Chapter 2

Theoretical background

Turkish politics is a field within which different mental models strive to create and retain hegemony and publicity over other mental models as alternative hegemons. Critical perspective, critical linguistics or critical discourse analysis (CDA) and discourse-historical approach (DHA) are the means to place the legitimacy struggles within language and the complicated power relations and dominance. Through the help of narrative-tracing, CDA and DHA posit three fundamental steps in the discourse: deconstruction, reconstruction, and the institution of the self as the most appropriate speaker and doer, based on the presumed competence of the rhetorical battle of hegemony via identities. Discursive strategies are incorporated in order to explicate the attributions to which the social/political actor claims exemption, distinguishing the persona from the referred entity.