EUnited in Diversity: Turkish Women between Tradition and Modernity

A bridge over the Mediterranean sea, suspended between East and West, Turkey reflects the coexistence of an old national heritage and new cultural models. Turkey is still a candidate for accession to the European Union. The country is the object of a media campaign that aims to testify the progress made in the adaptation to European standards. The Europeanization of Turkey is also enacted by means of the discursive construction of a European Turkish woman, recognizing its importance among the priorities of the EU’s social policies. This chapter focuses on the videos, ‘Turkish women – Between tradition and modernity’ (released in 2005 by the European Commission Audiovisual Service on the occasion of Turkey’s admission to negotiations for accession), ‘Focus on Southeast Europe: Turkey − Gender Equality’ (2009), and compares them with more recent promotional audiovisual material that appeared in the section ‘Enlargement Policy’ of the EUROPA website (www.europa.eu), which is specifically dedicated to EU promotional discourse. Based on a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach, this multifaceted investigation examines the linguistic and semiotic strategies (Wodak, Chilton 2007) enacted by the EU for this campaign. In particular, the analysis reveals how visual and textual choices (such as framing of shots, lexicon, modality and narratives - Kress, van Leeuwen 2006), depicting Turkey through the lens of Western values, can contribute to drawing the country closer to the West. The study discusses which aspects and values of the Mediterranean culture are stressed and which are downplayed in the representation of Turkish women, and how their voices are exploited to narrate themes other than the female condition (Schiffrin, Tannen, Hamilton 2001). The progress of the whole country is thus propagandized in various economic and social areas, all for the purpose of consensus formation about enlargement policies.