Ottoman Propaganda and Turkish Identity: Literature in Turkey During World War I

Throughout World War I the Entente Powers (France, Britain, Russia and later the USA) directed widespread efforts towards the generation of propaganda as a weapon of war, with devastating effect. However, in the underdeveloped and multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, the Turkish intelligentsia could not produce adequate propaganda to support the war effort. As the war unfolded, writers abandoned their initial attempts at propaganda and turned instead to the task of defining a national identity. In this new reassessment of Turkish literature and propaganda in World War I, Erol K?¶roglu argues the Ottoman-Turkish intelligentsia used the conditions created by the war to eliminate the deficiencies in national culture and build a Turkish identity, a project inherited from the pre-war years.