Turkish nationalism discourses in the media during the Balkan wars (1912-1913)

Discourse is based on the interpretation of language and what the meanings represent in the culture of society. The verbal, written and visual forms of discourse of a society give us clues about the identity of that nation, cultural existence, sustainability of existence and the meanings they share. As a representation system, nationalism has also been used by people from past to present to define and make sense of their own identity and the world they live in. The 19th century, which is called the "age of nations or nations", was characterized by mass movements of ideological variations that brought the end of empires dominated for centuries, and at the same time formed its discourse. Nationalism has played a major role in shaping the social structure in the West. In the Ottoman Empire, at the beginning of the 20th century, the Balkan Wars revealed a nationalist movement that would revive the awakening of the Turkish nation. The war has emerged as a socio-cognitive and socio-psychological collective awakening movement rather than a loss of land for the Turkish nation. Thus, this movement, which emerged as the ideal of "Turkish nationalism", also created a form of discourse. The aim of our study is to try to find out which contexts, representations, cognitive attitudes and discourses the discourse structure of Turkish nationalism, which has begun to become increasingly central to Ottoman ideology, and which codes it contains in its nature. One of the best venues of the discourse is the press where public discourse takes place. In this context, texts on Turkish nationalism / Turkism were determined in İkdam newspaper (moderate opposition), Tanin newspaper (pro-government) and Tasvir-i Efkâr (neutral / independent) newspaper of the period, and subjected to critical discourse analysis with Teun A. Van Dijk's socio- cognitive approach. It has been determined that the structure of the Turkish nationalism discourse, with its presence in the Turkish press in the specified date range, has built itself over which contexts, representations, cognitive attitudes and discourses. In addition, the words and phrases that refer to Turkish nationalism were determined in the texts in question and subjected to frequency analysis from the content analysis method.