Discourse Analyses of Ergenekon Cases' PR Campaigns in Taraf and Zaman Newspapers

This dataset accompanies a study that employed the Topic Modelling method (based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation – LDA principles) to analyze a corpus of 1,537 opinion pieces, investigating the transformation of political and security discourse in Gulenist newspapers between 2008 and 2014. The aim of the analysis was to statistically reveal the underlying themes (topics) and the clustering of key terms (topic terms) within the corpus. The simulation identified nine main topics. The results statistically confirm a significant shift in the primary security actor from the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) to the National Intelligence Organisation (MIT). Furthermore, the study demonstrates that media campaigns supporting judicial initiatives, such as Ergenekon and Balyoz, against the TSK were orchestrated via Taraf and Zaman newspapers using a systematic "public relations" strategy. These campaigns represented not only a legal process but also an institutional and ideological struggle.

The related media content analyzed in this study can be downloaded from the following link:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mymTHn7SLqcQFlz3Mnb2rdutYeXgBjWA?usp=drive_link