An Examination of “Honor” Killings _{in Turkish Religious and Secular Media}

In this paper, I will analyze how particular knowledge on the issue of “honor killings” is re/produced and conveyed within mainstream Turkish media. I focus on both the secular and religious media in order to explore different discourses used to describe the issue of “honor” killings in Turkey. Explaining these media discourses is necessary not only to understand public conceptions of honor killings but also many other social and cultural realities, because media is widely influential in shaping public opinion about social, political or cultural matters that determine how we understand and organize our lives. Through creating many pictures “in our heads,” media's role in helping to define the world is inevitable. Thus, daily outcomes of shaping public opinion on the issue of “honor” killing and its implications cannot be understood without analyzing the politics of representation in the public media over the course of the country's republican history. To this end, this research is aimed at exploring and deciphering the various media discourses used to present “honor” killings to Turkish society. Before introducing the media discourses, I first explain the socio-political implications of “honor” killings in Turkey as the background in which they flourished.