Özet:

In the Western Balkans Turkey is often perceived as a rising power because of its population, territory, resources, strong economy, political and diplomatic influence and military power. According to such perceptions, Turkish presence in the Western Balkans has been aimed at peace, stability, mediation, trade and commerce. However, due to strong impact of the great powers, especially from the West, on Western Balkans countries, Turkish diplomatic and political presence is sometimes questioned within these countries. This paper makes assumptions that the great powers, especially in the West, were either supporting the coup or were indifferent regarding the events of the July 15. Thus, being under strong American, Russian, Turkish and European influence, it is of utmost importance to research the political and diplomatic inclinations of the Western Balkans countries with regards to July 15. This paper employed the content analysis in order to determine how July 15 events were presented in the daily newspapers in selected Western Balkans countries such as Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. In order to test research objectives on subjective vs. objective daily newspapers reporting and overall on the nature of daily newspapers’ coverage of July 15, the research will analyze randomly selected news from the following newspapers Dnevni avaz (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Vecernji list (Croatia), Vecernje novosti (Serbia), Vijesti (Montenegro). Multistage sampling will be used to select samples to be analyzed. The research is limited to a period between July 15, 2016 and July 15, 2017. The research findings will indicate the Western Balkans media perceptions of July 15 coup d’état in Turkey.

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