Pluralism's Imprint
by Oya Aktas
Binding made of blue-and-white marbled paper, Ibrahim Muteferrika's Tarihu'l-Hindi'l-Garbi el-Musemma bi Hadis-i Nev, 1142/1730, 22 x 16 cm, DR 403, M825. The Lilly Library, Indiana Univeristy, Bloomington.
Beneath Erdogan’s sweeping press censorship lies a rich history of print culture’s flourishing in a diverse Turkey
THE Committee to Protect Journalists began keeping detailed records of the status of journalists in 1990. In December 2016, the CPJ reported that more journalists were jailed worldwide than at any other point since the organization began tracking this data. And at the top of the list—the winner of the award for the most oppressive media environment—sits Turkey.
As of April 25th, 159 Turkish journalists and media workers are imprisoned, and of these media employees, eight worked for one of Turkey’s oldest dailies, Cumhuriyet. In the campaign season leading up to the April 16th constitutional referendum, Cumhuriyet was one of the few media outlets disseminating material for the “no” campaign, arguing against constitutional changes that would grant the Turkish president sweeping executive, legislative, and judicial powers. Before that, Cumhuriyet incurred the wrath of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for its front-page headline about Turkish intelligence covertly sending weapons into Syria. The author of the piece and editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Can Dündar, was imprisoned and eventually fled the country. This episode occurred before the July 15th coup attempt and the ensuing witch hunt that gave Erdogan carte blanche to quash any and all opposition.
It goes without saying that a free press in any country is fundamental—it allows ideas to circulate freely, and keeps the public informed and elected officials accountable. But in Turkey, the press is also historically significant for groups whose identities are threatened by Erdogan’s imposition of a Muslim identity across the country. In the Ottoman Empire, non-Muslim minorities led the growth of press and newspapers, and later secular state reformers mobilized the press as a tool for engaging more directly with Muslim and non-Muslim communities alike, as well as in promulgating a secular Turkish identity.
Cumhuriyet was established in 1924 by Yunus Nadi, a close associate of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Named after the Turkish word for “republic,” Cumhuriyet was established to promote the state’s revolutionary secular republic-building agenda.[1] Although national leaders had established Ankara as the capital of the Republic the year before, Nadi chose Istanbul, the former capital of the Ottoman Empire, to be the home of his daily newspaper.
He was not alone in his choice. In 1935, although the city constituted only 4.5 percent of Turkey’s population, 35 percent of the nation’s newspapers, 68 percent of its journals, and 72 percent of its books were published in Istanbul.[2] Perhaps the selection of Istanbul was born out of necessity more than choice: Much the way Washington, D.C. was chosen in the 1790s, Ankara was selected for its strategic location, and it rapidly developed from a small town into a capital city. Though Ankara was the capital, it likely lacked the press technology or literate readership to support the publication of a daily newspaper. By circulating a daily across Istanbul instead, Cumhuriyet appealed to a long tradition of intelligentsia and newspaper consumption dating back to the mid-nineteenth century.
Vital to the successful introduction of newspapers after the establishment of the Turkish Republic in the early twentieth century was the introduction of the printing press in the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century. Unlike in Europe, where technological innovation and commercial relationships catalyzed the growth of printing, the Ottoman Empire adopted printing through a top-down imposition with a ferman, or imperial decree, in 1727. The ferman came towards the end of the Tulip Era (1718-1730), a period free of turmoil and rife with conspicuous material consumption in the Ottoman Empire.
In 1719, the Grand Vezir Ibrahim Pasha sent diplomat Mehmet Çelebi Effendi as a special envoy to Paris. His son Said Effendi accompanied him on the trip and returned impassioned to promote the printing press in the empire. Back in Constantinople, Said Effendi partnered with Hungarian-born Muslim convert Ibrahim Müteferrika[3] to convince the Sultan Ahmet III to grant them permission to establish a printing press. In 1726, Ibrahim Müteferrika authored a pamphlet titled “The Usefulness of Printing”[4] in which he listed the benefits that the printing press would bring to the Empire— namely, the spread of education and literacy, the better preservation of texts, and the accessibility of accurate information by way of indices and safeguards against errors.[5] Ibrahim and Said presented this tract to the Grand Vezir, who in turn gave it to the sultan.
Convinced by their arguments, Ahmet III procured a ruling (fetva) from the şeyhülislam, Turkey’s highest religious authority, condoning print media:
Question – If [S]aid, who pretends to have ability in the art of printing says that he can engrave on molds the figures of letters and words of books edited on language, logic, philosophy, astronomy, and similar secular subjects, and produce copies of such books by pressing the paper on the molds, is the practice of such a process of printing permissible to Zaid by canon law. An opinion is asked on the matter.
Answer – God knows it best. If a person who has the ability in the art of printing engraves the letters and words of a corrected book correctly on a mold and produces many copies without difficulty in a short time by pressing the paper on that mold, the abundance of books might cheapen the price and result in their increased purchase. This being a tremendous benefit, the matter is a highly laudable one. Permission should be granted to that person, but some learned persons should be appointed to correct the book the figures of which are to be engraved.[6]
The fetva allowed the dissemination of secular texts and emphasized the importance of accuracy in the printing process, recommending bureaucratic oversight to correct errors. The fetva also made an economic argument for the printing press: The ease and speed of production would lower prices and increase purchase, encouraging the spread of erudition across the empire. But this endorsement of the printing press caused consternation among manuscript copyists, who saw an existential threat to their profession. So, to appease calligraphers and theologians, Ahmet III’s ferman decreed that printing presses could only produce secular works—that the Quran, the hadith, and similar religious texts would remain under copyists' purview.[7] This decision limited the volume and speed of religious text production when compared to secular texts, which could be mass produced and widely disseminated. [2]
Although this state decree and Ibrahim Müteferrika’s establishment of the first official printing press marked an important innovation in the empire, minorities in the Ottoman Empire had been operating printing presses for centuries, dating back to the late 1400s. Two Jewish brothers, David and Samuel Nahmias, established the first Ottoman press in Constantinople in 1493. [8] Other members of the Jewish community quickly followed, opening publishing houses in cities such as Edirne and Aleppo, as well as Salonika—which became the main Jewish publishing center in the empire. Apkar of Sivas—an Armenian priest and student of typography in Venice—followed the Nahmias’ example and established the first Armenian press in Constantinople in 1567. Nicodemus Metaxas, a Greek printer trained in London, founded the first Greek press in 1627, also in Constantinople.[9] All three communities founded their inaugural presses to print religious texts in their respective languages—in contrast to the strict forbiddance of printing Muslim religious texts by official presses—but they sometimes published Turkish language versions as well.[10] By 1729, the number of minority publishing houses opened in the empire had reached 37.[11]
Just as the minority publishers before him, Müteferrika relied heavily on western technologies to operate his publishing house, importing six printing machines and paper from Europe. Although paper mills in Istanbul and Amasya supplied raw materials, they were unable to compete with their European counterparts. In 1741 Müteferrika established his own paper mill just outside of Istanbul, but it only remained in operation until 1755.[12]
Although it did not inaugurate Islamic or Ottoman printing, Ibrahim Müteferrika’s press was the first state-supported secular Turkish press. But while Müteferrika made the state’s approval highly visible in the first book he printed, the extent of state support behind the endeavor remains unclear. Most sources suggest that the government supplied consent rather than active assistance. In his accounts of Turkish culture based on his 1840s travels, British Colonel Charles White presents a more engaged state:
Regular salaries were allotted to these two active promoters of knowledge [Ibrahim Müteferrika and Said Effendi], and the above mentioned Mufty and Grand Vizir rendered them all possible assistance. Four of the principal magistrate[s] were appointed censors; and Sultan Achmet, who survived the erection of the establishment little more than three years, constantly visited the presses, and encouraged the directors and their German workmen. His example was followed by Mahmoud I.[13]
White’s account may reflect the value the state conferred on the press in the 1730s, or it may present an 1840s revisionist retrospective communicated to him after the state had published an official newspaper in the 1830s. Müteferrika’s press produced between 500 and 1,000 copies per printed edition, which is comparable to early average European editions that ranged between two hundred and a thousand copies.[14] However, between the establishment of the press in 1727 and Müteferrika’s death in 1742, his publishing house had only released 17 books. [15] Subsequent managers procured fermans in 1783 and 1794 to keep printing, but the publishing house eventually shut down in 1796. In over six decades of existence, it had only been operational for 18 years, during which time it only produced 24 books.[16] It seems that state support in this period was more symbolic than practical, as Müteferrika’s press could not boast noteworthy success.
Mütefferika’s overarching focus was the education of the empire. The seventeen books printed in his lifetime dealt with history, language, physics, and geography.[17] However, his press did not achieve the level of ubiquity necessary to have much of an effect on how the general public accessed information in the Ottoman Empire. Yasemin Gencer, a specialist in Ottoman and Turkish visual culture and satirical publications, suggests that part of Müteferrika’s failure was due to the high cost of having to import technology from Europe. Moreover, she argues, “European publishers were savvy businessmen first and craftsmen second.”[18] Müteferrika neither cultivated business ties nor understood the importance of advertising and thus could not translate his intellectual endeavor into a commercial success. Since Müteferrika’s publications did not affect a transition from print to print capitalism, they were unable to influence the public sphere.
The Ottoman public was initially constituted through mosques and religious meeting places. Five daily prayers and extra-Friday meetings made the mosque a heavily trafficked public space, and dervish convents provided a forum for contemplative discussion. The spread of coffeehouses in the 17th century further solidified this social sphere.[19] However, these institutions also led to the development of separate publics: for Muslims and minorities. For Muslim communities, public news and government announcements such as imperial laws and regulations were generally disseminated through public criers. Announcements to the non-Muslim population, however, were communicated through collective community responsibility. The government would issue edicts to the heads of the respective communities, and these religious leaders were responsible for ensuring the general communication of the news.[20]
The establishment of the first newspaper in Turkey constituted a state attempt to have greater influence over these diverse public spheres. Sultan Mahmut II, best known for abolishing the Janissary corps and removing a corrupted vestige of past Ottoman glory, established the first Turkish newspaper in 1831. Mahmut II chose the name The Calendar of Events for the paper and intended the monthly publication to be a means of state communication with the public in a controlled and uniform manner. The first issue included an article describing the function of the newspaper:
To know the events of the past serves to keep up the laws and the character of the Empire and the solidarity of the nation… If daily events are not made public at the time of their occurrence, and their true nature is not disclosed, the people are apt to interpret governmental acts in ways which are not even dreamed of or imagined by the authors…In order to check the attacks and misunderstandings and to give people rest of mind, and satisfaction, it is necessary to make them acquainted with the real nature of events… As the kindness of His Majesty regarding all of his subjects, and his goodwill to all friendly powers are evident, the utility of the work will be extended to them by making publications in languages other than Turkish. It has been decided to employ for this purpose a reliable foreign refugee.[21]
Mahmut II also inaugurated a postal system in 1834 to facilitate the transmission of his newspaper.[22] Rather than relying on oral transmission through town criers or religious patriarchs, Mahmut II could justify his actions to different communities directly. As the article indicates, the publication was released in various languages—Arabic, Farsi, Greek, Armenian, Bulgarian, and French—to reach diverse linguistic communities. However, the language variants were not simply direct translations of the Turkish original. Rather, each version contained news that the state felt would be most relevant to the members of the particular linguistic group.[23] Though The Calendar of Events constituted a state attempt to increase influence over majority and minority communities, it did not collapse—or even necessarily diminish—the divisions between the public spheres of the different communities.
Just as printing did not reduce separations between religious communities, rather than unifying the empire under the Turkish language, print capitalism gave francophone subjects a new window into the outside world. Again, just as Müteferrika’s was not the first press in the Ottoman Empire, The Calendar of Events (Takvim-i Vekayi) was not the first newspaper to be produced in the empire. This distinction instead belongs to La Bulletin de Nouvelles, published by the French Embassy in Istanbul beginning in 1795. Along with its two successors, La Gazette Française de Constantinople and Mercure Orientale, this paper disseminated the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution throughout the empire. Its primary audience was French expatriates, but it also targeted the French-speaking Ottoman intelligentsia, which included both Muslims and minorities. The next newspaper appeared in Izmir in 1824. Le Spectateur Oriental also targeted francophone audiences and contained French news, but unlike the publications of the French Embassy, its primary focus was commercial. By relating trade news to francophones living in Izmir, Le Spectateur Oriental became one of the first major capitalist print endeavors in the empire. [24] Consequently, the emergence of print capitalism in the Ottoman Empire fostered an imagined community of francophone merchants and intelligentsia, rather than one centered on the Turkish language.
After these French newspapers had provided the first examples of journalism in the empire, another European-established paper set the conventions and standards of Turkish newspapers. The[6] first non-official publication to follow The Calendar of Events was the weekly Journal of News (Ceride-i Havadis) started by Englishman William Churchill in 1840, just after the death of Mahmut II and the advent of the Tanzimat Era of constitutional reform (1839-1876).[25] Similar to Le Spectateur Oriental’s French focus, Journal of News predominantly covered international affairs. This international focus—coupled with critical commentary on international events—drew the ire of the Russian embassy, which pressured the Ottoman government to shut down the Journal for a brief period. Nevertheless, the Journal quickly reopened, and capitalized on its coverage of widely discussed events such as the Crimean War, thereby demonstrating the importance of the modern newspaper and setting the standard for Turkish journalism. The Journal also simplified its language to increase accessibility, thus creating the first instantiations of “Turkish journalese.”[26] The Journal enjoyed a monopoly on Ottoman journalism for the first twenty years of its existence, but other important Tanzimat newspapers soon emerged: Description of Ideas (Tasvir-i Efkar 1861-1870), The Army Newspaper (Ceride-i Askeriye founded in 1863), Liberty (Hürriyet published in London 1868-1870) and many others.[27]
With this proliferation of newspapers came increased state oversight. Sultan Abdülmecit issued a ferman in 1854 prohibiting printing without government permission, and another in 1856 requiring printers to present their documents to the Ministry of the Official Gazette and pay a portion of their revenue to the Treasury.[28] These restrictions were extended in 1860, making it illegal to open print houses without state permission or publishing anything against the state, members of the government or millets subject to the Ottoman state.[29] The Tanzimat government feared that newspapers would threaten its reform agenda, and censored what it perceived to be incendiary rhetoric. Notably, the Criminal Code also protected millets, or minorities such as Armenians and Greeks, from press criticism as well. When a paper critical of the government, The Informer (Muhbir), received a government-issued warning for publishing an article about the concession of the fortress of Belgrade, its editor-in-chief, Ali Suavi, fled to London to continue The Informer publications, thus inaugurating a trend of expatriate Turkish journalists publishing from Europe.[30] Nevertheless, state censorship did not reach full force until the end of the Tanzimat era and the ascendance of Sultan Abdülhamit II to the imperial throne in 1876.
Historians characterize the Hamidian era (1876-1908) as a reactionary period that undermined the modernizing reforms of the Tanzimat with authoritarian control. When delineating the period of Ottoman censorship, general consensus agrees that it began in 1876. The government enforced censorship laws more vigorously and created new laws to ban words that might cause offense to the sultan. For example, writers could not use the word ‘nose’ for fear it would be perceived as an allusion to the rather bulbous one that Abdülhamit possessed. In response, one journalist wrote:
If someone were to tell Abdülhamid that the word “nose” was forbidden in the Press, how would the people around him explain this? Would they say to the Caliph of the earth: Your majesty, you have quite an ugly nose, that is why we banned this word…[31]
Alongside these stricter restrictions on the press, the government encouraged educational institutions that increased literacy rates and made these publications more accessible. In 1883, Abdülhamit II developed a taxation system that would fund the Education Benefits Share for the construction of public schools. Since schools were already concentrated in Istanbul, the tax funds were allocated across the empire such that by 1897, only 1 percent of elementary schools, 7 percent of middle schools and 3.6 percent of higher education institutions were in Istanbul. Minority groups—who had higher literacy rates than Muslims—maintained their own institutions, with 5,982 elementary schools, 687 middle schools, and 70 universities in 1897. These were also spread out throughout the empire but highly concentrated, with 2.4, 14.7, and 24 percent in Istanbul, respectively. [32] This increase expanded the influence of newspapers, and writers began to supplant religious leaders as the cultural idols of the empire. Although[8] the introduction of the printing press did not affect an Eisenstinian revolution in the Ottoman Empire, the period of newspaper proliferation paired with improved literacy is probably the closest the Ottoman press came to a European print revolution.[33]
In 1908, a group of young intellectual officers in the Turkish military—the Young Turks—carried out a coup against Abdülhamit II. Heavily influenced by Enlightenment ideals, such as liberty and tolerance, the military government established a parliament and adopted rhetoric in support of free speech. In the Press Law of 1909, the Young Turks did away with the pre-publication assessments of earlier Ottoman censors. Still, the law had strict provisions against libel that would result in punitive action. The criminal liability fell chiefly on editors but also included authors, printers, and vendors. Only the readers were exempt. Consequently, despite the lack of pre-publication censorship, publishers still had to self-censor to mitigate the financial risk of issuing recalls.[34] This allowed the Young Turks to espouse Western secular ideals, including free speech, while still silencing opposition.
After World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Atatürk’s Republican government similarly purported to welcome opposition while, in fact, silencing it. Although Atatürk did not significantly alter the government approach to free speech, he did enact a radical transformation of the press through linguistic reform. Ottoman Turkish comprised a complex combination of Arabic, Farsi, and Turkish lexicons and grammatical structures, all written in an Arabic script. The prevalence of Arabic words, structures, and script in Ottoman fostered an intimate relationship between the language of the empire and the language of Islam. By breaking this bond, Atatürk hoped to separate the spheres of state and religion. Through his secularizing reforms, Atatürk changed the call to prayer from Arabic to Turkish and banned Arabic education. Atatürk, in 1928, officially replaced the Arabic script —which Turkish people had used for over a thousand years—with the Roman alphabet. He created a Turkish Language Institute, tasked with codifying the structure of the Turkish language and expunging Arabic and Farsi words by creating more authentic Turkish alternatives.[35] These reforms were meant to simplify the language, making it more easily learned and thereby increasing literacy, as well as purging Arabic and Farsi influence to return to pre-Islamic Turkish roots. Newspapers shifted to the Roman alphabet in 1928 and became an integral component of the transition towards a simpler, more secular language.
Cumhuriyet[36], too, followed the Roman alphabet shift in 1928. By circulating the new Turkish script on a daily basis, it helped to usher in a new Turkish public space and national consciousness. Perhaps one of the most valuable roles it fulfilled, at least in its earliest years, was incorporating minorities into Turkish identity, most visibly through a beauty pageant.
On February 6, 1929, Cumhuriyet announced that it would be hosting a beauty pageant to discover the most beautiful Turkish woman. The winner of the national pageant was to go on to represent Turkey on the international stage at the International Pageant of Pulchritude held in Galveston every year.[37] Less than a decade after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and subsequent establishment of the Turkish Republic, the beauty pageant represented an opportunity for Turkey to showcase its modern women and assert its place among the “civilized” nations of the West. [38] In a daily front-page pageant column, Cumhuriyet published contestants’ photograph submissions, invited readers to vote on the winner of the pageant, and insisted that the provision of feedback constituted a national duty for every citizen. The show functioned as a tool to stir Turkish national consciousness and develop Turkish identity in the aftermath of an anachronous Ottoman one.
In its construction of the Turkish woman, the Cumhuriyet encouraged broad participation. Time and again, it insisted that all “virtuous Turkish girls” were invited to submit their photographs, and that “race, religion, or sectarian differences” would not be considered. [39] In fact, many of the photographic submissions Cumhuriyet published accompanied Jewish, Armenian, and Greek names. The rich tradition of minority presses, as well as the secular connotations of the printing press and newspapers, would have made the newspaper a comfortable avenue for Jewish, Armenian, and Greek participation. Cumhuriyet’s embrace of diversity under a single umbrella of the “Turkish woman” invited minority communities to subscribe to the new Turkish language and the new secular identity. In the early years of the pageant, Jewish, Armenian, and Greek women were consistently successful enough to be pageant finalists. Alongside this inclusivity, Cumhuriyet’s encouragement of broad minority participation also excluded Islam from functioning as a criterion for being Turkish in the new Republic.
As media independence disappears in Turkey, the diversity of backgrounds and ideas that supported its growth goes as well. Censorship and government tension are part of the traditions of Turkish journalism, and strategic newspaper consumption has been considered subversive or incendiary in the past. But now, these institutions are being shut down and silenced entirely. Commenting on the results of the referendum, Turkish journalist Amberin Zaman lamented that the most articulate voices, who could have most effectively put forth the case against the referendum, were all jailed leading to the April 16th vote. Now, the country must bear the burden of the referendum results. As Erdogan dismisses allegations of vote rigging and charges ahead with his vision for a new Islamic Turkey, secular, non-Muslim identities will continue to come under threat, with dwindling avenues through which to voice their concerns.
[1] A. Holly Shissler, “’If You Ask Me’ Sabiha Sertel’s Advice Column, Gender Equity, and Social Engineering in the Turkish Republic,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 3 no. 2 (2007): 1-30.
[2] Gavin D. Brockett, How Happy to Call Oneself a Turk: Provincial Newspapers and the Negotiation of a Muslim National Identity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012), 62.
[3] The term Müteferrika refers to his profession, which was court-stewardship in the imperial palace
[4] Sometimes translated as “The Means of Printing”
[5] Yasemin Gencer, “Ibrahim Müteferrika and the Age of the Printed Manuscript,” The Islamic Manuscript Tradition: Ten Centuries of Book Arts in Indiana University Collections (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 156-7
[6] Ahmed Emin Yalman, The Development of Modern Turkey as Measured by its Press (New York: Columbia University, 1914), 23-4.
[7] For the history of printing the Quran in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, see Translating the Qur’an in an Age of Nationalism: Print Culture and Modern Islam in Turkey by M. Brett Wilson (London: Oxford University Press, 2014).
[8] Gencer ibid, 155,
[9] Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 50. J.R. Osborn, The Type of Calligraphy: Writing, Print, and Technologies of the Arabic Alphabet (Doctoral dissertation), Retrieved from ProQuest Information and Learning Company (3304007).
[10] Clifford Edmund Bosworth et al, Encyclopedia of Islam Vol IV (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989), 799.
[11] Buğra Tokmakoğlu, “Osmanlı’da Basın ve Basın Tarihi,” Milliyet, Dec. 22, 2010.
[12] Gencer, ibid, 159.
[13] Charles White, Three Years in Constantinople vol II (London: Henry Colburn, 1845) 199.
[14] Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 8.
[15] Gencer, ibid, 185.
[16] Bosworth et al, ibid, 801.
[17] William J. Watson, “Ibrahim Müteferrika and Turkish Incunabula,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 88 no. 3 (1968), 436
[18] Gencer, ibid, 182.
[19] Ertuğrul Özkök, “The Turkish Press: 150 Years of Controversy,” The Transformation of Turkish Culture: The Atatürk Legacy, ed. Günsel Renda and C. Max Kortepeter (Princeton: The Kingston Press, 1986) 214
[20] Emin, ibid, 18.
[21] Emin, ibid, 30.
[22] Lewis, ibid, 95.
[23] Uğur Akbulut, “Osmanlı Basın Tarihine Bir Katkı: Gazetelerin Yayınlanma Amaçları Üzerine (1831-1876),” Internatinal Periodical for the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic vol. 8 no. 5 (Spring 2013), 37.
[24] Ali Budak, “Fransız Devrimi’nin Osmanlı’ya Armağanı: Gazete Türk Basınının Doğuşu,” Internatinal Periodical for the Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic vol. 7 no. 3 (Summer 2012).
[25] The Tanzimat Era sought to reform the empire by centralizing Ottoman authority and expanding civil rights, including legal rights of minorities
[26] Lewis, ibid, 147.
[27] Stanford J. and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey Volume II: Reform, Revolution, and Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press: 1977), 128-9.
[28] Irvin Cemil Schick, “Print Capitalism and Women’s Sexual Agency in the Late Ottoman Empire,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, vol. 31 no. 1 (2011), 201
[29] Ebru Boyar, “The Press and the Palace: The Two-Way Relationship Between Abdülhamid II and the Press (1876-1908),” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London vol. 69 no. 3 (2006) 421.
[30] Ipek K. Yosmaoğlu, “Chasing the Printed Word: Press Censorship in the Ottoman Empire 1876-1913,” The Turkish Studies Association Journal vol. 27 no. 1 (2003), 18.
[31] Hüseyin Cahid, Edebi Hatıralar (Istanbul: Akşam Kitaphanesi, 1935), 108 (as cited in Yosmaoğlu).
[32] Shaw and Shaw, ibid, 249.
[33] For more on the print revolution in Europe, see Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
[34] Yosmaoğlu, ibid, 35.
[35] Özcan Başkan, “Turkish Language Reform,” The Transformation of Turkish Culture: The Atatürk Legacy, ed. Günsel Renda and C. Max Kortepeter (Princeton: The Kingston Press, 1986), 95-112.
[36] Although I would have liked to devote more of this study to Cumhuriyet itself, the history of this specific publication is not well documented in English or Turkish sources and therefore evaded deeper analysis.
[37] “Güzellik Müsabakamız,” Cumhuriyet (Istanbul), February 6, 1929.
[38] “Güzellik Müsabakamız,” Cumhuriyet (Istanbul), February 12, 1929.
[39] “Güzellik Müsabakamız,” Cumhuriyet (Istanbul), February 11, 1929.
This work appears in Khabar Keslan Issue 0. MEDIUM.