Introduction

Abstract

This study considers the media system in Turkey through the lens of rights and citizenship. It attempts to bring together a perspective that considers processes such as Europeanisation, de-Europeanisation and digitalisation in relation to communication and citizenship, thereby arriving at a holistic view of the transformation of the media under the rule of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party. It tracks the transformation of the media, in all its aspects (mainstream, minority, alternative, digital), since the beginning of the 2000s through normative, communicative and participative citizenship trajectories and through entrepreneurial citizenship practices. There is an ever-present need to make sense of the country’s recent political changes, which have spanned more than two decades and reflect the transition from a democratising, Europeanising parliamentary republic to a presidential system. This chapter includes the studies and fieldwork from which the data are drawn, and reviews the relationship between media and citizenship in a European context. It also introduces the remaining chapters and describes the structure of the book. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.