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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A Staten Island college professor has received a prestigious award for an outstanding contribution to the study of international communication.
Bilge Yesil, a professor of media culture at the College of Staten Island, Willowbrook, was awarded the Distinguished Scholarship Award – Best Book of 2025, from the National Communication Association’s International and Intercultural Communication Division.
The award recognizes Yesil’s latest book, “Talking Back to the West: How Turkey Uses Counter-Hegemony to Reshape the Global Communication Order.”
Published in 2024, the book offers a critical examination of how Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party has sought to reposition the country on the world stage. In the 2010s, the party launched an English-language media system to elevate Turkey’s image, counter Western criticism of its increasingly authoritarian practices, and promote its own geopolitical and economic interests.
Yesil’s analysis traces how party-backed outlets frame Turkey as a champion of the oppressed and a counterweight to Western powers, while also revealing how media and communication initiatives often obscure facts, rely on identity politics, and weaponize anti-Western rhetoric to consolidate domestic power and bolster Turkey’s regional ambitions.
“It really feels wonderful to receive this recognition from my peers,” said Yesil. “As academics, we invest a great deal of time and energy in our work — often over many years — so it is deeply rewarding to see it recognized and appreciated by readers. It’s also a reminder that all those long days (and nights) of research and writing were worthwhile, and that the ideas I hoped would spark conversation are finding an audience.”
In recognizing Yesil’s work, the International and Intercultural Communication Division of the National Communication’s Association highlighted the book’s innovative approach to understanding how communication strategies intersect with authoritarianism, religion, and identity politics. The division is one of the most active scholarly communities, dedicated to advancing research and teaching that explore communication across cultural and national boundaries.
Yesil said she hopes her book will inspire more conversations and scholastic research on communication strategies countries are using across the world, through the lenses outside traditional methods.
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