ÇİFTLİK BANK: A TRAGICOMIC FRAUD AS AN EXAMPLE OF POLITICIZATION OF THE DISCOURSE ABOUT NUTRITION SECTOR IN CONTEMPORARY TURKEY
ÇİFTLİK BANK: A TRAGICOMIC FRAUD AS AN EXAMPLE OF POLITICIZATION OF THE DISCOURSE ABOUT NUTRITION SECTOR IN CONTEMPORARY TURKEY

Summary/Abstract: Politicizing of consumption like the boycott is a part of modern life. Politicizing of nutrition production discourse as a fraud in contemporary Turkey is a unique example of Turko-Islamist ruling ideology’s instrumentalization in the nutrition sector. Çiftlik Bank by Turkish Capital Market Board is a Ponzi scheme. The founder is a 27 years old young Turkish amateur failed internet phenomenon and amateur rap singer Mehmet Aydın. From 2016 to 2018, Mehmet Aydın collected approximately 128 million USD from 80.000 victims. He fled to Uruguay. The aim of the study is to discuss the social, economic and political root of “easily conned” practices in the Turkish society’s common mind-set in making a semiotic analysis of the Çiftlik Bank’s founder Mehmet Aydın’s speech. From Çiftlik Bank’s Youtube account three videos are used as the materials of the study. The method is a semiotic discourse analysis method of Raymond Williams, cultural materialism. Mehmet Aydın’s discourse utilizes Tayyip Erdoğan’s elements. It could be evaluated ludicrous, absurd and surreal for a commercial business. The economic infrastructure of the Turkish society could be evaluated as a coherent base for anti-democratic, ultra-nationalist, xenophobe, revanchist and dogmatic dominant collective minds. For this type of mind-set, easily conned could stay as a frequented and associated practice.

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