Top Newspapers in Turkey | Turkish Culture

Lesson Transcript

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Merhaba! Nasılsınız. Ben Seda and welcome to www.turkishclass101.com.

Today we are going to talk about top newspapers in Turkey, okay?

So are you guys ready for our topic?

After this video I hope you'll have a general view about Turkish newspapers

and you can read when your Turkish is good enough, you can start reading them.

But first of all let's look at the word newspaper in Turkish.

It is gazete, gazete, gazete. I probably put it here, gazete, gazete.

Do you see it? I never match the, you know, wording with my fingers.

Does it sound familiar? Gazete.

Okay, before I start, it's a little bit harder to talk about this

because I need to explain something first.

Turkish politics is and has always been controversial.

Always a lot of sides fighting over this and that and separating people actually to this and that.

You know, it doesn't matter what the separations, it's just the way of the politics in Turkey.

And this is something I really don't like about my culture

and the politicians manipulating the people to their will and to their benefit.

But the people suffer, you know, and Turkish people are very very hot about it.

Hot about it some subjects like soccer and now politics is definitely one of them.

So I suggest as a side note you don't argue with a Turkish person about politics.

Anyway, what does newspaper get to do with the politics you may ask?

Actually, everything. I think it is like that in, you know, every part of the globe,

but maybe more in Turkey, more, you know, in these kind of countries, I guess.

Newspapers, which part of a medium like media, again, sometimes, you know, has been a lot,

has been a tool of manipulating people. Let me put it that way. I'm trying to be kind.

Some newspapers are like opposing some governments, some newspapers like opposing others,

and some newspapers are like booklets for the residing governments. So there are a lot of sides.

So I'm not gonna pick one side, one kind of newspaper or the other kinds like

the kind or I'm not gonna pick the ones I read, but what I'm gonna do, I will try

to show you all the political sides so you can pick and read whatever you like.

So I have to say that there are different categories when it comes to politics.

Let's first talk about these terms that I'm gonna talk about. Then I can categorize the newspaper

according to these categories, like the political categories. I'm sure it's gonna be clear

in a moment. So we have these kind of political categories. We can say populist. It's the same

in English. Populist. Solcu. Leftist. It can be like central or the extreme.

Sağcı. The right wing. Again, central or the extreme version.

And muhafazakar. It's a long and a tough word. Muhafazakar. Conservative. And we have ulusalcı

seküler. Ulusalcı seküler. Like secular nationalist. Islamcı. Islamic. This is the

point of view. I'm not talking about religion here. It's just a point of view.

And liberal. Liberal in Turkish. Liberal. Sosyal demokrat. Social democrat.

And we have plain milliyetçi. Milliyetçi. Nationalist. And what else? Sosyalist. Socialist.

We have a category that is unique to Turkey. Atatürkçü. There is no word in English for

that. There is no translation. But you can say atatürkist. Like the people who follow

Atatürk in a certain way. Köktendinci. It literally means a religious person from the,

I don't know how to translate it a little bit. It means like fundamentalist, religious,

something like that. And these are of course general terms. And there are nuances. Some terms

can be together. Some terms cannot be together. For example, you can be liberal and nationalist.

Or Islamic nationalist. Or conservative right-wing. Conservative nationalist. You can mix and match.

I'm not a political science specialist. So I cannot actually talk about these differences.

Similarities, differences, nuances between them. So it's not our topic anyway.

So just think of these categories. Like general categorizations. Not exact science, okay?

So let's, from this perspective, let's see our newspapers. We have different categories as I

said before. The first category should be populist central right-wing. Okay? Populist

central right-wing. What kind of newspapers fall under this category? We have Hürriyet gazetesi.

Okay. Milliyet gazetesi. Posta gazetesi. Takvim gazetesi. Güneş gazetesi. Akşam gazetesi.

Türkiye gazetesi. Okay? We can put more here but these are the general newspapers. And don't forget

that these newspapers can be different things in different times of the history. But the categories

is for today. You know from today's point of view. Not like 50 years ago. Okay? So what is our

second category? It should be a secular secular nationalist wing. Okay? So under this category

we have Sözcü gazetesi. Yeni Çağ gazetesi. Korkusuz gazetesi. Yurt gazetesi. So

we have another category. The third category. It is the left-wing. More leftist, social democrat

like that kind of a secular of course category. And under this we have Cumhuriyet gazetesi.

Radikal gazetesi. Birgün gazetesi. Sol gazete. Okay? So another one, the fourth

categorization is conservative wing. Okay? Conservative wing.

So we have Yenişafak gazetesi. Karar gazetesi. Milli gazete. Yeni Asya gazetesi. Okay?

These are the main basic categories and the popular newspapers in Turkey. Of course we have much more like

small differences between these categories and we have more newspapers in Turkey. But

this was a you know a brief explanation. Okay these are like most common ones.

But which ones from these lists are the top five in Turkey? So we have a chart.

It changes you know as you can know because these newspapers are daily and they have daily

reports. But let's see for example a report from 7th between 7th and 13th of March 2021.

This is a circulation report. 07-13 MART 2022 HAFTASI TİRAJ RAPORU

Let's see. The first category is like Hürriyet. Then comes Sabah. Then comes Sözcü. Then comes

Milliyet. There comes Turkey. Like the more central politics like the more nationally central

like right wing is like mostly red newspapers not the conservatives or the you know leftist ones.

And about the numbers I have to say you know there are some doubts about the real numbers.

Some say these numbers are altered for different reasons for like manipulated

and I'm not going to go into that either. Anyway but this is the you know list.

So I will give you a link for these top five. So you can they are free. You can read them online

and practice your Turkish. And if you want to you know learn more about Turkey what's going on

but don't know enough Turkish to read from a Turkish newspaper though I think you can check

it out and learn some words and study Turkish newspapers. But you can read about Turkey in

English as well. And we have some English versions of these sites. For example Hürriyet Gazetesi has

you know it's like www.hürriyetdailynews.com and we have Sabah Gazetesi. It's like dailysabah.com.

We have Birgün Gazetesi. It's like www.birgün.net/birgun-daily okay. And we have Turkish Press and it is like turkishpress.com easy easy peasy lemon squeezy.

And we have Cumhuriyet. It's like e-gazete.cumhuriyet.com.tr. So of course you can check

out the other newspapers and you may find English versions or maybe Arabic versions I don't know.

And I think that's it. So I think I this is all the information I can give you about newspapers

and if you are going to read the you know newspapers don't forget the

politics sites I mentioned and you know read the newspapers you know accordingly because you know

there is always manipulation in the news. So I hope you enjoyed this lesson. Please leave

some comments you know do you have these kind of you know political manipulations in your

country's newspapers? And have you ever read any of these newspapers? Was Turkish hard or easy for

you? And which one was your favorite if you read them? And remember if you want to speak Turkish

and learn in the fastest easiest and most fun way go to turkishclasss101.com

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