Embodying the Nation: Self-Representations of ‘Sultans of the Net’ on Social Media

This article considers how Turkish women volleyball players (Sultans of the Net) connect and represent themselves on social media with a trope of Turkishness emphasising the emancipation of women. Turkish women volleyball players use their social media accounts to leverage and build upon their considerable popularity with the Turkish public and beyond. Theoretical strands on media, nationalism, feminism, and representation theory are used to support our arguments. The data covered in this research consists of 351 posts on Instagram by five players (Hande Baladın, Zehra Güneş, Melissa Vargas, Eda Erdem, and Ebrar Karakurt) between the dates August 2023 and August 2024 including when the Sultans of the Net were crowned the champions of Europe and featured in the Paris 2024 Olympics. Findings problematise Global North feminism which tends towards a hostility towards nationalism. The case of Türkiye, with the samples from five athletes, shows that this relationship has a more complex and nuanced nature. Both gender and nationalism are understood differently within various iterations of the nation, and by choosing a Kemalist iteration of nationalism in the Turkish case. In addition, the players' choice to align themselves with Türkiye's broader journey as a modern liberal nation is particularly noteworthy.