Page 248 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

Özgün’s own proud claim is that her home audiences include many men—which
is possible, given the numbers of retired and jobless in Turkey. Regardless, how-
ever, her choice of “social issues” for discussion (such as public health, munici-
pal services, and crime rates) as well as performance style imply a mixed home
audience. Her studio audiences are consciously gender and age mixed. The “ex-
pert guests” she invites differ according to the choice of topic and the exigencies
of programming—except every Friday morning, when Yasar Nuri Öztürk is the
unchanging and indisputable authority.
Below I focus on the Friday morning program exclusively, to illustrate the dy-
namic between Yasar Nuri Öztürk (as the expert), Ayse Özgün (as the hostess),
and the studio audience (as a protagonist), such that particular kinds of knowl-
edge are constructed. For analytical purposes, I take up “the performance” and
Yasar Nuri Öztürk’s own discourse and rhetoric as different “layers” that operate
separately. 12

The Performance and the Players

On Friday mornings the show begins as usual, with generics and music
followed by camera shots of Ayse Özgün’s face addressing home audiences di-
rectly as “our dear” or “very dear viewers” as well as “our respected viewers.”
Ayse Özgün, as the producer and hostess of the program, is, of course, a “celeb-
rity” herself; after all, the show bears her name. She is a hefty woman in her
¤fties, with a cherubic face, elaborately coiffed and costumed in brightly col-
ored matching ensembles—who appears on camera as if she had just walked
out of a Brazilian telenovella (to my mind at least). Her appearance, as well as
the dynamism she projects as she rushes around with a microphone in her hand,
seemingly caught up in the heat of the discussion and eager to give everyone in
the studio audience a voice, makes her performance one of the main objects of
watching during the show.
But the program proceeds with a solemnity that be¤ts Yasar Nuri Öztürk’s
status and knowledge. Ayse Özgün’s own performance is a skilled combination
of “sincerity” and “congeniality”—enacted somewhat differently when address-
ing studio/home audiences and Yasar Nuri Öztürk himself. She is “sincerely”
ignorant on matters pertaining to “Islam”—which allows her to be awkward
when posing questions to Yasar Nuri Öztürk (on behalf of audiences). But be-
cause she is “honestly” concerned about what she is asking, “lack of knowledge”
is transformed into an emotional appeal.
She addresses Yasar Nuri Öztürk as hocam, a word that has been assimilated
into everyday Turkish as a general term of respect for someone of learning, but
much less distant than the alternative sayin which acknowledges of¤cial stature,
as in the English “sir.” She seeks “illumination” in the third-person plural “we,”
but lapses into “I” when emotionally moved.
But in addition to the “we,” for those of “us” in the studio and at home
who seek illumination, Ayse Özgün periodically brings into the picture “poor

Becoming “Secular Muslims” 237