everyday life practices. Although the definition of populism includes cultural differences, the thesis discusses populism through the several sets of concepts: the opposition of rootlessness, the unique form of political relationship established by modern society with its roots, the depiction of women as an empty signifier, and the opposition between "us" and "other". As a result of the literature review, it has been detected that there is a deficiency devoted to the relation between populism, gender and media contents in the relevant studies. In order to fill this gap in the literature, a digital platform series is chosen as the sample of the study. This study analyzes gender-based populist discourses in the media through the first two seasons of Atiye, which was broadcast on Netflix in 2019. the way the populist discourse encodes women and how this coding is presented in media contents has been analyzed through critical discourse analysis. The findings show that the dominant ideology is reinforced by the media. Although the language and codes used in the series in question attempt to reflect the woman as heroic and strong, the female character in the series is still represented in negative ways: she looks for her identity, she is fragile and she needs a man. The masculine style of populist discourse in the series does not allow it to represent women as physically autonomous and powerful.