The Organization and Activities of the Beyoğlu Censorship Inspectorate in the First World War

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the organisation, practitioners, and activities of the Beyoğlu Censorship Inspectorate which was one of the three (Dersaadet/ İstanbul, Beyoğlu, Galata) military censorship inspectorates that the Ottoman State formed in İstanbul during the First World War in accordance with the censorship regulations. In the research, the legal extensions related to censorship, censorship activities, and transformations in censorship practices in the Ottoman capital during the First World War were evaluated by modelling the organisational structure of the Beyoğlu Military Censorship Committee. In this way, flexibility, success or failure of the censorship system in İstanbul which was the centre of censorship practices were revealed. Thus, it was tried to contribute to a number of explorations which would facilitate the compilation of the history of Ottoman censorship.

There were difficulties naturally in carrying out the monumental task of forming and operating a system completely censoring the press and communication in the Ottoman State in the First World War. However, it seems that the structure of the censorship system which was institutionalised since the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II made it easier to overcome these difficulties. Likewise, the data related to the Beyoğlu Censorship Inspectorate demonstrates that the censorship system became organised quickly during the war. Through this organised structure, the “fear of censorship” was also clearly established in public. However, the most significant element that reduced the functionality of the military censorship system during the war was the limitation of human resources that knew foreign languages. This problem was tried to be solved through soldiers who were unarmed and assigned to fixed service as well as nonMuslims. The study benefited from the data of the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye Directorate of State Archives, the Military History Archive of the Ministry of National Defense, the ATASE Fund, and the Ottoman Archive.