Introduction

The Greek crisis and the memoranda

In 2009, Greece entered an unprecedented economic crisis, well beyond the scale that other countries faced during the same period, in terms of duration and productive decline. The cumulative loss of around 26% of GDP during the 2009–2016 period, the skyrocketing unemployment that reached 27% in 2014 (nearly three times the previous 10 years’ average) and the bankruptcy of 200,000 small and medium enterprises were just the tips of the iceberg.

The crisis in Greece was an integral part of a broader structural crisis that was described as a crisis of neoliberalism, perceived as the insistence on private enterprise and on the weakening of the broader public sector (Dumenil and Levy 2011). The crisis showcased the weaknesses and the frailty of an economic structure that depended on the excessive growth of fictitious capital (Harvey 2010). The increase of public and private debt, and the dependence of consumption on lending as a counterweight to the austerity policies, was not a Greek peculiarity. It became a common characteristic of all Western economies immediately after the structural crisis of the early 1970s. In the United States, the economy was shaken by the securitisation of structured bonds that included an unknown amount of high-risk loans of the mortgage market (Krugman 2012). In Ireland and Spain, the overdeveloped mortgage market was also at the heart of the financial crisis. In Cyprus, the banks themselves and in particular their risky investments led the state to emergency lending to prevent their collapse. Greece was led to the memorandum of understanding (MoU) (conditionalities) imposed by the IMF and the EU as a prerequisite for its lending, due to its inability to borrow and service the public debt, which was the trigger of its economic crisis. Thus, public debt proved to be the weak link in a long chain of structural imbalances (Bofinger 2012).

A common feature of all these different crises was the reproductive incapacitation, under its working terms, of an economic model based on two pillars. The first pillar was continuous austerity and low wages (Blyth 2013). The second pillar was borrowing by employees, households and businesses, which facilitated the expansion of commodity production, the realisation of surplus value and the expanded reproduction of capital (Streeck 2014).

In the euro area in particular, the distorted structure of the monetary union was made obvious (Lapavitsas et al. 2012).

Introduction

This chapter looks at how the newspapers that position themselves as politically close to the government portrayed and presented the health sector agenda of the government. The chapter is based on a scan of two major pro-government newspapers of the period, Zaman and Yeni Şafak, between 2002 and 2011.

These two dailies were scanned for news articles and columns on health policy changes in particular and the Turkish health sector in general. The aim of this chapter is to show how the pro-government media portrayal of the health sector complemented a broader discursive narrative of the government on health. This portrayal positions the government determined to end victimisations caused by the pre-AKP (Justice and Development Party) era healthcare system, presents changes introduced to the healthcare system by the AKP as unprecedented developments and depicts opponents of the reform – namely doctors – as driven by self-interest.

In the AKP's populist discourse, serving the people, treating all citizens as equal, being just, representing a radically different approach from previous governments and the claiming to introduce a total change of mentality in the country emerge as central themes. This populist politics rests on a discursive opposition constructed between the ‘Old Turkey’, where the AKP claims the citizens were victimised by the elites, and the ‘New Turkey’ that the AKP offers to construct on the basis of equality.

Day-to-day issues such as health and transformation are areas through which the populist politics are constructed as the short-term consequences of those issues are compatible with the short-term result-oriented agenda of populist politics. This study will look at how the populist politics of AKP is constructed through health reform. In this broader political picture, healthcare emerged as a key discursive space where the AKP's populist claims to end ‘Old Turkey’s’ social inequalities and ‘victimisations’ materialised. Furthermore, the AKP's changes to the healthcare system were presented as steps that symbolised the creation of a ‘New Turkey’ where previously victimised people are saved from privileged elites.

In other words, it was not only structural changes that the AKP insistently aimed to introduce into the health system through the Health Transformation Programme (HTP) but also a strong discursive determinacy to propagate these changes as the end of the inequalities of ‘Old Turkey’ that created a rupture in Turkey's larger political field.

Introduction

As the world continues to linger in the gloom of COVID-19, the narrative of the epidemic has been flipped in China where the virus controversially originated. With the public memories about the missteps took by the Wuhan government in handling the outbreak fading away, the mass media adapted the tragic story to a national victory achieved by the central government (Case 2020). Proactive diplomatic strategies, such as providing masks and vaccines to other countries, have been taken to boost the soft power of China in the global sphere (Verma 2020). Accordingly, it is argued that instead of being weakened by the ‘blundering initial responses’, Xi Jinping managed to present himself as ‘a forceful and triumphant leader on the world stage’ (Huang 2020). Such reversal was accomplished through ‘a tremendous behind-the-scene effort’ made by the domestic media (Yuan 2021a). Facilitated by the tightened censorship during the pandemic (Shibu 2020), state media abiding by the party line has been the dominant sources of information that has been shaping the mainland audiences’ perception of the crisis. It is revealed in a recent study that by ‘sharing positive stories and promoting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) pandemic response, rewriting recent history in a manner favourable to the CCP as the coronavirus pandemic evolved, and using targeted ads to spread preferred messages’ (Molter and DiResta 2020) the state media frames the onslaught of COVID-19 as an ‘extraordinary and historic test’ that the Chinese nation led by the CCP eventually passed after hard fighting (Zhao and Liu 2020).

Among the heroic figures that constitute the epic narrative of conquering the contagion, medical professionals seem the most outstanding group highlighted by the government and the media (Stanway and Pollard 2020). In September 2020, on a ceremony celebrating the victory over the crisis held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Xi Jinping awarded four medical experts who are regarded as the ‘role models in the country's fight against the COVID-19 epidemic’ (CGTN 2020). As the awardee of the highest honour in China – ‘Medal of the Republic’, respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan along with many other scientists and specialists contributed significantly to rewriting the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic into an inspiring story of the central government leading its people to overcome disasters.

If there is something that we have learned as an international community during the past few (and not only) years is that in today's interconnected world, a crisis is never ‘far away’ from us. From the recent paradigms of the international financial crisis in 2008 and its aftermath to the pandemic of COVID-19 and the war between Russia and Ukraine, we have all experienced the effects of a crisis in different contexts and depths.

Research on crisis and crisis communication involves many models and definitions, but with the common denominator that a crisis is a major occurrence with a potentially negative outcome (Coombs 2015). A basic condition of a crisis is a non-specific event, which has a strong effect on the entire social tissue and creates feelings of uncertainty (Seeger 1998). In this environment, political communication is expected to highlight clear leadership with the aim of alleviating the symptoms of this crisis and strengthening the structures so that the next crisis will have milder effects. Along with the term ‘crisis’, that is both experientially and scholarly defined, the term ‘political communication’ has been widely researched and sometimes vaguely defined. For example, Pye (1993: 422) follows a social-constructivist definition by arguing that political communication is ‘the flow of messages and information that gives structure and meaning to the political process’. In addition, Blumler (2014: 39) highlights the importance of the media organisations suggesting that political and media organisations ‘show a horizontal interaction while on a vertical axis, they separately and jointly engage in disseminating and processing information and ideas to and from the mass citizenry’. Other scholars (Jamieson and Kenski 2014; Powell and Cowart 2003) with a wider approach define political communication as a communicative activity of citizens, individual political figures, public institutions, media and social movements. Perloff (2018: 12) defines political communication as a ‘complex, communicative activity in which language and symbols, employed by leaders, media, citizens and citizen groups, exert a multitude of effects on individuals and society, as well as on outcomes that bear on the public policy of a nation, state or community’, highlighting the notion of political leadership.

At this point, Kahn (2020) identifies two models of leadership, namely the Political Prominence Model, where the political protagonist receives advice from experts but still reserves the decision-making process and the Expert Appointee Prominence Model, where the politician focuses on delegation of the decisionmaking process.

Historical Context

First memorandum

In January 2019, the increased borrowing needs of Greece, which signalled the concept of ‘public debt crisis’, led the rating agency Standard & Poor's to downgrade the country's credit rating from A to A–. Under such pressure, the prime minister of Greece, K. Karamanlis, affiliated with New Democracy (ND) (the Greek right-wing party), announced early elections for 4 October 2009, where PASOK (the Greek centre party) emerged as the winning party with a percentage of 43.92% with the party leader G. Papandreou uttering the characteristic words ‘The money's there’. Sixteen days later, on 20 October 2009, the – at the time – Minister of Finance G. Papakonstantinou announced to ECOFIN that the deficit for 2009 would be around 12.7% as a percentage of GDP and not 6%, as had been calculated by the previous government of ND. At the same time, on 22 October, the rating agency Fitch downgraded Greece's credit rating from level A to level A– and on 8 December, from A– to BBB+. Eight days later, the Standard & Poor's agency downgraded Greece from status A to status BBB+ and, on 23 December, the Moody's from level A1 to level A2. At the same time, the European press appeared to be aggressive towards Greece (see the cover of the German magazine Focus, on 22 February 2010, with the title ‘Swindlers in the Euro Family’ and the statue of the Goddess Aphrodite (Venus de Milo) ‘making an obscene gesture’ against Europe or the cover of The Economist reminiscent of the movie Apocalypse Now with the modified title Acropolis now, which depicts the Acropolis surrounded by military helicopters and Angela Merkel on the right side of the cover next to the subtitle ‘The horror, the horror’). In this context of solid European pressure, Greece was called upon to comply with the European labour market reform and fiscal consolidation, which has begun since the 1990s, with the main aim of strengthening competitiveness.

Second memorandum

Following Papandreou government's first memorandum and the severe social unrest, Papandreou resigned. Before that, he had announced a referendum on the new loan agreement that was cancelled four days later, following the stance of the European partners, who jointly decided that in the event of a referendum, the question should be whether Greece will remain in the EU or not.

Crisis is an opaque term, applicable to a range of different domains and practices. Its origins lie in the progression and treatment of disease, where crisis indicates a turning point at which the disease becomes more serious (Kamei 2019). Central to many definitions that are shared across different disciplines is that a crisis is an unexpected disruption that will, or is perceived by some, lead to adverse outcomes. In sociology and political science, a crisis is characterised as a ‘period of discontinuity, marking the breaking point in a patterned process of linearity’ (Boin 2005).

Crises and their effects have been conceptualised at different levels at which they occur. First is the micro level. These are crises that affect or are a result of errors made by an individual. Next is the meso level, which are the crises that impact on organisations or are a consequence of organisational failures. Finally, there is the macro level, the crises that have widespread repercussions for society. The focus of this chapter is these crises that have a wider societal impact. While some may appear more limited in their geographic or temporal latitudes, with their acute impacts experienced by a particular state or country, many reflect the accumulation and intersection of vulnerabilities that lead to crisis. This includes those that connect to or are a consequence of global challenges, the climate crisis, pandemic risks and structural inequalities, for example.

This chapter seeks to illuminate the concept of crisis. It addresses questions concerning the nature of crisis, their different forms and the underlying processes and actors that shape crisis and their outcomes. To this end, it begins by evaluating the contrasting definitions and the common characteristics of crises. At a macro level, a crisis is often understood as a disruptive event or process that will have a significant impact on society. These may be slow burning, evolving gradually and over time, environmental degradation and persistent conflict are two evident examples here, and, as a consequence, there may be uncertainty about the appropriate course of action (Nohrstedt 2008). Others, such as disaster and financial shocks, are characterised as acute events. While this typology of crises is well established within the literature, it is unable to encompass the breadth of risks, vulnerabilities and underpinning processes that precipitate crisis.