Abstract:

Critical studies on Orientalism interrogates the hierarchies of power constructed between the East and the West. It has been stated that orientalist discourse has been instrumentalized by the West as a vehicle to sustain hegemony over the East. Approaching the notion of Orientalism from a national perspective, this article aims to critically analyze the manifestation of Turkey’s center-perphery relations in the advertising discourse. For this purpose, this article undertakes a critical discourse analysis of two Turkish Airlines advertisements about the opening of Iğdır and Ordu-Giresun Airports in Turkey’s peripheral provinces. Accompanied by the discourses of nationalist and consumerist ideologies, this article argues that advertisements constitue an orientalist discourse that situates the peripheral other vis-à-vis the Western self, represented by the technological, modern, developed and civilizational values of Turkish Airlines.

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