The i̇mages of ASEAN in Turkish media: News reports from the year of 2015 to 2017

The geographical location between Turkey and the countries in the South East Asia region may be far, nonetheless this cannot explain the diplomatic relationship between the two country that had thrive on. Through out history, when it comes to the land of far east, the Turkish foreign policy seems to seamlessly weaved the relationship between the countries that are geographically out of the proximity of the area of neither the middle east nor the European region. This far east Asia region was seen to have grown significantly and in other words, rapidly since their establishment. Like European Union, the Southeast Asian region have their own of coalition of membership between the countries located in the proximity of that region, called ASEAN. From the perspective of International Relations, the relationship between Turkey and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has show an inclination towards a positive outcome judging by the frequency of involvement of Turkey in the association as the year passes by. On that note, naturally every event and decision made by both parties, the media counterparts in each party would have done their job in reporting the news. This research aimed to discover the pattern, frequency and the inclination of stand of Turkish media in regards of ASEAN and its relation with Turkey. This research also focuses on the relationship that Turkey have with the association from the year 2015 to 2017. The starting point of the year was chosen due to the newly elected president of Turkey at the point of time and 2017 was chosen as the end point of the research to monitor the recent progression of the diplomatic relationship. To achieve the aim of this research, a methodology called content analysis was identified to be the most suitable method to elicit information that is sufficient and would be able to fulfil the aim that was initially laid down as the pillars of this research. To be able to identify or recognize the tone of each of the newspaper involved in this research, the content analysis would be the best to indicate this aim specifically. Content analysis is a research tool used to determine the presence of certain words or concepts within texts or sets of texts. A set of questions will be identified to be listed in a manner that would assist the researcher to identify certain keywords in the newspaper. The research will be carried out using the methodology of content analysis in total of 5 Turkish newspaper that can be divided into two categories based on the language of the newspaper, which is Turkish and English. The Turkish newspapers comprised of Hurriyet, Sabah, and Sozcu. On the other hand, the English language newspaper are Daily Sabah and Hurriyet Daily. The period of time that was chosen will be from January 2015 to December 2017 that is equivalent to two years. The newspaper and data can be retrieved from the Press Museum and the archive in Istanbul.