Actors, Scenarios and Advertising in the Turkish Alcoholic Beverage Market: To Be Fish or Not Being Able To Be in Raki Ads

This paper takes its lead from the process of legal regulations regarding advertising in the alcoholic beverages market in 2009, its actors, their public or hidden scenarios of these actors, and the raki ads, which were produced in the end of the process. The market structure that enables the advertising, strategies and tactics of the advertiser/ owner are examined and the paper traces the question whether the advertising can be a form of resistance in the raki market in Turkey. In the course of the paper, the agents of the political power and the power of the owner of the capital are not considered as contenders in the arena of power politics, but as parties of the symbiosis. In the same vein, by the theoretical frame of economy politics, the paper argues that advertising cannot be signified as a form of resistance. Thus, the argument is grounded on the context of both de/reregulation process of alcoholic beverages market and of the reproduction and inducement of private monopolization by state.