THE PRESENTATION OF TRADITION-MODERNITY DICHOTOMY IN THE “WOMEN WHIRLING DERVISHES” CASE FILE PUBLISHED IN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TURKEY

The purpose of this study, through the assertion that the National Geographic Magazine perceive the world with an American ideological perspective and that the presentation of the Third World Countries is made within this perspective as stated in Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins’ collaborative work titled as “Reading National Geographic”, to review the modernity-tradition dichotomy of the modernization process of Turkey via the photographs and texts covered in this magazine and trace this point of view. The article that is analyzed within this context, written by Oya Ayman and whose subject is the women who perform the Mevlevi "sema ritual", published in National Geographic Turkey magazine April 2004 issue, is reviewed with a phenomenological assessment using the concepts of tradition, modernity and orientalism. The above-mentioned subject is discussed on the scale of "tradition and modernity" topics. This discussion is based on the "tradition-modernity" and "East-West" dichotomies. How the "religion" phenomenon and the cultural elements created by this phenomenon are perceived and presented by National Geographic magazine is discussed. This study reviews the approach of the magazine to these topics critically as well as it analyzes this approach considering its relation with the hegemonic ideology, and discusses the perspective of the Western World to the East, Islam and Islamic traditions within the "orientalism" framework, which leads to the questioning of the role and the effectiveness of the National Geographic Magazine.