THE REPRESENTATION OF THE 2015 TURKISH PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES ON NEWSPAPER CARTOONS

The importance of the 2014 presidential elections for turkish history arose from the fact that it was the first time that a president of the republic would be elected by public vote. the three candidates competing for the presidency were the premier minister recep tayyip erdoğan for the ak party, selahattin demirtaş for the hdp, ekmeleddin ihsanoğlu as the joint candidate for the chp and the mhp, and the elections happened rather as party elections. elections have always been a popular theme for cartoons that are regarded as well suited vehicles for conveying the political discourse. newspapers manifest their chosen positions through cartoons that lend themselves better to this task than news coverage that has to adhere to objectivity criteria. thus, the aim of our study was to analyze the representation of the presidential elections on the cartoons to explore whether there were relationships between the discourses of the cartoons and the ideological stances of their respective newspapers. cartoons printed between july 1 and august 15, 2015 on the dailies cumhuriyet, evrensel, yeni akit, yeni çağ, milliyet and sabah chosen as newspapers known for their ideological identifications have been subjected to a discourse analysis as described by van dijk.