“Welcoming a Dear Guest...”: The Kemalist Propaganda’s Coverage of Reza Shah Pahlavi’s Visit to Turkey and Relations with Iran in the 1930s

Abstract

The paper explores the development of Iranian-Turkish relations through the prism of Turkish press coverage of Reza Shah’s visit to Turkey from 10 June to 7 July 1934. The research is based on the content analysis of the flagship Kemalist media outlets — namely, the newspapers Akşam, Cumhurriyet, Hakimiyet-i Milliye and Son Posta. Founded at the turn of the late 1910s and early 1920s with the personal support of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), these newspapers became the mouthpiece of the ruling People’s Republican Party and an instrument of Kemalist political propaganda. The visit of Reza Shah Pahlavi to Turkey in 1934 became an important event in the history of Iranian-Turkish relations, which experienced in the 1930s a new stage in its development characterized by both the overcoming century-old confrontation legacy and the imperatives of modernization and Westernization. The state visit of Reza Shah and his meetings with Ataturk marked the course for establishing good neighborly relations and cooperation between Ankara and Tehran. The Kemalist propaganda, mixing the problematic issues of bilateral relations, played a significant role in covering these events and giving them an official solemn gloss. Although there is a number of publications analyzing the record-breaking visit of Reza Shah to Turkey, none of the well-known works attempted to analyze the events through the prism of Turkish press coverage and Kemalist propaganda’s activities. The content analysis of Turkish press revealed the mechanisms for creating a positive image of Iran, the ruling Shah and relations between Tehran and Ankara in an exclusively positive way using a variety of propaganda techniques. The state visit of the Iranian Shah became a manifestation for the policy of good neighborliness, set by the 1932 agreement between Turkey and Iran, and continued in the subsequent years.

References

1. Dudaiti A.K. Vneshnaya politika Irana v 1933–1939 godah [Iran’s Foreign Policy in 1933–1939] // Nauchniy Dialog. 2021. No. 12. P. 309–326. (In Rus.)

2. Men of order: Authoritarian modernization under Atatürk and Reza Shah, Touraj Atabaki and Erik J. Zürcher, eds., London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004.

3. Turkish Foreign Policy, 1919–2006. Facts and Analyses with Documents. Ed. Baskın Oran. Utah Series in Middle East Studies. The University of Utah Press. 2010.

4. Akgül, L.H. Rıza Han’ın (Rıza Şah Pehlevi) Türkiye Ziyareti // Yakın Dönem Türkiye Araştırmaları. 2012. № 7. S. 1–42. (In Turk.)

5. Elhan N., Karaoğlu O. Uluslararası Dostluk Çerçevesinde Türkiye-İran İlişkileri: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ve Rıza Şah Pehlevi // İran Çalışmaları Dergisi. 2022. № 6 (2). S. 203–226. (In Turk.)

6. Erdal İ. Atatürk Dönemi (1923–1938) Türk-İran İlişkileri ve Sadabad Paktı // Karadeniz Araştırmaları. 2012. № 34 (34). S. 77–88. (In Turk.)

NEWSPAPERS

1. Akşam.

2. Cumhurriyet.

3. Hakimiyet-i Milliye.

4. Son Posta.