The republic's children and their burdens in 1930s and 1940s Turkey: the idealized middle class children as the future of the nation and the image of "poor" children in children's periodicals

Abstract

This study aims to contribute to highlighting some mainstream perceptions of the Turkishnation-state about its children from 1930s till the middle of the 1940s in the light of themes from children̕s periodicals. This paves the way to distinguishing the specific meanings andburdens attributed directly to children in the specific political context of nation-stateformation with their own dilemmas. By this, it is aimed to illuminate significant images andvalues that were wished to be instilled onto children̕s minds regarding both the political discourse dimension about public issues and the private dimension of their daily lives athome. This illumination results in distinguishing a hidden duality. The ideal and virtuousmiddle-class child of a truly Republican nuclear family with its gendered terms in the storiesis represented especially from the 1930s towards 1940s. The essentialized, culturalistdefinitions and metaphors of the newly established nation-state and the Republic in the 1930sTurkey in the periodicals targeted the imagination of this child and tried to establish adialogue with it. The narratives about "poor children" on the other face of the coin, intensifiedin the 1940s with the hard socio-economical conditions caused by the Second World Warconditions in Turkey. The question of "poverty" in this respect was perceived just as a moralissue devoid of any socio-political meaning. This study tries to shed light on the waysthrough which the hidden duality between these idealized middle-class children and "poor" children as mostly objects of pity, sometimes object of exclusion, were narrated,portrayed and visualized in the children̕s periodicals.