State apparatus vs. surrogate sphere: a comparative analysis of domestic and international media in Turkish elections

This study investigates the deepening editorial schism between domestic (Anadolu Agency, TRT) and international (BBC Turkish, DW Turkish, Sputnik Turkey) public media in Turkey’s competitive authoritarian context, tracking their divergence across four consecutive elections (June 2015, November 2015, June 2018, May 2023). Drawing from a corpus of 1.5 million tweets, we employ a mixed-methods analysis on 22,739 campaign-related tweets to examine three dimensions: media visibility of political parties, thematic framing patterns, and discursive positioning of political actors. Our findings reveal a statistically significant and stark dichotomy. Domestic public media exhibit an extreme pro-incumbent bias, allocating over 92% of visibility to the ruling party by 2023, while confining opposition parties to narrow thematic frames and portraying them predominantly as passive objects of government criticism. Conversely, international public media maintain a relative editorial balance, providing opposition parties with substantive visibility, diverse thematic coverage, and discursive agency as active political subjects. This systematic comparison provides robust empirical evidence of the partisan capture of Turkey’s domestic public media, documenting their transformation from public forums into a state apparatus. Furthermore, it demonstrates how international public media have evolved to function as a surrogate public sphere, filling the void in a highly polarized and restrictive media environment.