Deutsche Welle Türkçe in the Context of Alternative Media

Abstract

In recent years, Turkey has tried to create an independent public debate environment by creating and developing alternative voices for the sake of virtually silencing opposition to have a voice. As the owner of the media has a great impact on the policy of individual outlets there are not many uncensored and opposing media channels left; a gap that has been tried to be filled by local news outlets as well as foreign-financed ones like Sputnik News and Deutsche Welle. Hosting some well-known journalists who have been sacked from their mainstream media channels, DW Türkçe shows promise by touching government issues that have long been omitted by the mainstream press and the way that they handle daily news. In this article, it is discussed if DW Türkçe edition fulfills the function of being an alternative media outlet, keeping Turkey’s media ownership changes effects on the pluralism of the press in mind. The criteria that have been harvested from different theoretical definitions such as financial independence and continuity, professional workforce and resource use, and news selection, a descriptive analysis was made for DW Türkçe. Moreover, in order to better understand the news language and the journalistic approach of DW Türkçe and hurriyet.com.tr the news about the Kahramanmaras devastating earthquake that affected 11 cities in south Turkey, was quantitatively scanned between 2 March - 9 March 2023 by examining the titles. Although the discussion of Deutsche Well's role in Germany is a separate research topic, it is apparent that it differs from the mainstream media in Turkey thanks to its financing from the German state, that is, foreign capital. While DW Turkish contains various elements of alternative media, it can be said that there are deficiencies in defining it as alternative media at some points.