Abstract:

The media has always been a tool of hegemony for political leaders in the arena of politics from the past until today. The formation of politics over media, its role in determining the social opinions, its having the potential of influencing social reliability attributed to institutions and similar other factors may be given among the reasons of the media holding this power in its hands. For this reason, political actors use the media effectively in forming the public opinion and try to impose their policies to the society by using it. In the election periods, which are extraordinary periods especially for democratic countries, politicians try to form their own public opinions. In this context, the political speeches are considered in the propaganda concept, and thus propaganda, as a one-way communication method, becomes important in terms of manipulating the masses. In this study, the discourse of the candidates' propaganda speeches was solved in the presidential election held in Turkey for the first time in 2014. As a conclusion, when the propaganda speeches of the candidates are examined (although the name is propaganda) it becomes obvious that the leaders did not use all of the propaganda methods completely.