Questioning the Compass of the Western Media: Early Perceptions of the July 15 Coup Attempt in Turkey

This study investigates how the Western media reacted immediately after the July 15, 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, in which a group of armed forces loyal to FETÖ aimed to overthrow Turkey’s democratically elected government. To this end, 91 news reports and articles in ten newspapers from the U.S., the UK, Germany, and France, dating from July 15 to July 18, 2016, were analyzed. Based on content analysis, the early perceptions of the Western media were categorized by sentiment as positive, neutral, or negative in terms of their tone, feeling, and emotion regarding the coup attempt. The findings show that only 42 publications were neutral only reporting the news, while 44 publications were positive about the coup attempt favoring the junta and failing to support the democratically elected government. On the other hand, only five publications expressed negative opinions about the coup attempt by showing strong support for democracy and expressing anti-coup views. Frequency analysis also shows that the most commonly used keywords and phrases in the news and articles were Erdoğan’s authoritarianism (58 times), the polarization of society (32 times), Erdoğan’s oppression (28 times), Erdoğan dividing the country (16 times), and the instability of Erdoğan’s regime/dictatorship (15 times). Overall, the analysis shows that journalists are not free of bias; most of them missed or neglected the damaging consequences of the coup attempt on Turkish democracy and society due to their negative perceptions about the incumbent government.