Constructing the ‘National Ideal’: The ‘Inclusive’ and ‘Exclusive’ Representations of Syrian Refugees in Turkish Print Media

ABSTRACT Since 2011, almost four million refugees were welcomed in Turkey. This paper aims to explore how these people are included/excluded from the society through the construction of the self/the other. The paper argues that studying the media representations of these refugees in Turkish print media reveal the wider politics of nationalism in the country. To study the wider politics of nationalism, I collected newspaper articles from pro-government and anti-government papers from 2014 to 2018. This data not only reveals the inclusion/exclusion of these people from the definitions of ‘nation’ but also reveals the tension between AKP and Kemalist ideologies in Turkey. The paper discusses these discourses through ‘secular’ and ‘humanitarian’ nationalisms.