Representation of the death of President Demirel in Turkish media: A comparison be-tween international and national newspapers

Turkish politics has largely been concentrated on party politics, particularly focused on the leader of the party, since the transition to democracy in the 1950’s. The main political structure was based on a two-party system between 1946 and 1960, which was transformed by the military intervention of 1960. This was the end of the term of Bayar, the leader of Democratic Party. In 1962, Demirel joined the JP (Justice Party), built in 1961. Following his participation in the JP as a young and a promising politician from the DP tradition, his positive image contributed his leadership. Therefore, his career as the leader of JP started in 1964 and he remained in the political area for decades. Demirel, Prime Minister for a couple of times and President between 1993 and 2000, was one the most important political figures in Turkey. He was famous for his calm, humorous and witty character. He was given the title “father” by the Turkish society due to several reasons. He had in his mind a modern, developed and prosperous country. He was loved and respected by millions of people and different generations since he had an extremely long political career. His death on 17 June 2015 created grief among the Turkish people. This study aims at investigating the news, death of Demirel. National and international newspapers from the mainstream newspapers published on the day after his death, 18 June 2015 is examined in this study. The method chosen for the study is discourse analysis since the death of the President is represented by presenting the news through different lenses by a variety of international and national newspapers. In this study, mainstream national and international newspapers are examined in order to carry out a research to explore how they express the death of Demirel on the headlines and pictures of their first pages. Therefore, an analysis of the political discourse that they assert will be the main research area of this study.