Murat Akser - University of Ulster
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Murat Akser
University of Ulster
School of Creative Arts
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Seth Feldman, Scott Forsyth, and Duygu Köksal
University of Ulster, School of Arts and Humanities, Londonderry, UK
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Journal Articles by Murat Akser
How Media Ownership Matters
International Journal of Communication
, 2026
How Media Ownership Mattersoffers a somewhat different yet familiarly compelling, em...
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How  Media  Ownership  Mattersoffers  a somewhat  different  yet  familiarly  compelling,  empirically grounded    rationale    for    reconsidering    how    scholars conceptualize    media    ownership    in    contemporary democracies. Opening with vivid vignettes from the United States, Sweden, and France, the authors demonstrate that ownership  power  manifests  through  public  service  orientation,  economic  instrumentalism,  and  political instrumentalism, three modes that structure journalistic possibility across media systems. The book setsout  an  ambitious  agenda:  to  move  beyond  binaries  of  “mogul  power”  versus  “market  structure”  and  to operationalize ownership as an institutional form embedded in funding models and audience dynamics.
Finding Leadership in Media Education
CINEJ CInema Journal
, 2024
This article is an exploration of leadership in media education and some of its identifying featu...
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This article is an exploration of leadership in media education and some of its identifying features. As lecturers in media studies and production, our teaching philosophy weaves through these themes: active learning (Budhai 2021), learning by doing (Schank et al 2013), peer and self-assessment (Iglesias Pérez, Vidal-Puga, and Pino Juste 2022) and constructive alignment (Loughlin, Lygo-Baker and Lindberg-Sand 2021).
Media Systems and Media Capture in Turkey A Case Study
Media and Communication
, 2024
This article attempts to explain the current situation of the Turkish media system through the me...
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This article attempts to explain the current situation of the Turkish media system through the media systems approach as a case study with special attention to the concept of media capture. We propose that the Turkish media system’s shift is heavily influenced by media capture. We associate four of Hallin and Mancini’s media systems concepts related to the effects of media capture in the Turkish media system shift: rise of political parallelism, erosion of journalistic professionalism (ethics), controlling role of the state, and government-friendly ownership concentration. In explaining the shift from a pluralist polarised to captured media in Turkey, we acknowledge the potential for new, independent, and alternative media to emerge. The article also comments that the potential reason for this shift from a captured liberal to a captured media in Turkey is the climate of fear that has allowed successive governments in Turkey to attempt media capture. In general, this article attempts to provide insight into the current relationship between media and politics in Turkey.
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The Turkish media system has shifted towards an authoritarian model due to extensive media capture tactics used post-2011 by the government.
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On land, memory, and masculinity: unearthing silences around myths of Gallipoli in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Ahlat Ağacı (The Wild Pear Tree)
New Perspectives on Turkey
, 2023
This article offers a critical reading of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Ahlat Ağacı (The Wild Pear Tree) th...
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This article offers a critical reading of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Ahlat Ağacı (The Wild Pear Tree) through an exploration and critique of the mythmaking and monumentalization surrounding the Gallipoli Battle and the multiple ways in which Ceylan’s film unsettles the foundational myths of the last century in Turkey. Ceylan’s scenes and characters are constructed in such a way that the male characters and particularly Sinan (the main character) refuse to succumb to hegemonic codes of masculinity. Through this cinematic refusal by an anti-hero (Sinan), the film addresses the crisis of hegemonic masculinities in their interconnectedness to militarism, nationalism, capitalism, and heteronormativity. Through Sinan’s quest for self-realization, the film signals not only the impotence and vanity of nationalist masculinities but also the caesuras and instabilities in national myths. As the last film of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s new Land of Ghosts trilogy, which started with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and Winter Sleep, Ahlat Ağacı seems to close the cycle with a final scene that bespeaks the possibility of unearthing lost others of national mythmaking, bringing fertility and hope to the lands in which collective amnesia reigns supreme.
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The film critiques Gallipoli myths, depicting them as foundational to Turkish nationalism and ignoring broader historical experiences.
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Turkey and the West: Mutually Suspicious Perceptions in Film
Turkish Area Studies Review
, 2021
There have been more than 150 popular Hollywood films that presented Turkey and the Turks in an O...
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There have been more than 150 popular Hollywood films that presented Turkey and the Turks in an Orientalist manner. That is, after more than sixty years of participating in Western democracy, having established a liberal market economy, and enjoying a functioning multi-party democratic political system, the image of Turkey in Hollywood is still emphatically that of the Eastern, lustful, and barbaric Turk. Against that background, the Turkish cinema's depiction of the Westerner has been one of a cowardly, clumsy enemy. This piece will look at the discourses of Orientalism and Occidentalism that Turkish and Hollywood cinemas feed upon and reflect on each other.
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Turkish characters in American cinema exhibit unique stereotypes that differentiate them from Arabs, maintaining a distinct yet negative portrayal as the Oriental 'Other'.
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Four Women in the Harem (1965) by Halit Refiğ: The Construction of "National Cinema" in Turkey
Dinç, Enis, and Murat Akser. "Four Women in the Harem (1965) by Halit Refiğ: The Construction of “National Cinema” in Turkey." Journal of Film and Video 71.4 (2019): 51-64. APA
, 2019
On july 27, 1966, the renowned Turkish film director Halit Refig ̆ angrily left a panel dis­ cuss...
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On july 27, 1966, the renowned Turkish film director Halit Refig ̆ angrily left a panel dis­ cussion on Turkish cinema. Organized by the film writers’ association Sinematek, the panel was titled “The Social Structure of Turkey, Turk­ ish Cinema and Its Future.” According to Refig ̆, the panel had expanded from a discussion of Turkish cinema and its future and turned into a courtroom in which Turkish filmmakers were put on trial, and filmmakers including Refig ̆ were deeply insulted at being framed as the enemies of society (Refig ̆ 71). After intense disagreement with Sinematek writers on the condition of Turkish cinema, Halit Refig ̆ and some other film directors developed the con­ cept of what they called ulusal sinema (national cinema).
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The film's tragic conclusion illustrates the failure of the Ottoman system and warns against naive westernization.
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Fight for a National Cinema: An Introductory Text and Translation (Halit Refig, 1971)
Akser, Murat, and Didem Durak-Akser. "Fight for a National Cinema: An Introductory Text and Translation (Halit Refiğ, 1971)." Film Studies 16.1 (2017): 56-77.
, 2017
Halit Refiğ had impact on debates around Turkish national cinema both as a thinker and as a pract...
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Halit Refiğ had impact on debates around Turkish national cinema both as a thinker and as a practitioner. Instrumental in establishing the Turkish Film Institute under MSU along with his director colleagues like Metin Erksan and Lutfi Akad, Refiğ lectured for many years at the first cinema training department. This translation is from his 1971 collection of articles titled Ulusal Sinema Kavgasi (Fight For National Cinema). Here Refiğ elaborates on the concept of national cinema from cultural perspectives framing Turkey as a continuation of Ottoman Empire and its culture distinct and different from western ideas of capitalism, bourgeoisie art and Marxism. For Refiğ, Turkish cinema should be reflected as an extension of traditional Turkish arts. Refiğ explores the potential to form a national cinema through dialogue and dialectic within Turkish traditional arts and against western cinematic traditions of representation.
Changing LGBT Narratives in Turkish Cinema
Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture
, 2016
From its inception, depiction of sexuality on screen outside of heteronormative behavior has cons...
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From its inception, depiction of sexuality on screen outside of heteronormative behavior has consistently been met with censorship by the state and negative criticism from the media. Yet, beginning with mid 1960s and spanning latter decades, Turkish filmmakers have become far more open and daring in their depiction of the gay and lesbian relationships. It is the aim of this essay to outline a history of LGBT representations in Turkish cinema over the last fifty years, depictions progressing from lesbian to transsexual and finally to homosexual males during the period, 1962 to the present.
Turkish Cinema -Islamic Studies -Oxford Bibliographies Turkish Cinema
Oxford Bibliographies
, 2017
Turkish Cinema studies goes back to 1968 with the publication of Nijat Ozon’s filmography. Before...
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Turkish Cinema studies goes back to 1968 with the publication of Nijat Ozon’s filmography. Before that, there has been film criticism by journalists in short-lived film magazines and newspapers. The first theoretical attempt define Turkish cinema as a culturally distinct cinema came from a film director, Halit Refiğ’s Fight For a National Cinema (Ulusal Sinema Kavgasi), and works after that came to view Turkish cinema as an umbrella term used to describe the cinema produced by filmmakers living in the
Republic of Turkey established in 1923.
Memory, Identity and Desire: A Psychoanalytic Reading of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive
Akser, Murat. Memory, Identity and Desire: A Psychoanalytic Reading of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. CINEJ Cinema Journal, v. 2, n. 1, p. 58-76.
, Nov 30, 2012
This is a reading of David Mulholland Drive through psychoanalytic approach of Lacan from the per...
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This is a reading of David Mulholland Drive through psychoanalytic approach of Lacan from the perspective of formation of fantasy and shifting identities. Lynch constructs his films consciously choosing his themes from the sub(versive/conscious) side of human mind. Previous attempts to read Lynch’s films are fixed around the idea that Lynch is using film genres to create postmodern pastiches. Mulholland Drive has been analyzed several times from different approaches ranging from gender to narratology . Elements of film noir, musical, caper films can be identified in Lynch’s films. This detailed textual analysis intends to rationalize Lynch’s narrative structure through Lacanian terms in reference to Zizekian terminology.
Diversity and Inclusion in Film, Television and Media Sector: Policy Alternatives for an Inclusive Film Industry and Training
CINEJ Cinema Journal
, 2021
This issue of CINEJ Cinema Journal observed the slow recovery from the destructive effects of COV...
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This issue of CINEJ Cinema Journal observed the slow recovery from the destructive effects of COVID-19 global pandemic on filmmaking, film distribution and exhibition, and teaching film at HE institutions. One development that is on the agenda is diversity and inclusion in film industry, film education and film studies/criticism as institution. The diversity of film sets has been voiced and is gaining momentum at creative top of the line levels of director, producer and screenwriters. Still obstacles remain for those who want to move from entry to mid-level both in film industry as creatives and for academics who want to enter white dominated academia.
Cinema, Life and Other Viruses: The Future of Filmmaking, Film Education and Film Studies in the Age of Covid-19 Pandemic
CINEJ Cinema Journal
, 2020
This issue of CINEJ Cinema Journal witnessed the devastating effects of COVID-19 global pandemic ...
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This issue of CINEJ Cinema Journal witnessed the devastating effects of COVID-19 global pandemic on filmmaking, film distribution and exhibition, and teaching film at HE institutions. Global shifts in production and distribution gave rise to new stars, streaming services. The diversity of film sets was gaining momentum as film productions were halted. Ne reports and new investment for the future of filmmaking are at stake at this juncture. As the year closed there have losses like Fernando Solanas and Sean Connery.
Halit Refiğ's I Lost My Heart to a Turk: Woman, Islam and Modernity in Turkish Cinema
Akser, Murat. "Halit Refig's I Lost My Heart to a Turk: Woman, Islam and Modernity in Turkish Cinema." CINEJ Cinema Journal 7.1 (2018): 5-29.
, 2018
Defined by some critics as the ultimate national cinema movement piece, Halit Refiğ's I Lost My H...
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Defined by some critics as the ultimate national cinema movement piece, Halit Refiğ's I Lost My Heart to a Turk (1969), the love story of a German woman and a Turkish worker in the ancient town of Kayseri becomes an allegory for the Turkish nation's identity crisis. This paper identifies the parameters used by Refiğ to position the Turkish identity in his film and emphasize the special role of women in Turkish modernization.
Auteur and Style in National Cinema: A Reframing of Metin Erksan's Time to Love
CINEJ Cinema Journal
, Dec 1, 2013
This essay will hunt down and classify the concept of the national as a discourse in Turkish cine...
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This essay will hunt down and classify the concept of the national as a discourse in Turkish cinema that has been constructed back in 1965, by the film critics, by filmmakers and finally by today’s theoretical standards. So the questions we will be constantly asking throughout the essay can be: Is what can be called part of national film culture and identity? Is defining a film part of national heritage a modernist act that is also related to theories of nationalism? Is what makes a film national a stylistic application of a particular genre (such as melodrama)? Does the allure of the film come from the construction of a hero-cult after a director deemed to be national?
Nation, Genre and Female Performance in Canadian Cinema
CINEJ Cinema Journal
, May 2013
This paper outlines a theory of style and performance in Canadian film based on geography, gender...
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This paper outlines a theory of style and performance in Canadian film based on geography, gender and genre. It is possible to form a theory of Canadian cinema based on theme-genre (strong women, nature as oppressor in dysfunctional family melodramas) in which female characters, as well as their personas, interact with both a physical geography and a social space to define a Canadian identity.
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Canadian cinema inverts typical gender roles, showcasing powerful female characters that resist the traditional passive depictions common in American films.
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Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival: Between the national and the global
NECSUS European Journal of Media Studies
, Nov 1, 2013
Antalya and Adana are run by competing and conflicting political parties. The film festivals in b...
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Antalya and Adana are run by competing and conflicting political parties. The film festivals in both cities underwent changes in programming and other activities due to municipal election results in 2009. As Turkey’s oldest existing film festival, Antalya’s lack of consistency attracted the attention of other city-run film festivals across the country that consider it a model for their own events. Neither Antalya nor Adana fulfill their missions to act as truly national events. Instead, by fuelling rival programming they have polarised filmmakers and the public. In addition, because they devote a great deal of resources to local activities and the national political agenda, neither festival can be considered transnational in scope. Political rivalry mixed with populism reduces the visibility of Turkish filmmakers both nationally and internationally, while nepotism and political discourses stoke the popularity of local government at the expense of filmmakers and audiences alike.
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Antalya Film Festival transformed into a 'People's Festival' with $1 tickets and a focus on local engagement after political changes in 2009.
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51st International Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival
The Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival was established in 1964. It is considered by many to be T...
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The Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival was established in 1964. It is considered by many to be Turkey’s foremost film festival—a festive environment where film critics, directors,
stars and spectators mingle in press conferences and parties, a spectacular event likened to Cannes Film Festival by those organising and attending it (Akser, “Antalya” 595). It is the oldest
surviving film festival in Turkey, with a tradition of attendance by local cinephiles, spectacular parades of Turkish film stars and gala events for films that have won international acclaim at
other festivals.
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In 2014, the festival featured 193 sessions, showcasing a diverse array of films while adapting its management team to current needs.
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For Those Who Seek Mastery and Personality, by Halit Refig
CINEJ Cinema Journal
, 2016
Halit Refig had impact on Turkish national cinema both as a thinker and practitioner. He worked h...
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Halit Refig had impact on Turkish national cinema both as a thinker and practitioner. He worked his way up from the 1950s as a film critic and become a film director practicing until the day he died. He also worked along with other directors like Metin Erksan, Lütfi Akad, Memduh Un, Duygu Sagiroglu. Ertem Görec, Nedim Otyam, Ilhan Arakon at Mimar Sinan University's Turkish Film Institute, the first cinema training department at a University for 25 years training generations of film directors. This except is from a 1968 film magazine essay.
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Translation of Refig's writings marks significant step in reviving interest in his impact on Turkish cinema after 63 years.
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Repressed media and illiberal politics in Turkey
Southeast European and Black Sea Studies
, 2022
This article examines the historical roots of the role of successive Turkish governments' fear of...
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This article examines the historical roots of the role of successive Turkish governments' fear of media and Turkish media's fear of government authority with respect to the development of press freedom over the long run and closely analyzes the historical pressures imposed on journalists through legal and informal means. We focus particularly on the economic and political pressure on the media in Turkey and offer three arguments regarding the fear in Turkish media: (1) Media fear is historical rather than a rupture that happened during the Justice and Development Party era; (2) out of fear of losing power, the governments use structural, legislative and extra-legal factors to the advantage of the ruling party to support a friendly media-ecology; and (3) the repressed media attempt to come out of this ecology of fear by utilizing new tactics of reporting, such as alternative media and citizen journalism.
Media and Democracy in Turkey: Towards a Model of Neo-Liberal Media Autocracy
Akser, Murat, and Banu Baybars-Hawks. "Media and democracy in Turkey: Toward a model of neoliberal media autocracy." Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 5.3 (2012): 302-321.
, Nov 1, 2012
This paper reveals the ways in which media autocracy operates on political, judicial, economic an...
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This paper reveals the ways in which media autocracy operates on political, judicial, economic and discursive levels in post-2007 Turkish media. Newsmakers in Turkey currently experience five different systemic kinds of neoliberal government pressures to keep their voice down: conglomerate pressure, judicial suppression, online banishment, surveillance defamation and accreditation discrimination. The progression of restrictions on media freedom has increased in volume annually since 2007; this includes pressure on the Doğan Media Group, the YouTube ban, arrests of journalists in the Ergenekon trials, phone tapping/taping of political figures and the exclusion of all unfriendly reporters from political circles. The levels and tools of this autocracy eventually lead to certain conclusions about the qualities of this media environment: it is a historically conservative, redistributive, panoptic and discriminatory media autocracy.
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There is a marked increase in criminal proceedings against journalists under the AKP's regime, reflecting serious threats to press freedom.
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