The Propaganda of the Bird

Nicholas Danforth, Georgetown University

With the start of United States economic and military aid after World War Two, the United States Information Service also began a broadcasting propaganda films for Turkish peasants. Mobile teams would travel around rural Turkey with projectors mounted on the backs of jeeps showing films that promoted a particular post-war American vision of capitalist modernity and scientific agriculture. The goal was to encourage a more "modern" and effective approach to farming among supposedly backwards villagers. This, in turn, would improve their standard of living, thereby inoculating them against communism, increasing their appreciation for US aid and giving the Turkish government more money with which to arm itself against a Soviet invasion.

In 1950, the USIS conducted a survey to try to better understand what often illiterate farmers took away from propaganda films they had seen. The results, as will be seen, forced them to conclude that despite their best efforts, something had been lost in translation. Indeed, there is a delightful absurdity to the transcripts from the survey. To review, these were films that had been made in America and translated into Turkish. They were then shown to villagers who were asked, in Turkish, by Turkish staff members, a series of questions that had presumably been prepared by the USIS in English. The Turkish staff then translated these results back into English for use by the USIS officials. In some cases the viewers seem to have misunderstood crucial points in the films, while in other cases we are left to conclude that the films themselves may have been pretty bizarre too. Even when the villagers who are questioned  seem confused, some are quick to parrot the lessons of other propaganda campaigns they have been subjected to by the Kemalist state.  In other cases, though, they offer the interviewers remarkably straightforward explanations for why the films' advice is completely inapplicable to their circumstances.

Villager in response to a question about what he remembered from a film on agricultural cooperatives:

The same film about poultry raising as above:

A film about the value of agricultural fairs is shown:

A film about healthy child-raising practices is shown:

And another film about agriculture:

Source: National Archives, RG 59 General Records of the Department of State. Misc Lot Files, Lot File no 58 D 61, Subject Files relating to Turkey, Box 1. 

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