State Policy Is a Children's Toy? :Reexamination of Impacts of the Political on the Social through Images of Children in Commercials

Atacan Atakan, University of Arizona

Since the beginning of Westernization reforms and subsequently the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire during the mid-nineteenth century, children and youth were closely monitored, controlled, disciplined and regulated by the state and its various institutions. This Foucauldian notion of biopolitical regime of the state, was perpetuated and reinforced during the history of Republic of Turkey. Till the millenium, each government required children to be loyal to the nation, to have strong, robust, and healthy bodies, and to align with the patriarchal and heteronormative structure. Since 2002, Justice and Development Party, nevertheless, changed the expectations even though biopolitical regime has been maintained. Raising a religious generation which has been expected to adopt Islamic values and sources and to be loyal to its Ottoman heritage. Taking these developments into consideration, first, I aim to trace the changing state discourses regarding an ideal generation and children’s healthcare between 1923 and 2019. Second, I am going to show in what ways and to what extent the state discourses were adopted through the commercials advertised by different media sources. In so doing, I scrutinize multiple representations of children and use them to comprehend the impacts of political milieu on the social one. Also, through my paper, I am seeking the answers of the following questions: What did the images and representations of children in commercials reveal regarding ideal corporeality and sexuality? What did they signify regarding abject bodies/sexualities/ethnicities? What were the roles of nationalism, Islam, modernization, and globalization in formation of an image? What were the roles of these commercials in cultural and medical areas? To substantiate my points, I am going to drawing on a wide variety of archival sources including children's/women's/healthcare magazines, newspapers, televisual and online commercials, books specifically written on child-rearing/health, child corporeality and sexuality.

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 Presented in Session 20. Childhood and Nationalism