Title: "Mak[ing] Turkey and the Turkish Revolution Known to Foreign Nations Without any Expense":* Propaganda Films in the Early Turkish Republic
Abstract: Cinema , according to an article published in the popular journal, Resimli Ay in 1930, was the most powerful means of propaganda... In every film we watch there is propaganda, to a greater or lesser extent .1 This view echoes that of many leading statesmen and politicians of the period, Stalin describing film as the greatest means of mass agitation ,2 while for the well-known English novelist John Buchan, speaking in the House of Commons in 1932, cinema was the most powerful engine of propaganda and advertisement on the globe today .3 This powerful engine was certainly not overlooked by the Turkish Republi can elite for whom propaganda in general was regarded as a vital tool of foreign policy, designed to impart the true vision of Turkey to the rest of the world, in cluding its very near neighbours. The Turkish government was willing to use any propaganda means that came to hand. Thus the offer made in 1935 by a French newspaper was of considerable interest. In December 1935, Henri Vautour, from the management of the newspaper Paris Soir, wrote to the Press Director, Vedat Tor, at the Internal Affairs Ministry in Ankara. Explaining that Paris Soir, with a circulation of 2,000,000 copies per day, was the highest circulating newspaper in France read by everybody, and that Paris Midi, with a circulation of more than 100,000, was sold both in France and in neighbouring countries and was read by the rich and educated classes, more especially in Paris, he stressed the considerable
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-08-12
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 2
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