Skewed Realities: Global politics, international media

A few days back, Turkey voted the AK Party back into power in elections that many say is a resounding slap on the face of the Turkish military. According to news reports in the BBC and other western media, the AKP has been accused of having an Islamist agenda by some who feel that Turkey is going backwards in some ways and are concerned about the increasing number of women who are wearing chadors on the streets.

What everyone will be watching for in the next few months is how this new power dynamic actually affects Turkey’s secularism, which has always been guarded rather jealously by its military. The AKP has denied that it has an Islamist agenda. Given its interest in seeing Turkey become part of the European Union, it is possible that they will continue to be understated about such an agenda, even it exists.

What this columnist, who is also associate professor of political science and director of Middle East Studies at Drury University, points out is that things are not as two-dimensional as the western media makes them out to be. It is not a battle between Islamist and secular forces because the different parties involved in Turkish politics and their policies are far more complex than that. Meanwhile, this blogger talks about why she supports AKP:

I do support the AK Party because they have, in fact, shown their determination to do something good for the country. It matters not if a little money disappeared; the majority went into the country coffers versus the pockets of politicians.

International media’s inability (unwillingness?) to go beyond the obvious and the hype to delve into the underlying layers presents a skewed picture to the world. Unfortunately, this leads to many of us having half-baked notions about many events — and in some cases — countries.

Another instance of this is when India recently elected its first woman president. Newspapers around the world celebrated this as a momentous victory for womankind and took it as a sign of changing times for women in, what has traditionally been, a very patriarchal society.

Scratch the surface and a different story emerges. The president holds little more than a ceremonial post. India has already had an extremely powerful woman prime minister — Indira Gandhi — in the past. Pratibha Patil, the new president, has a dubious record of fraud and misguided loyalties and she “talks to spirits”! Needless to say, many in India are skeptical (if not outright disappointed) at having her as president and this includes the feminists.

It’s sad, and little frightening, to think of how little we know and understand about other countries sometimes. And how little the media helps. On a more upbeat note though, thank god for blogs!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 5:02 am and is filed under Media Matters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.