Die Türkische Post: A Nazi Propaganda Newspaper in Turkey and Prime Ministry Directorate General of Press and Information

The relations between press and government provides important data in terms of revealing the censorship practices of the period studies. Both on the Ottoman Empire since the last quarter of the 19th century and the period of one-party rule of the Republic of Turkey, the press life was overshadowed by the political authority that existed. In this context, over the enacted laws during the Second World War, the press life of the period was tried to be taken under control. But the situation was not only valid for the Turkish press, daily and weekly newspapers published in foreign languages only had the opportunity to survive by taking into account the directions and directives of the administration of the period. In addition, while determining the editorial policy it was required to use an appropriate language with Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy. For this reason, the Türkische Post newspaper faced a situation that was not compatible to its founding philosophy. Because, the primary objective of the newspaper was defending the German thesis against noncommittal Turkey’s foreign policy and instilling German propaganda intensively in their pages. The newspapers close relationship with Germany, fixed Turkish authorities attentions on Turkishe Post and their printing house. And those close relationships had required close monitoring of the activities that took place. This study will shed light on the unknown history of the Türkische Post newspaper in the light of German archival documents and it deals with the relations with Turkish institutions during the World War II. But previously, the following questions will be answered: What was the aim of establishing Türkishe Post and which institutions and organizations of Germany was in contact with newspaper management? Which Turkish and German journalists worked in the newspaper s editorial works? Resources that helps clarify this subject are firsthand German resources like; the founded diplomatic mission documents of the German department of state, German Ambassador Rudolf Nadolny`s memoirs and the reports that had written to the registered institutions by Eduard Schaefer, who was the editorship of Turkische Post between 1937-1944. Turkish archival documents related to our topic are very limited in the terms of both quality and quantity.