Abstract
This article identifies and examines how United States Information Services (USIS) agents developed, managed, funded, and sustained a media infrastructure to facilitate communication between the people and governments of the United States and Turkey. The central focus of this analysis is the Educational Film, Radio, and Television Center of Turkey (EFRTC; Film-Radyo ve Televizyonla Eğitim Merkezi), which in 1956 published a catalog featuring hundreds of films about the American way of life and only a handful of films about Turkish people. By analyzing declassified documents and previously unexamined primary materials gathered from archives in the United States and Turkey, this study builds upon existing scholarship on nonfiction and nontheatrical films, USIS, propaganda, and smart power to identify how and why a Turkish institution distributed films about the US government, economy, and people under the label of education. This article demonstrates that EFRTC was a unique smart power campaign developed by USIS funding and infrastructure to spread American-modeled democracy, education and economy and mobilize US foreign policy in Turkey.
Recommended Citation
Etem, Aysehan Jülide
(2022)
"Media Infrastructure as Smart Power in the Case of the Educational Film, Radio, and Television Center of Turkey, 1949-1973,"
The Journal of e-Media Studies: Vol. 6:
Iss.
1, Article 6.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1349/PS1.1938-6060.A.479
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/joems/vol6/iss1/6
Figure 1: Map of the Educational Film, Radio, and Television Centers of Turkey (EFRTC) [Şinasi Barutçu, En Modern Ders Vasıtası Film (Ankara: Öğretici Filmler Merkezi, Doğuş Matbaası, 1954)]