Reporting Crime And Criminals In Newspapers During The Second Constitution

This thesis investigates the influence of newspapers’ political affiliations on crimereporting during the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire. News andarticles on crime and public order in Tanin (affiliated with the Committee of Unionand Progress), İkdam (supporting the Liberty Party), and Sabah (which acted asrelatively neutral) were subjected to a statistical and rhetorical analysis. The studyfocuses on a period marked by heightened concerns over public order, police negligence,and vagrancy. Although crime news was formulaic and did not vary muchbetween the newspapers, this thesis argues that Tanin deliberately delayed publishingsome reports to include updates on offenders’ detentions, aiming to presentthe image of a safer city and a stronger regime amid fears of declining order in theaftermath of the revolution spearheaded by the Committee of Union and Progress.İkdam, on the other hand, regularly criticized the police force for negligence andabuse of power. However, İkdam refrained from openly criticizing the police in theaftermath of the Beyoğlu Incident, where the police and soldiers fired shots at aprotesting Rum crowd. This thesis argues that İkdam’s silence in the aftermath ofthe Beyoğlu Incident reflects the constraining influence of nationalist sensitivities oneditorial autonomy. In the face of what was being presented as a matter of nationaldignity and security, İkdam avoided direct criticism of the police despite its liberaland oppositional stance, so as to prevent being labeled unpatriotic.