The Perception of Gender Issues by the Turkish Columnists: The example of Yeni Şafak Daily

This paper is written to portray how the center-right Yeni Şafak Daily’s columnists perceived and dealt with the Turkish women’s issues in 2008. In the evaluation of the articles as well as in the parts where the results are presented, special attention is given to women’s issues mostly discussed in Yeni Şafak and the gender of the columnists. In 2008, the Yeni Şafak Daily’s columnists focused on three main areas regarding women. As the first one, male as well as female writers defended that there ought to be no discrimination against veiled women. Further, the columnists condemned violence towards women and also wrote about female politicians. According to the results of this research, female columnists wrote more than four times than their male colleagues on women’s issues. The Yeni Şafak Daily’s female columnists who dedicated more than 19% of their total work on women’s issues, are sensitive to gender issues.