Euroscepticism during COVID-19: The Case of Turkish Media
Euroscepticism during COVID-19: The Case of Turkish Media

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyses de-legitimisation and Eurosceptic attitudes in Turkey as reflected in newspapers during the COVID-19 pandemic between 15 March 2020 and 30 May 2021. Easton’s (1975) specific support about concrete policy outcomes and Scharpf’s (1998) output-oriented legitimisation theories are utilised in testing the hypothesis on de-legitimisation of EU-rope in both pro and against government media in relation to EU-rope’s policies towards the “fight” against COVID-19 since Euroscepticism influences the political discourse in general regardless of political or ideological position. In the paper, EU-rope is used, instead of European Union (EU) and Europe as two different terminologies, since the analysed newspapers utilise EU and Europe interchangeably. Five newspapers are included in the analysis for this study: Hürriyet, Sabah, Karar, Gazete Pencere and BirGün based on their political and ideological stances. In the research, online archives of the newspapers are utilised, and in each newspaper the op-eds are excluded from the analysis. The main focus is given to the news – headlines on Europe and the EU. Keywords that are looked for in newspapers are EU, Europe, vaccine, BioNTech, Sinovac, Coronavirus, COVID-19, and the pandemic. It has been observed that, regardless of political ideologies and the position of newspaper at the left-right political spectrum, Euroscepticism became a common attitude.

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