The Depiction of Children in the Contemporary Turkish Media

A. Introduction: Challenges and Insights

The study of children poses enormous challenges to the researcher. The

main difficulty is the naturalization of their present condition in society. In other

words, the difference in biological constitution between children and adults is

perceived as socially relevant and results in very specific social roles and

inequalities. The questions that this situation raises are very similar to those that

have haunted feminist research. What is the relationship between the biological

condition of children and their social roles (and the limitations which these

imply)? Should the naturalness of this relationship be questioned? If so, to what

extent? How does one assess the legitimacy of the current position of children in

society and what alternatives are available when problems are detected? How to

deal with the otherness of children as a social group inhabiting a quite separate

social space1? James2 convincingly shows the problem to pertain to one of the

core issues in anthropology: how is the social other to be represented? How is

the other to find an authentic voice? Should children just be made to speak out?

But then who decides what and when to ask?

1 James, Allison. 2007. Giving voice to childrens voices: practices and

promises, pitfalls and potentials. American Anthropologist. 109(2)

2 Ibid.
 In her article3 James glibly avoids the lures of simplistic solutions. Ten

years earlier, in a volume that she co-edited with Alan Prout 4 (that will be cited

extensively in this work) ample space had been given to studies that questioned

the adult-centrism of the methods and constructs then used extensively in child

research (and by childs rights movements) and demanded that the child be seen

and heard as an active social agent. In the final chapter of the book James and

Prout made a stand for re-presenting5 the child. Their argument was that

childhood and children were rarely represented in the present tense: childhood

was usually seen as either a state of becoming someone in the future, or as a

happy time to be nostalgically remembered in adulthood. In this context re-

presenting meant coming into touch with the every-day reality of childhood, with

childhood as a social condition experienced in the present, in a certain way by

a particular group6. As James implies in her later article, it was then an issue that

childrens voices be heard at all; however once these voices have appeared the

question of how they are to be heard increases in relevance 7. James challenges

the notion of a completely child-centric sociology of childhood as a fiction (she

3 Ibid.

4 Ed. James, Allison and Prout, Alan. 1997. Constructing and Reconstructing
Childhood. London and New York: RotledgeFarmer

5 James, Allison and Prout, Alan. 1997. Re-presenting Childhood: Time and
Transition in the Study of Childhood. In Constructing and Reconstructing
Childhood, ed. James, Allison and Prout, Alan, p. 230-254. London and New
York: RotledgeFarmer

6 Ibid.

7 James, 2007
calls that the pitfall of authenticity 8). Basically she argues that any survey of an

other (and to this children are no exception) is necessarily an interpretation

regardless of the meticulousness of the researcher. Jamess call for structural

and other studies that are to qualify the voice of the children and to make it

comprehensible to adults is a consequence of her realization that the position of

an observer and thus interpreter is inescapable for the researcher (indeed it is

what makes him or her a subject different from her or his object of observation!)

and that this reality cannot be ignored. Simply put we cannot become kids in

order to understand children9. We have here a variant of the feminist concept of

the gaze, and indeed James draws parallels between the study of children and

feminist endeavors.

8 Ibid.

9 Her skepticism as to claims of absolute authenticity of researches conducted by

children on children has the same roots. A sociology of children for children would
probably defeat childrens aims by being impenetrable and thus irrelevant to adults,
even as it is hard to see in what sense it would confer ideological purity to the
results
 This, however, is only the beginning of the troubles for the conscientious

and informed researcher of childhood. As cutting-edge sociological researchers

engage in these sophisticated arguments over the authenticity of the

representation of children in last-minute researches, older images of childhood

survive (and often coexist in spite of being contradictory) in every-day discourses

on children. Another legacy of feminism is the discovery that history is pernicious

and cannot simply be erased by an idle realization of its historicity (the bane of

the liberal feminist movement). New and old images of children exist in their

delimited social spaces as a result of a complex dynamics that is a legitimate

subject of analysis in its own right. James is clearly aware of this fact, and cites

Castanedas figuration studies as an example of an attempt to tackle such

dynamics10.

10 Ibid.
 Finally, researchers of childhood in countries outside the West

(particularly in post-colonial countries) have to tackle a dynamics of childhood

images that is even more complex. As Hendrick11 makes clear, the development

of the modern institution of childhood was linked to a number of economic and

social developments, not least among these industrialization. Indeed, the

changing face of labor (from agricultural familial labor where the childs work was

supervised by the parents to capitalist free labor where supervision passes over

to the factory-owner) has contributed much to discrediting child labor and thus to

the creation of the institution of dependent childhood in the modern sense 12.

These social and economic changes were not uniform across the world. Thus,

many of the more modern images of children have penetrated other countries by

means of missionerism from the early industrializers (and colonizers). Feminist

research again has a number of good accounts to offer on how such dynamics

can affect the symbolism of subordinate groups (here women). Uma Narayan has

brilliantly shown how in the fulcrum of the colonial--national-reactionary disputes

in colonial India, Indian and British women and their private and public behavior

and attire had been transformed into walking symbols of certain cultural ideals

(be these national identity or modernity) 13. Certain traditional modes of practice

that had hitherto been given little importance suddenly became highly charged

11 Hendrick, Harry. 1997. Constructions and reconstructions of British

Childhood: An Interpretative Survey, 1800 to the Present. In Constructing
and Reconstructing Childhood, ed. James, Allison and Prout, Alan, p. 34-60.
London and New York: RotledgeFarmer

12 Ibid.

13 Narayan, Uma. 1997. One: Contesting Cultures. In Dislocating Cultures,

1-41. Routledge: New York and London
symbolically at the same time as certain modern habits and ideas were

appropriated unquinchingly14. To expand Volosinovs terminology, for the

colonized the new ideals and practices were alien symbols entering an already

existent system of imagery and meaning15. The entire symbolic plateau was

altered by this invasion. In Freuds terms, many original practices (and subjects)

underwent symbolic condensation16. Practice shows this condensation was

usually formed around less-advantaged social groups and their practices, hence

the prevalence of women symbolism. The effect of Mustafa Kemal Ataturks

modernization project on the situation of Turkish women is another phenomenon

of the same kind and has been the object of extensive attention for feminist

scholars. The way in which the modernist-nationalist discourse has moulded the

existing symbolic dynamics into a new system of meaning and how it has cast

women in the position of idealized helpers to their sovereign husbands is

14 Ibid.

15 Volosinov, Valentin. Marxist Philosophy of Language. In Course-pack.

Volosinov talks about the phenomenon of the alien word assimilated by
other languages. According to Volosinov the alien nature of the word confers
it mystical connotations (in Bourdieus terms it is evidence of a form of
thinking outside the doxa). Its assimilation is mostly performed by priests
and has profound effects on the meaning structure.

16 A term used extensively by Freud to refer to the phenomenon of a single

sign drawing a great amount of symbolic charge from a number of symbols
in related symbolic systems. Dream imagery is the typical example. For
Freud symbolic relations are the only way of binding mental energy (creating
a link (cathexis) ). A distinctive feature of Freuds semiotics is that cathexa
(that would correspond to Saussurean symbolic value) are considered to be
mobile, and can be consciously attributed to other symbols (and symbolic
chains) than those where they actually originate. For example ones fear of
his or her father may be displaced towards an animal (The Little Hans Case).
Cathexic mobility is one of the best empirically-backed psychoanalytic
claims.
excellently described by Sirman17. Saktanbers account explains the coexistence

of high standards of decency and modesty in Turkey with the abundance of

images of women of loose morals in the press by showing how the latter are

considered to be females not under male control and thus victims of their

natural depravity18. A very vivid example of the condensed symbolism around

women in Turkey is the raging debate around the suitability of wearing a

headscarf in public institutions: many adepts of the mainstream modernization

ideology consider that wearing a head-scarf in a public institution is an offensive

symbolic act against the notion of a secular republic.

17 Sirman, Nukhet. 2005. The Making of Turkish Familial Citizenship. In

Citizenship in a Global World. Ed. Keyman, Emin, Icduygu Ahmet. European
Union Countries: Routledge.

18 Saktanber, Ayse. 1995. Women in the Media in Turkey: the Free, Available
Woman or the Good Wife and Selfless Mother? In Women in Modern Turkish
Society/ A Reader (ed. Sirin Tekeli). London and New Jersey: Zed Books.
 Barthes framework in Mythologies19 offers us the colonizers part of the

equation: in the case of childhood, for example, their missionerist efforts can be

said to be conducted under the influence of a myth of childhood that is to be

exported. While I find many faults with Barthes account of myth, the descriptive

virtues of his account of the imputation of a symbol to a foreign context (stolen

language, as he refers to it) should not be underestimated: the inflexibility and

flatness of the exported sign20 (here a particular image of good and bad

childhoods) and its resilience to the local signs 21 is a well-studied fact. Thus

Boyden22 criticizes the thoughtless export of supposedly universal concepts of

childrens rights (such as the right not to work) to cultural contexts where they

are irrelevant and may even be harmful to children.

19 Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. In Course-Pack

20 In Barthes termsconnotative signified

21 In Barthes termsconnotative signifiers

22 Boyden, Jo. 1997. Childhood and the Policy-Makers. In Constructing and

Reconstructing Childhood, ed. James, Allison and Prout, Alan, p. 190-224.
London and New York: RotledgeFarmer
 Given the disempowered position of children in modern society and the

emergence of strong children symbolism in the early industrializing countries in

the 18th and 19th centuries, it is to be expected that a complex dynamics of

children symbolism has ensued in the colonial, post-colonial and rapidly

modernizing spaces as a result of factors similar to those identified by feminist

research. This suspicion finds its empirical confirmation in the depiction of

children in the Turkish newspaper media. This study will show the Turkish

institution of childhood to be very fragmented and complex. However this

explorative work is very far from giving a comprehensive account of Turkish

childhood. Such an account would require the careful study of the childrens

social space from many different perspectives. The media is just one (arguably

influential) dialectical factor (and actor) in the social reproduction of this social

space. Childrens programs and publications, educational institutions, health

institutions, childrens homes and dormitories, the government and its official

ideologies, and the parents are other perspectives that have to be explored

thoroughly before we can have an even sketchy impression of Turkish childhood

as a social institution. Most importantly, the way in which children experience all

these structures in their every-day life should be studied from first-hand accounts.

Not to mention that a historical approach on most of these topics would be

preferable. Once a critical mass of data on these counts has been accumulated a

broad conceptualization of childhood in Turkey might be attempted. This study

aims to contribute to such a critical mass by showing glimpses of children

symbolism as it is seen in Turkish media and venturing very preliminary

speculations as to its significance.

B. A Brief Background
 While, as I have mentioned below, the Turkish construction of childhood is

likely to be different in many respects from the institution of childhood in the

West, it doesnt exist separately from it. Indeed in the previous section I have

given good reasons why they may well be connected. For a critical appraisal of

the material in the media Ill therefore give the reader a brief background as to

modern conceptions of childhood and their historicity.

 The appearance of childhood as a separate, highly visible social space is

a relatively new event. Hendrick23, positions it towards the end of the 18-th

century and in an illuminating account traces the development of the

constructions of childhood in 19-th and 20-th century Britain. The early Romantic

and Evangelic views of the child positioned it as the paragon of purity against the

corrupting forces of the society on one side and as an inherently wayward

creature to be disciplined on the other24. Later perceptions of childhood frequently

retain nuances of one or the other of these accounts. Indeed the attitude towards

children approved by the common sense today in many of the Western

countries is one of affection and protection (by which more than often is meant

discipline). With the abolition of child labor and the advent of universal education

children for the first time were made part to an experience common to them all,

thus children became to be constituted as a more and more consistent and

uniform social space, their dependence on adults was also firmly established 25.

Indeed from then on the trend in the West has been towards universalizing

children as a condition, this to include all children in the world irrespective of their

existential context. This has happened along with the increasing implication of

the state and the medical (psychological) institution in the condition of children 26.

The emergence of an universal ideal of childhood entailing dependence and

helplessness has paved the way for the marginalization of those who did not fit

23 Hendrick, 1997

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.
these ideals; thusenter the

delinquent child, a child that has lost the traits of childhood and should be

regained to that happy condition27. The coercive strength of the ideal was a

telltale sign of the strength of the new institution. The children with no childhood

or deviant child theme will join the child to be loved and child to be

disciplined duet as perpetual tinges of Western childhood, even as it evolves.

Finally, a complex child-parent-state-medical community relationship emerges as

the child is discovered as an investment in the future of the nation and the state

becomes especially proactive in child-related issues 28. Another dimension of

modern childhood develops parallel to its increasing separation from the adult

worldit also becomes a nostalgic space of remembrance for adults 29. Thus, as

discussed above its present is somehow obliviatedin adults eyes it becomes

the land of future possibilities and of melancholies of the past.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 James, Prout. 1997.

 As the childhood ideal becomes more lofty the image of the child becomes

more fragilean increasing bulk of representations of children present a image

of childhood under threat. The stereotypical US mantra Dont talk to strangers

is perhaps one of the best manifestations of this mentality. Other examples are

the avidity with which child criminals and child victims are depicted in the media.

Such an approach to children and the associated image of the helpless and

passive child has been criticized most virulently by a number of authors.

Kitzinger, for example, gives us an account of the way in which children victims of

sexual abuse experience their condition30. Kitzinger stresses that the overall

picture is nothing like a passive, helpless demeanor: children usually oppose

active resistance with all the forces at their disposal. A theme that runs

throughout the James, Prout 1997 volume is, as has been mentioned before,

their protest against the lack of childrens voices in the debates about their best

interests and the resulting skewed practices and representations. Qvortrup 31

studies the implicit assumptions behind the way in which statistics treating

children were organized (the lack of children-centric statistics, as well as a

children-centric account of family budgets and children activities), while

Woodhead32 analyzes the presumptuous concept of childrens needs

30 Kitzner, Jenny. 1997. Who Are You Kidding? Children, Power, and the
Struggle against Sexual Abuse. In Constructing and Reconstructing
Childhood, ed. James, Allison and Prout, Alan. London and New York:
RotledgeFarmer

31 Qvortrup, Jens. 1997. A Voice for Childen in Statistical and Social

Accounting. In ibid.

32 Woodhead, Martin. 1997. Psychology and the Cultural Construction of

Childrens Needs. In ibid.
(understood in an absolutist fashion) and finds it wanting. Even as James (2007)

claims that in research the old about the child mentality has been superseded,

such constructions continue to exist in other representations of childhood. As

such they still represent a modern view of childhood.

C. The Child in the Turkish Media: Prevailing Themes

I have studied the way in which children were represented in a number of Turkish

newspapers. I studied Cumhuriet--a left-leaning daily that keeps a severe design

and attempts to create the image of serious news reporting, Sabaha tabloid-

style centrist daily, Hurriyeta pro-nationalist, somewhat sensationalist tabloid,

Milliyeta somewhat more serious version of Hurriyet and Zamana

conservative, religious-leaning daily trying, with a certain success, to maintain a

high standard of professionalism. Although my focus was on the contemporary

representation of children, I also did a brief study of the way in which children

appeared in the media in the 1930s and the 1970s so that I could put my

findings in a historical perspective.

1. Early depictions
 I found a high prevalence of children-related news and of children depictions

in the contemporary newspapers. The contrast with the past is most striking and

instructive. In the 30s and the 40s depictions of children in newspapers are

practically missing. When they do appear, they are usually represented as

unremarkable members of the family and figure in the news-item only

incidentally. Most representations of children during this period can be found in

advertising. The prevailing theme is that of a child that might need discipline. A

typical example is offered by a toothpaste advertisement: the mother holds a

grotesquely big toothbrush in her hands pointing it at her son that is bending back

to avoid it. The child is thus portrayed as a naughty person that doesnt know

what is best for him. The second prevailing theme is a related one: namely that of

the mischievous child. Another advertisement, this time for cologne, represents a

boy spraying cologne from an enormous bottle on a slightly intimidated mother.

The theme of the mischievous child is also seen in a number of caricatures.

These imply the child making a daring and somewhat nave replica to an older

person who does not find what to reply. Cumhuriyet occasionally publishes a

section on children in the 1930s. This deals mostly with discipline issues,

although some modern ideas of child entitlements sometimes come through. The

Cumhuriyet of the 1940s, during the WWII, contains almost no representation of

children whatsoever (in either written or pictorial form). This is to be contrasted

with the fact that a great proportion of Cumhuriyets current coverages of war or

disaster picture a child.

 Children arent often seen in the newspapers of the 70s either. However,

there is a certain qualitative difference in the description: children are now mostly

depicted in their quality as students. In a number of news children are also seen

as a national resource, to use Hendricks33 terms. An example of this conception

is a news item in an issue of 1972 Cumhuriyet. Children with extraordinary

capacities should be bred into national leaders 34 says the title. The text claims

matter-of-factly that one in 100 Turkish children had extraordinary mental

capacities and informs the reader that a special school educating these children

as national leaders will be built. The emphasis throughout the article is on the

needs of the state. Glaring is the disregard of childrens own wishes as to their

future.

Children can sometimes be seen represented as the continuation of their

older peers--the university students that were characterized at the time by a great

degree of political activity (visible to the media in the form of protests). Thus, a

caricature represents a child asking his father to increase his allowance and then,

when met with a sarcastic attitude, protesting with a placard saying My father is

very avaricious. He gives me only 10 liras a week35. Evidently the characteristics

of the days youth trickled down to children and were thus applied by the

caricaturist to them.

33 Hendrick, 1997

34 Cumhuriyet. 1972. January 22.

35 Milliyet. 1975. January

 During the 1970s Turkey was involved in the Cypriot dispute. It is notable that

although some active operations were taking place at the time in the region

(including displacements of entire families) and although Turkey had a huge

ideological interest in the conflict children imagery, to which weve grown so

accustomed in contemporary war-reporting, is all but missing. An article depicting

the harsh conditions of a number of Turkish Cypriots that were displaced by force

by the English armed forces does mention children, but doesnt give them any

prominence in the list of victims. The expression used to refer to the victims is

women, men, children and old people36. The photograph accompanying the

article is one of the few graphic depictions of children in the 1970s press. Its

focus is on a man, obviously of Turkish descent standing in a middle of a very

muddy road and carrying a girl over his shoulder (the news was partially about a

flooding of the Turkish camps). We do not see the girls face, she has turned to

see over her fathers shoulder. Indeed, the photograph seems to concentrate on

the man, his peculiar facial expression and state of spirit. This is in contrast to

contemporary trends under which, as we will see, children in such situations are

mostly represented frontally and are usually the focus of the photographers

endeavors.

2. Contemporary Depictions

36 Milliyet. 1975. January

 As I have mentioned above, the frequency with which the children are

depicted in the Turkish media has increased manifold since the 1970s. In a

certain sense children seem to be the new fashion, and children-related

debates are taking more and more of the publics attention. The coverage of

children has acquired a tone of its own. It is often characterized by the use of a

very specific symbolism and a special language. Thus children are depicted as

happy or in a distress that they fail to understand completely (because they

cannot fathom the whole range of implications of what has happened on their

subsequent development37). Expressions such as the happy day, the children

are waiting for, a hand of affection are commonplace. Moreover, some

depictions of children have an only very liminal relation to their experiences.

Children are used in reports of negative events from wars to economic crises as

little more than symbolic catalysts for the reporters point. It is here that the

discourse about children reaches its height. Children are observed and depicted

quite separately from their immediate preoccupations and experiences, many

times it is obvious that they were unaware their photo was taken, or that their

involvement in the photo-shooting process was minimal. Such voyeuristic

imagery emphasizes the alleged passivity, helplessness and naivety of children.

Indeed, much coverage of this type is nothing more than an extreme

aesthetization of this emotional construction for the particular purposes of the

article. The emotional effect is often enhanced by leaving such images practically

without comment or referring to them only very marginally in the article itself. In

37 Here we have an example of what James and Prout (1997) called the de-
presenting of childhood and an illustration of the way in which it manifests
itself and affects children. Children are nave because they cant see the
sophisticated long-term perspective and lack the sophisticated long-
term perspective because they are nave.
such a way, the impression of a separate magical world of childhood under

threat of being trespassed by the cruel world and barbarous adults is enhanced.

There are significant differences among the way in which children are

depicted in different newspapers. If they were to be catalogued these depictions

would span a very variegated range of symbolic attitudes. Such a variety of

coexisting symbolic niches is the result of the complex dynamics described

towards the beginning of the article. However there is also an overriding similarity

among the different representative traditions, namely the almost utter absence

of the childrens own point of view and experiences. Children are the eternal

other.

The two publications in my sample that made the most extensive use of

sentimentalized child symbolism were the leftist Cumhuriyet and the

conservative Zaman. It is interesting to note that these newspapers can be

considered extreme outposts of certain political ideologies. The other

publications are more mainstream, more centrist and less colored by the

pervasive line of a particular conviction. Thus, as the ideological polarization of

the newspaper increased, so did the vehemence of the use of child imagery. This

is consistent with the conclusions of the feminist studies on the symbolic use of

women in colonial and post-colonial contexts. The special language and narrative

devices described in the paragraph above are observed in these newspapers

reports on children on an almost consistent basis.

Milliyets coverage is more matter-of-factly, even when it describes issues of

great potential symbolic impact. Significant is that reporters use the special

language of child reporting only rarely in Milliyet. The danger to children theme

is quite prevalent though.

 Depictions of children along the modern protection and care of children lines

are found mostly in Sabah and Hurriyet. These newspapers give place to medical

accounts of childhood as well as to extensive discussions of the modern threats

to children, such as violence and the wide availability of sexual material. Sabahs

depictive style in particular can be described as developmental-educational.

Hurriyet, gives more space than Sabah to the alarmist variations of the

educational discourse and to the other children that this marginalizes. Articles

implying that childhood is being corrupted are most prevalent here.

Below Ill describe some prevailing themes in contemporary Turkish medias

depictions of children.

2.1 The Child in a Danger of Which He or She is Unaware

One of the most striking child depiction themes in the Turkish media is the

depiction of children in dangerous situations of which these are blissfully

unaware. This theme has numerous variations, of which I will give a number of

examples. Cumhuriyet specializes in such depictions, although Zaman provides

some examples as well.

 Perhaps the best example of such a depiction is an article in the Cumhuriyet

entitled The snow agreed with38 the children39. This article was published on the

front page and provided the front-page caption. This caption fitted the title quite

nicely, it represented two kids playing with snow. One of them is standing in the

background, the other is squatting, hurdling a lot of snow between his arms and

looking inquiringly into the camera objective. One would expect a story of how

children have fun to accompany the title and the caption, perhaps tinged by a

romanticized nostalgia. In fact, despite the title, the news item makes no

reference whatsoever to winter fun. The two subtitles of the article are The cold

kills and In Ankara schools are again closed. The first section relates the death

of a 14-year-old that froze to death and that of a person who fell after slipping on

ice, it concludes by mentioning the increase in traffic casualties. The second

sections subtitle is self-explanatory. Thus, a strong element of anxiety is

associated to the image of the happily playing children. The impression of

naivety, vulnerability and isolation is increased by the fact that the children

obviously have no knowledge of the terrible events associated with the snow

with which they play in such a careless fashion. As Kitzner convincingly puts it in

her article on childrens experience of sexual abuse, such depictions of children

as passively vulnerable is likely to be paid by the children themselves in the form

of unreasonable restrictions in name of their protection and best interests 40.

38 In the sense that children loved the snow. Snow is a rare treat for
children in Istanbul.

39 Cumhuriyet. 2002. January 3.

40 Kitzner. 1997
 A variation of this theme, again extremely prolific in Cumhuriyet, is publishing

photos of small children with articles recounting adverse economic

developments. An article in the same issue of Cumhuriyet recounts a significant

acceleration of the rate of inflation41. The image above the article depicted a

woman with a baby looking, clearly displeased, at the rows of merchandise in a

store. The rows are to the left side of the photograph, thus the woman is shown

in profile and we do not meet her gaze. We do however meet the gaze of her

baby that she clutches to her chest. It looks alerted and slightly interested by the

camera but in an unpleasant fashion. Note again that the baby is the only actor

not aware of the new dangerous development.

41 Cumhuriyet. 2002. All eyes are set on the inflation rate. January 3.
 A very similar instance is an article reporting a routine development in an

Argentina in the throes of economic crisis. The article reports the imposition of a

one-shot tax on big corporations, the money to be used for social support. The

image accompanying it depicts a row of police officers with big shields restricting

the entrance to a building in the background and a woman soothing her crying

baby in the foreground42. Here the child is unaware of the cause of his or her

woes.

In Zaman this theme is most manifest in its frequent reports of accidental

deaths or damage to children in domestic incidents. Most representative is an

article entitled A tiny child fell into boiling milk 43. The article recounts how a four-

year-olds mother left a pot of freshly-boiled milk on the floor and how her son

accidentally fell into it and got injured. Significantly the event happened in the

countryside were leaving a pot on the floor is not very unusual behavior. Zaman

persists in frequently reporting such cases.

42 Cumhuriyet. 2002. In Argentina firms will share the burden. January 6.

43 Zaman. 2007. October 16.

 2.2 The Child as the Perfect Victim

Another pervasive theme is the depiction of children as the main victims in a

wide array of situations. These situations range from war, to natural calamities, to

geopolitical disputes, to the state of affairs in poor or war-torn countries. This

theme is related to the previous one, in that the intense victimization of children

has its underpinnings in their depiction as innocent and ignorant. Not surpisingly

here again Cumhuriyet and Zaman lead the way.

Zaman may publish an article with the title One more Palestinian child was

killed44 depicting child casualties in a confrontation far away. This was quite in

tune with the public discussion on the plight of Palestinian kids at the time in

Turkey.

44 Zaman. 2004. September 19.

 Cumhuriyet is again the ultimate specialist. Most war stories are published

accompanied by photographs of children often irrelevant to the news. A most

typical example is a one-page report on Afghanistan and Pakistan. The main title

of the report is The poker game between Afghanistan and Pakistan 45. The

article is everything but child- or people-centric. The author reports his own

experience of the countries from a decidedly idiosyncratic, Turkish tourists

perspective. Boarding experiences and first impressions are given much weight.

However the top of the page is dedicated to a big photo of a child salesman in an

open marketa victim of child labor. Towards the bottom of the pagean even

more interesting depiction: the reporter describes an interview with an Uzbek

living in Afghanistan. The nationalist discourse in Turkey attempts to foster a pan-

Turkish attitude, accepting the plethora of ethnic groups in Asia speaking

languages of the Turkish linguistic group as Turks, or in more politically-correct

contexts nations-relatives to Turks. Uzbeks are in this category. The Uzbek

interviewed by the reporter recounted his desire to move to Turkey with his

family. He allegedly wants to raise his children in Turkey and considers Turkey

the motherland of his childrenthe great, authentic motherland. Here the

affective value of children is used to titillate the readers nationalist pride: a father

considers that the best for his children is for them to be Turks. Children are the

true symbolic targets of cultural assimilation, here happily surrendered. The

articles subtitle: The Longing of the Uzbeks reinforces the strong nationalist

message.

45 Cumhuriyet. 2002. February.a

 Another instance of the appropriation of other children can again be found in

Cumhuriyet, again in an article concerning Afghanistan. The article informs us

that the number of Turkish soldiers in Afghanistan is going to be increased. A big

picture accompanying the article depicts an allegedly Tadzhik girl writing on a

broken blackboard46. Tadzhiks are another relative ethnic group. Thus the story

is subversively framed as Turkish soldiers coming to the defense of the

defenselessappropriated other children.

46 Cumhuriyet. 2002. The number of Soldiers will be Increased in April.

February
 An especially disturbing example of the special pattern of the victimization of

children was the coverage in Cumhuriyet of the intensified efforts of the

government to get underprivileged children (fugitives etc.) off the streets. Despite

the return of fugitives to the childrens homes entailing an amount of coercive

action as the reporter readily acknowledges, the article is entitled An affectionate

hand to street children47 and uses the usual affection-protection terminology that

is most probably completely unsuited to that particular circumstance.

Interestingly, children were interviewed by the reporters in this case (details

regarding the usual hanging out places of some of the children are reported as

well as much other personal information). Surpirsingly, this does not make the

article any more anthropological in the sense of having given the childrens

perspective. The childrens comments seem incapable of altering the reporters

romanticized images: the childrens words are quoted by the way, in an

abbreviated, out-of-context fashion, almost as the incomprehensible blabbering

of the insane. They are used as props to the reporters emotional key. Thus a

child is quoted to have said I do not love my mother. No further qualification or

explanation of this statement is given by the reporter. By definitionnone is

needed. That statement, in its decontextualized fashion represents well enough

for the reporters taste the lost, abnormal condition of the child: he is not a

normal child in a normal loving family. The incongruity between the style of the

reporting and the experiences of those particular children is absolutely grotesque.

47 Cumhuriyet. 2002. January 3.

 More conventional depictions of children as victims abound in all of the

newspapers studied. Thus there are many stories of poisoning in childrens

homes and schools, of real and alleged cases of sexual abuse and beatings etc.

The common point of all such reports in all newspapers is the lack of the

childrens perspective.

A conventional victimizing of poor children can also be found. Thus Sabah, in

an article entitled The Easts Poor Children48 cites a number of statistics on new

developments in child poverty in Turkey and in the world. Child labor statistics are

quoted uncritically, and generally a rigid childrens rights line is adopted.

Interestingly, without any support from the cited statistics, indeed even in

contradiction to some of them the problem is localized in the East of Turkey, the

traditional locus of poverty. Thus, to a certain extent the problem of child poverty

is attributed to the other, in disregard of the figure cited in that same article that

the Western-most Ege region of Turkey reports the highest rate of child poverty.

2.3 The underprivileged child gets a rare moment of happiness

48 Sabah. 2007. April 17.

Another theme, most prevalent in Cumhuriyet but present also in most other

newspapers, is the coverage of special organizations for children that are in a

certain way disadvantaged (for example have disabilities). Cumhuriyet remains

true to its victimization line: usually the condition of the child is highly visible in

the article and the use of special moment of innocent happiness and diminutive

language is especially intense. The prevailing impression is of a child with a

tragic fate experiencing a rare moment of happiness. The childrens first-hand

experiences of such organizations are almost never reported in such news items.

The children are bound to be happy in such contexts, whether they actually are

doesnt seem to matter. Milliyets reporting of similar cases is less presumptious

and more distant.

2.4 Other Representations: The Private World of the Child, the

Educational and Medical Discourses

When the every-day life of children or their interests are depicted in the Turkish

(and not only) media, the general line is that of a private, bordered world with its

own rules. This is perhaps the most aesthetically-rewarding offshoot of the

modern institution of childhood. This delimitation is physically visible in the

specificities of the childrens spaces. Thus childrens sections in books and

newspapers have a completely different stylistic arrangement, not to speak of

color. The world of children has become safe haven for a number of fugitive

symbolic values that can no longer find a place in the world of adults. Thus fairy-

tales, folk-tales, magic and unbridled imagination (among others) were relegated

to the realm of the kids. In Turkish newspapers this is obvious in reports on

childrens books, movies etc. In such cases the pages are decorated accordingly

and space is given to sanitized (loosely paraphrased) childrens voices. Zaman

uses depictions of this private space in order to promote its own traditionalistic

line on education: news on cultural products for children that incorporate religious

lines aboundfor example a music album by child artists including among others

a piece entitled the Word of Allah49 Thus, the private world of childhood is also a

disputed space. A number of articles confirm this suspicion. Zaman reported a

conference by the religious authority in Turkey on improving the quality of child

publications50. Most of the article is written to mean that the Office intends to

contribute to an increase in the total volume of cultural products for children in

Turkey. The article also reports the Offices interest in making children love

religion. It is highly probable that the Offices official position is that religion is a

49 Zaman. 2006. Songs from Kir Cicekleri. October 8.

50 Zaman. 2005. The Office of religious Affairs targets Childrens

Publications. October 27
universal value and that children should love it. This can certainly be said about

the apologists of such other values as nation love, love for language, love for

culture etc. The childs highly charged symbolical position is brought into stark

relief. In their position of future citizens children are the ideal arena for a battle

of universal values to be imputed. Such considerations in fact color the entire

private space of childhoodthus the concern with the content of childrens

cultural artefacts: they are to somehow entail a moral message.

 The educational and medical discourses are very much echoes of similar

ones in the West, thus I will not focus on them extensively in this work. The

interesting fact to mention is that they are published uncritically in Turkish media

and patently assumed (by the reporter, of course) to be universally applicable.

Indeed the language is one of certainty to prohibition of dissent. Statements such

as children are (like this) or You must give (this) to the child are common. The

linguistic and cultural divide between Turkeys and other countries academic and

other social spaces and the great degree of inner fragmentation of these spaces

in the country means that curious phenomena such as the articulation in a

newspaper of relatively antiquated views are common. The educational

discourses are intimately linked with the discourses on danger to children and

children as victims. Indeed, reports of sexual abuse or violence towards children

are made in an educational-medical key almost uniformly across the Turkish

media. As it has been mentioned above, Sabah and Hurriyet with their more

mainstream, middle-class audiences, give most space to the educational

discourse.

D. Conclusion
In this study I have attempted to give the reader a glimpse of the diverse ways in

which children are depicted and used symbolically in the Turkish press. It is my

conviction that studies of the way in which children are represented in Turkey,

along with first-hand studies of the childrens experiences in their every-day lives

will help us better understand the Turkish institution of childhood, the very

complex ways in which it interacts with the level of the actual behavior of

children, and how it reproduces itself. I have tried to highlight the complexities

involved in studying childhood in a non-First-world country: among others the

existence of different subjectivities (those of children and adults) and the way in

which the different discourses on childhood interact and coexista dynamics

complicated by the symbolical condensation around the child of which my study

has given numerous examples. I hope this work will prove a valuable first step in

the conscientious study of this very complex field.