What question did this study set out to answer?

The research investigates how the May 27, 1960 military coup was depicted in media and how political legitimacy was framed around democracy.

Coup in the Name of Democracy: May 27, 1960 and the Discursive Construction of Political Legitimacy

View Full Paper

Ask AI

Bookmark

The research investigates how the May 27, 1960 military coup was depicted in media and how political legitimacy was framed around democracy.
Analyzed nine opinion columns from May 27–31 in four Turkish newspapers: Hürriyet, Milliyet, Cumhuriyet, and Akşam.
Applied Roland Barthes’s concepts of denotation, connotation, and myth to understand the semiotic representation.
Identified themes and signifiers related to the construction of legitimacy and the portrayal of the coup.
The texts depicted the coup as an 'extraordinary yet necessary' intervention legitimized by narratives of 'punishment' and 'purification'.
The military was framed as a neutral subject while the previous government was portrayed negatively as deviating from democratic norms.
Signifiers such as 'democracy', 'nation', and 'freedom' were central to constructing a legitimizing myth around the coup.

No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.

Examines the representation of the May 27, 1960 coup, revealing how legitimacy is constructed through discourse.

Bozdoğan et al. (2026) studied this question.

View Full Paper

Ask AI

Bookmark