The Great War and the visual mobilization of the Ottoman public sphere: the case of "Donanma" journal

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1221096 (Table of Contents)

This study tries to explore the Ottoman experience of the Great War through a preliminary analysis of the visual propaganda of the journal Donanma. Although the Ottoman war propaganda suffered from serious infrastructural and superstructural setbacks and hence doomed to fail eventually, this thesis argues that the attempt of the government to penetrate the Ottoman public sphere, to manipulate the public opinion and to incorporate the society as a whole to the state’s war effort cut across the social, economical and cultural aspects of the Ottoman war experience and thus offers a valuable insight into it. In this perspective, the present thesis proposes that Donanma was an efficient and preferable channel for the dispersion of the governmental propaganda due to its popular character, and that visuals aided the journal by improving the accessibility of its propagandist message to the highly illiterate Ottoman society. In this context, this study tries to analyze and identify the main arguments and symbols embodied in the journal’s visual propaganda during the last three months prior to the Ottoman intervention to the war and the war years.