Ayşehan Jülide Etem, "Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

New Books Network
Episode: Ayşehan Jülide Etem, "Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations" (Columbia UP, 2026)
Date: May 16, 2026
Host: Eileen Zhou
Guest: Professor Juliet Atom

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Overview

In this episode, Eileen Zhou sits down with Professor Juliet Atom to discuss her new book, Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations. The book investigates how educational films and documentary media served as tools for both Turkey and the United States to shape perceptions, build alliances, assert geopolitical influence, and manage populations from the 1930s through the late Cold War era. Drawing on archives across Turkey, the US, and beyond, Atom offers a transnational, institutional history that challenges conventional understandings of film as merely entertainment or propaganda, instead emphasizing its centrality as a technology of governance, nation-building, and even racialization.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Genesis of the Book and Research Journey

• Origin Story:
  • Juliet Atom is a media scholar and filmmaker whose curiosity about film as a tool of education and soft power led her to investigate 16mm educational films produced about Turkey in the US during the 1950s.
  • “I was struck by the fact that American organizations were producing films about Turkey in the 1950s and showing them in US classrooms…” (03:31)
  • The research evolved from a chance archival discovery into a much broader interrogation of film’s role in US-Turkey relations.

2. Archival Methods & Challenges

• Piecing Together a Transnational Puzzle:
  • Atom conducted research in archives across three continents; no one archive held the full record, so she had to assemble stories from scattered catalogs, letters, reports, and missing reels.
  • “No single archive had the whole piece, but each one offered a little trace… The method was to trace the film’s journey – where was it made, how was it translated, who funded it, and why did they sponsor it?” (08:11)
• Critical Reflections on the Archive:
  • Archives are not neutral; they reflect institutional priorities and value hierarchies.
  • “Archives offer access to a selected collection of materials… they are curated by archivists, by institutions, by elites, by people in power… And one of the book’s major methodological lessons is that the archive is not just where the evidence sits and waiting to be found, but the archive is actually part of the history of governance…” (13:19)
  • Unique local factors impacted film preservation: some Turkish films were destroyed for their silver content.

3. Historical Context: Turkey, the US, and Modernization

• Turkey 1930–1986:
  • Period spans from early Republican secular nation-building through Cold War pro-Western alignment to the post-1980 coup cultural realignment.
  • Post-WWII, US influence intensified: “Turkey… became a laboratory for modernization and modernization theory… Marshall Plan… becoming a NATO ally and US Information programs all became intertwined with film culture and educational media.” (20:17)
• Institutional Cross-Pollination:
  • Multiple actors shaped the film exchange: state agencies, missionaries, NGOs, educators, and local professionals.

4. Conceptual Contributions: Film Diplomacy & Technologies of Power

• Defining Film Diplomacy:
  • “Film diplomacy is a process. It involves how films are produced or re-edited with specific geopolitical intentions… how they are received by audiences and evaluated by researchers… Film functions as a technology of governance…” (26:38)
• Film as Soft Power:
  • Films model behavior, shape norms, and produce knowledge about populations. Critical theory (esp. Foucault) helps situate film as an everyday tool shaping citizenship and belonging.

5. Race, Ethnicity, and Whiteness

• Whiteness as a Transnational Technology:
  • Modernization projects in both Turkey and the US leveraged racialized frameworks—even if not explicitly labeled as such.
  • “Whiteness operates as an unmarked norm… it structures what is visible, what counts as modern, what is taken for granted…” (28:50)
  • The archive itself, as well as the films, erased or privileged certain voices: “I began asking not just what is present in the archive, but what is absent, who is not represented, whose voices aren't mediated, whose voices are silenced...” (28:50)
• State-Sponsored Racial Projects:
  • Turkish scholars and officials engaged in efforts to “prove” Turkish whiteness; American modernization theorists categorized Turkish populations by proximity to “modern” norms.

6. Case Studies and Memorable Examples

• Turkey–Soviet Collaboration:
  • Despite later Cold War divides, Turkey in the 1930s collaborated with the USSR on films promoting modernization, using Soviet technical prowess while maintaining ideological distance.
  • “Film collaboration precedes Cold War polarization… films like Ankara, the Heart of Turkey… bring together Turkish political goals with Soviet technical and aesthetic expertise…” (33:16)
• Cold War & the Korean War Moment:
  • The Korean War became pivotal for Turkey’s Western rebranding: “The Turkish media, newsreels, cartoons and films, they all recast the terrible Turk stereotype as a modern, disciplined ally fighting alongside the US…” (40:51)
  • Visual and narrative contrasts with Chinese and Soviet forces underscored Turkey’s performance of “whiteness” in the West.
• US-Sponsored Film Infrastructure in Turkey:
  • Extensive networks for film distribution and exhibition were created in Turkish cities and villages, supported by training programs and local partnerships.
  • “Not just like one way transfer of American media, but a hybrid infrastructure shaped by US institutional models, but reworked through Turkish cultural and linguistic and political conditions.” (44:24)
• Local Agency and Gender:
  • Example of Saldum Katipoklu, a Turkish woman who became director of USIS Turkey Cinema Services—bridging cultures, and breaking gender norms in public communication roles.
  • “She became one of the first women in Turkey to be recognized at that level… and the way she got into that is through film…” (46:50)
• Internal Visual Governance:
  • Educational films produced by the Turkish state instructed citizens in everything from industrial modernization to family planning, using film to “manage populations from within.”
  • “Internal visual governance means using film as a domestic management tool… Turkish agents used film to shape citizens from within…” (48:49)

7. Tensions, Contradictions, and Negotiation

• Film Diplomacy as a Site of Contradiction:
  • “There were definitely tensions… On the US side, film was a tool of geopolitical influence… On the Turkish side, it was about consolidating national identity… and the meaning of modernization has a different meaning for each…” (52:12)
  • Multiple agendas fit uneasily together: anti-Communism, nation-building, missionary activity, capitalist modernization.
• Legacy and Ongoing Impact:
  • Though the platforms have changed (digital media, social media, etc.), states and other actors still use audiovisual media to shape opinions, behaviors, and collect data.
  • “The logic is the same. States still use media to shape perception, manage audiences, control populations, gather data. What's different here is… the speed, the scale, the visibility…” (54:09)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Power of the Archive:
  • “The archive is not just where the evidence sits and waiting to be found, but the archive is actually part of the history of governance the book is describing.” — Professor Juliet Atom (13:19)
• On Race and Modernization:
  • “Whiteness operates as an unmarked norm… it structures what is visible, what counts as modern, what is taken for granted.” — Professor Juliet Atom (28:50)
  • “Whiteness as a transnational technology of racialization… functions as an unmarked norm standard that defines what counts as progress, civilization and development without necessarily naming itself as such.” (33:22)
• On Film Diplomacy’s Mechanisms:
  • “Film diplomacy is a process… through which institutions shape meaning and track its effects… Film functions as a technology of governance. It models desirable behaviors…” — Professor Juliet Atom (26:38)
• On Local Agency:
  • “She became one of the first women in Turkey to be recognized at that level… and the way she got into that is through film…” — On Saldum Katipoklu, Professor Juliet Atom (46:50)
• On Modern Echoes:
  • “Film diplomacy is still there… States, NGOs, corporate actors now use YouTube, TikTok, algorithms to shape opinions, behaviors, and they also collect that data to design better communication strategies.” — Professor Juliet Atom (54:09)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Introduction & Atom’s Background: 02:11 – 06:06
• Archival Methods and Fragmentation: 07:47 – 17:45
• Scope of Turkey’s History & US Relations: 19:30 – 25:48
• Defining Film Diplomacy: 26:38 – 28:25
• Race, Ethnicity, and Whiteness: 28:25 – 33:16
• Turkey–Soviet Film Collaboration: 33:16 – 39:53
• Turkey in the Cold War & Korean War: 39:53 – 43:10
• US Film Infrastructure & Local Agents: 44:24 – 48:15
• Internal Visual Governance: 48:49 – 51:41
• Contradictions & Institutional Tensions: 52:12 – 53:42
• Film Diplomacy’s Legacy Today: 54:09 – 55:03
• Archival Limits & Expanding Research: 55:47 – 58:07

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Closing Thoughts

Professor Juliet Atom’s Film Diplomacy reframes both film history and transnational relations by centering institutions, material practices, and the infrastructures that enable media to function as both a domestic and geopolitical technology. The conversation shines in its balance of rigorous archival detail and broad theoretical reflection, providing essential context for anyone interested in media studies, history, cultural diplomacy, and the politics of modernization.

Highly recommended for listeners seeking insight into the power of film beyond entertainment—film as governance, negotiation, and nation-making.

Transcript

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[Professor Juliet Atom]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Eileen Zhou]

Hello everyone and welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host Eileen Zhou. Today I'm joined by Professor Juliet Atom with her fascinating new book, Film A Media history of Turkey U.S. relations, which will officially come out soon in May with the Columbia University Press. In this book, Julie Da offers us a fresh account of how film shaped international relations and national identity as well she's drawn on previously unexamined archives in both Turkey and the US Showing us how both countries used educational films to advance their irrespective institutional agendas and geopolitical interests. So this is a really rich historical research that rethinks the role of film in global politics and specifically the making of modern Turkey. There's so much to unpack here, and I'm really excited to dive into it. Hi, Juliette. Welcome to the show and congratulations on publishing your first book.

[Professor Juliet Atom]

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for hosting me.

[Eileen Zhou]

Of course. So, to start off, could you please introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners and tell us, how did you start writing this book?

[Professor Juliet Atom]

Of course. I'm a scholar of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Virginia, where I also direct the Film Studies concentration. My work focuses on how governments, institutions, and also individuals use film as a tool to advance political, cultural, and social agendas. I'm also a filmmaker working in experimental and short documentary forms. So I have always been interested in what images do, how they shape perception and experience. That interest really comes from a longer standing curiosity about education and the global attraction to American institutions. The idea of the US As a leader in technology and democracy. And that basically how the project began. And it actually began when I came across a set of 16 millimeter educational films about Turkey in the moving image archives at Indiana University. And I was struck by the fact that American organizations were producing films about turkey in the 1950s and showing them in U.S. classrooms. And that discovery basically, basically raised the key question that I try to answer in my book. Why were these films made and what work were they doing? As I follow that question across archives in multiple countries, I realized there was a significant gap in how we understand this history. And we often tend to think of cinema as entertainment, or at most, propaganda, but not necessarily as part of a broader institutional infrastructure. So film diplomacy grew out of both academic curiosity and a personal drive to tell a different kind of film history, one that centers institutions, circulation and audiences. And I wanted to show that cinema has been used not just to tell stories, to entertain people, but also to build alliances, shaped behavior, and even manage populations. So the book investigates the media systems that were built decades earlier through coordinated efforts to influence how people think, act, and understand the world around them.

[Eileen Zhou]

That sounds amazing. And I can't really imagine how excited you would be when you first encountered those 6 millimeters. So was that an unexpected encounter or was that something you were tracing and you expected to see them there?

[Professor Juliet Atom]

Yeah, no. It was totally unexpected, but I looked for them. So the way it began, I was taking this course with Greg Waller in graduate school, and it was a course on non theatrical cinema, non theatrical film. And we had a week dedicated to educational films. So one of the takeaways for me was that there was an educational film about any subject that you can think about. So I took that challenge and went to the archives and tried to see if they had anything about Turkey. And the benefit that I had at the moment was that IU has the largest educational film collection. So they actually had them. They had, I believe, 24 films about Turkey. And I sat down at the archives and watched them, and I was just amazed. I couldn't find anything, any scholarship, any kind of work that explains why these films were made, why they existed, and how they circulated. And that question actually took me to Turkey because I wanted to see whether these types of films existed in. In Turkey, in the Turkish context. And so the book actually traces that whole journey.

[Eileen Zhou]

That's really exciting. And I remember in the book you were saying, oh, actually did archival research in both countries and actually across three continents. Right. If I remember correctly. And I was wondering, how was that like, you know, being a scholar traveling around and doing research across different sides or in different cultural settings.

[Professor Juliet Atom]

Yeah. So researching this project felt like piecing together a puzzle scattered across different archives and countries. So no single archive had the whole piece, but each one offered a little trace. And instead of following clues through U.S. state Department documents and Turkish Ministry, Rupert Reports missionary letters at the Howden Library at Harvard, UNESCO records, and some of these are digitized and film libraries. I just spend hours finding, reading, documenting these primary source materials at places like nara, US National Archives and Records Administration, examining catalogs in Ankara and looking at NGO archives like the Red Cross. And there were layers to the process. I found some films, I analyzed them, I identified who was involved and looked for archives that contained information about those agents, the sponsoring agents. And that process is what took me to the different archives. So each archive, each institution, each archivist has their own system. And these systems vary drastically. So as a researcher, I also had to develop a sense of how to navigate these different systems. And a key insight was that production, distribution, screening, reception, each leave a trace in a different card. So the method was to trace the film's journey, where was it made, how was it translated, who funded it, and why did they sponsor it? Who were the target audiences? Who conducted the audience reception surveys, and at the end, understanding the network of archives, the network of these institutions became part of the answer. And it meant constructing this transnational network of institutions. The method had to follow the infrastructure, how films moved, how who handled them, how they were evaluated. So looking into different spaces was really crucial to piece together the narrative that I construct in the book.

[Eileen Zhou]

That's great. And I want us to stay a little bit longer here with the method, because archives and archival research as a method has been so crucial for film and media studies. And also there are a lot of methodological reflections upon that. So I'm wondering if you encountered any difficulties throughout the whole process in different countries, Any reflections you would like to share with us?

[Professor Juliet Atom]

Yeah, maybe there are two surprises. One is fragmentation. You rarely find a complete record of a film. You piece it together from catalogs, reports, letters, film evaluation forms, and sometimes missing reels. They don't exist. You can't find them. Or they exist, but you're not given access to them, and sometimes from multiple versions of these films. So there were cases where films were inaccessible. So I had to rely on catalog entries and analyze the descriptions provided in film catalogs. I looked at film magazines and incorporated the way that the films were discussed in those types of platforms. And in some instances, the preservation practices were inconsistent. And this was often the case within the archives in Turkey. In one instance, an archivist actually told me that some of these films melted down for their silver content. And that made me mad because it basically means burning a national treasure, erasing history. The archive is truly part of the whole system, or it is better. It's actually the product of the system. Audience reception reports, for example, they document the reactions that the viewers had at the time, but they also produced a particular kind of knowledge about populations. And this is the kind of knowledge that is described by government sponsored researchers. So in these reports, you don't get to see the exact sentences. Some of them are reduced into keywords, some of them are translated, and you don't get access to the original transcripts. So there were these types of concerns that I had to work around. And. And yeah, so in other words, archives reflect value systems. What is valued, what is marginalized. And I'm both interested in the material existence of archival documents in the forms of physical films like film libraries, mobile film units. And that's why I talk about infrastructure in the book. I'm also interested in what the archives did not preserve, what gets erased, burned, destroyed, or trashed. So I looked up the archival materials from a critical perspective and questioned the power dynamics there. And that shifted how I think about the archives. So archives offer access to a selected collection of materials. So they are not these natural spaces. They are curated, right? They're curated by archivists, by institutions, by elites, by people in power. And they might have their own set of priorities. And that prioritization can shape the way we access information and how we can get access or how we can get denied access to that information. And one of the book's major methodological lessons is that the archive is not just where the evidence sits and waiting to be found, but the archive is actually part of the history of governance the book is describing. So these like missing reels or bureaucratic cataloging decisions, digitization and preservation practices, they all shape what kinds of stories can be written. And in Turkey, educational films were hard to access. Some, as I mentioned, disappeared through neglect and material recycling, and some of them were accessible in digital platforms. But even finding them was a challenge because they were not listed under a category of educational films, even that genre, that concept existed, and we see that from the film catalogs and film magazines. They called it nostalgia. So these films, some of these films were listed under a category of nostalgia. And I figured this out when my keyword searches kept failing. So the process taught me to try using different words and looking at unexpected places, thinking out of the box, being unconventional and perseverance. In the US Archives, like legal restrictions, partial digitization shaped what could be seen in this country. Legal parts is you can think about the Smith mundt Act of 1948, which is very interesting because it prevented government from disseminating propaganda films targeted at foreign audiences or being screened in the U.S. so scholars were not able to study them because they were not allowed to watch them. So all these pieces of the puzzle shaped my understanding of the archival method in film and media studies. And the process pushed me away from treating archival absence as mere inconvenience and toward reading it as evidence of institutional priorities, value judgments and power dynamics.

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[Professor Juliet Atom]

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[Professor Juliet Atom]

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All of them.

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[Eileen Zhou]

Totally agree and thank you for sharing so many, you know, fascinating stories. I'm just curious, how long did they take you to, you know, finally complete this book? Because it seems like sounds like a lot to me.

[Professor Juliet Atom]

10 years.

[Eileen Zhou]

Oh my God. Wow. And I can tell like with all these different kinds of archival materials or gaps and absence in the archive, it really, it's your effort to triangulate and to discern different perspectives or point of views behind each source. That's amazing. And actually this book, you folk, for this book, you focus on a really long period of time from 1930 to 1986. So I'm wondering if you can give us a brief overview of Turkey, Turkey's history over this time and its relationship

[Professor Juliet Atom]

with the U.S. yeah, that's a great question. So this period traces Turkey's transformation from the early Republican project of secular nation building to the post 1980 coup reconfiguration of politics and culture. And in the early Republican era, modernization was tied to the creation of a secular nation state and to a broader aspiration to align Turkey with the West. Educational films emerged within that larger effort, first through missionary and government networks and then through more formal state and transnational infrastructures. After World War II, Turkey's relationship with the United States intensified within the Cold War context and with the 1950 election of the Democrat Party under Amnan Menderes, Turkey more fully embraced American aid, liberal economic policies and anti communist alignment. So Turkey to some extent became a laboratory for modernization and modernization theory. While for many Turkish elites, the United States represented a little America ideal of democracy, prosperity and technological advancement. And you can think about like Marshall Plan becoming a NATO ally and US Information programs all became intertwined with but film culture and educational media. And by the 1950s, there was an establishment of an infrastructure centered on educational films. Most importantly, the partnership in 1952among the ministry of National Education of Turkey, UNESCO and United States Information Services came together. They collaborated to form the Educational Film center in Ankara. And they created a system for producing, distributing and exhibiting films. And over time, the center evolved from distributing American films to producing non fiction films about Turkey for Turkish audiences by Turkish filmmakers. And it helped build a national educational film center. And by the late 1960s and 70s, the meaning of modernization had become more contested. And after 1980 coup, there was a shift away from the earlier hyper secular framework, with Islam reemerging as a stronger force in political and cultural life. So the period from 1930 to 1986 is the arc through Turkey moves from early Republican Westernization reforms to Cold War alliance with United States, to a more internally conflicted and ideologically shifting media landscape. And the reason why I select 1930 in 1986 has to do with the films that I found. So the first film that I found that fits into what I'm describing is a film made by Protestant missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. So they made this film in Turkey, and It's made in 1930, and they helped establish the infrastructure in Turkey because they formed before Turkey became Turkey, it was the Ottoman Empire. Right. So back in the day, they established schools, hospitals, libraries, and various kinds of institutions. So they already had that kind of a space for connecting with different audiences. So the 1930 film is where the story begins. And the way I connect the Protestant missionaries to the United States information agencies in 1948, they connect USIS agents actually share some films with missionaries, and they ask them to circulate them within their circles. And then they start developing relationships with Turkish government agents. And initially the first period is composed of them distributing American films about any American subject you can think of. And then they slowly figure out that that process is expensive, so it's better to invest in the local infrastructure. And. And that's how they build this relationship.

[Eileen Zhou]

That's interesting. So even when we are talking we're focusing on the US Turkey film exchange, they're actually not, that is actually not a state to state relationship, even within the US or on the Turkish side. I feel there were multiple historical actors or agencies that played into the whole picture. I mean, we'll get into that more as we move on to the chapters. But before that, I want you to help us unpack the term film diplomacy. It's Something that I feel we all have a vague idea, but I'm wondering how you really define that term for your project.

[Professor Juliet Atom]

So film diplomacy is a process. It involves how films are produced or re edited with specific geopolitical intentions, how they circulate through national and transnational networks, how they're exhibited in particular institutional settings, and crucially, how they are received by audiences and evaluated by researchers. So what matters is that these stages are all interconnected, and film diplomacy captures this full life cycle of a film through which institutions shape meaning and track its effects. And that's where the idea of film as a technology of power comes in. And I draw on a Foucaultian sense of power, not as something simply imposed from above, but as something that works through systems, institutions, and everyday practices. So film functions as a technology of governance. It models desirable behaviors. It defines what modern life should look like. And it signals that access to development and citizenship and belonging all depends on aligning with those norms. So it's the power to shape institutions, regulate conduct, and produce knowledge about populations, all through a medium that appears, that is labeled as educational or informational, but it's embedded in political and institutional agendas.

[Eileen Zhou]

And another aspect that's very central to your book, into your argument, is race and ethnicity. And I feel like you've engaged a lot with the critical recent ethnicity studies and also critical white whiteness studies. So I'm wondering, how did that perspective emerge for you?

[Professor Juliet Atom]

So this lens emerged organically from the archive, and it happened gradually. As I worked across these materials, films, institutional records, audience research, I kept noticing that modernization was often framed through specific set of norms. Western dress, secular education, infrastructure like roads, bridges, airports, energy grids, electricity and communication networks. So those patterns appeared normal and obvious, even though they were historically constructed and ideological. Right. So that's where scholars like Richard Dyer came in. And Richard Dyer's idea of making whiteness strange, weird, he calls it weird, became important for me. So whiteness operates as an unmarked norm. It structures what is visible, what counts as modern, what is taken for granted. So methodologically, I began asking not just what is present in the archive, but what is absent, who is not represented, whose voices aren't mediated, whose voices are silenced, what kinds of differences are erased? And once I started reading the archive that way, then a larger pattern became clear. Modernization itself was operating through a racialized framework. And it wasn't explicitly named as race, but it was structured by it. And you see this very clearly in both Turkish and American contexts. For example, figures like Arfe Dinan, a Turkish feminist and Mustafa Kemay Ataturk's stepdaughter conducted state sponsored anthropometric research in 1937 to demonstrate that Turks were white, trying and tying national identity directly to civilizational and racialized claims. And I dive into this. There is excellent scholarship on this, so I bring that in too. And on the American side, modernization theorists like Daniel Lerner categorized populations in Turkey into stages. Traditional Turks, transitional Turks and modern Turks, often linking progress to media exposure and alignment with Western way of life. So what emerged was a hierarchy, a hierarchy that organized populations according to proximity to a Western, implicitly racialized model of modernity. So that's when it became clear to me that whiteness wasn't present just in the films, but it was actually embedded in the system and it shaped how development was imagined, how audiences were evaluated, and how national identity was constructed.

[Eileen Zhou]

Yeah, and I really like in your book you wrote that this is on page 27, the whiteness is actually a transnational technology of racialization. That argument sounds really powerful to me. And let's dive deeper into the chapters. So in the first chapter, you really set up the understanding of film diplomacy as a global practice. And even this book focuses on US Turkey film diplomacy. Actually, you brought up a case that really stood out to me is the Turkey the collab film collaboration between Turkey and the Soviet Union in the 30s. And despite their ideological differences, there were still film exchanges. So would you like to introduce more about that?

[Professor Juliet Atom]

So let me start with that quote that you had.

[New Books Network Host]

Oh, sure.

[Professor Juliet Atom]

So what I mean by whiteness as a transnational technology of racialization is that whiteness operates as a system of norms that organizes how modernity is imagined and measured across borders. Right. And in the book I show that whiteness functions as an unmarked norm standard that defines what counts as progress, civilization and development without necessarily naming itself as such. And that standard troubles. Right. And it moves through institutions, media, and even policy frameworks, especially through objects like educational films. So whiteness becomes a technology in the sense that it structures how people and nations are evaluated. Its shapes what is seen as modern, like secularism, technological advancement, rationality, alignment with the west, and positions those traits as both desirable and necessary. And in the context of Turkey, this means that modernization is not just political and economic project, but it's actually also a racialized one. And you see this in state sponsored efforts to prove that Turks are the cradle of the Western civilization, and in the films that model a particular kind of modern citizen, urban, secular, Western oriented, while marginalizing other identities. So whiteness works across scales, and it organizes these global hierarchies between nations. And it also structures domestic ones, shaking who is included in the national image and who is excluded. So that's why I call it a transnational technology of racialization. It's a system that moves. It adapts and governs how differences pursued, how differences controlled. Going back to that example about the Soviet Union, what's really striking about the 1930s is that film collaboration precedes Cold War polarization. In the early years of the Turkish Republic, the state deeply invested in projecting itself as modern, secular and forward looking. So the film was seen as an ideal medium for that because it could visualize reform, it could visualize the developing infrastructure, it could visualize the transformation of the nation and becoming modern and western. So at the same time, the Soviet Union had developed strong expertise in documentary filmmaking, especially in using film as a tool for state building. So the collaboration takes shape through an investment in film as a modernizing medium. So films like Ankara, the Heart of Turkey and Turkey and New Turkey on the Move bring together Turkish political goals with Soviet technical and aesthetic expertise. And none of this was a seamless partnership. Turkish officials were very clear that these films had to represent what they called Turkish reality in an acceptable form. So that meant while Soviet techniques were used, ideological framing had to align with Turkey's own modernization project and not Soviet socialism. So each side gains something different. Turkey gains a powerful visual tool to promote at the Turk reforms and presents itself on the global stage. And the Soviets in turn gained an opportunity to demonstrate their filmmaking model and their role in shaping modern nations beyond their borders. So what this shows is there, is this. This is like where it connects to my larger argument and is that film diplomacy is not limited to Cold War blocks. Even in the 1930s, film is already functioning as a tool of statecraft where distinct actors collaborate, adapt, negotiate their ideological differences through this medium.

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[Eileen Zhou]

Now I see that still moving on to the Cold War period, because I still think that is the most fascinating part in history and also in your historytelling. So how did Turkey position itself during the Cold War, and how did it achieve that through film or media representation? So especially when we think about, you know, in the early 50s, Turkey actually joined the Korean War as a U.S. ally. Right. So I'm wondering, amidst all these different conflicts, how did Turkey position itself among, on the one hand, the US and on the other side, the socialist countries like the USSR and China.

[Professor Juliet Atom]

All right, so the Korean War became a key moment for rebranding Turkey. The Turkish media, newsreels, cartoons and films, they all recast the terrible Turk stereotype as a modern, disciplined ally fighting alongside the US and you see this in newspapers like Jumhuriyat and the cartoons that they published where Turkish soldiers are contrasted with racialized images of Chinese communist forces. And that contrast does something ideological. It aligns Turkey with the west while marking communism as the threatening Other. So this is how Turkey performs whiteness, by creating an Other to demonstrate that it belongs to the West. At the same time, films like the credible Turk from 1958 and Turkish troops in Korea, they emphasized military cooperation, technological capability, and integration into Western defense structures. So these films document participation. They stage Turkey as a modern nation, an ally within a US Led order. So what emerges is a deliberate positioning. Turkey presents its itself, and it is also presented as geographically and historically connected to the east, but politically and militarily aligned with the West. And this is where the racial dimension becomes interesting. As I argue in the book, whiteness functions as a kind of geopolitical currency. It organizes what is seen as civilized, modern, and what is aligned with progress. So through these films and media forms, Turkey is narrated as Western and modern, and it's distinguished from states like China and Soviet Union.

[Eileen Zhou]

That's fascinating. And when I was reading that chapter, I kept thinking, if there's any Chinese or Soviet films, or even North Korean films that depict the Korean War if they represent any Turkish soldiers. And how, if we did have those films, and how did the racial dimension played in the socialist bloc? And then moving on to the third chapter, you cannot shift the perspective to the US side and the US Sponsored film activities in Turkey. Right. So what was the institutional infrastructure like? And how did the US really adapt its film, film, diplomatic infrastructure to the Turkey, the Turkish context?

[Professor Juliet Atom]

So what chapter three shows is that US Sponsored film activity in Turkey operated as an institutional infrastructure. It included film libraries in cities like Ankara and Istanbul, also in more rural areas. But they also use 16 millimeter projection systems in schools, embassies, United States information services, screenings, and mobile cinema units that brought films to rural areas where they didn't have electricity. There were also training programs like USIS cinema courses in the 1950s that taught Turkish officials and educators and media professionals how to use film as a communication tool. And this was an infrastructure that was also supported at policy level through regulations that facilitated the import and circulation of educational films. The key Turning Point was 1952 with the establishment of the Educational Film center in Ankara. And it became a hub of a much larger audio visual system. And they also produced radio programs, television programs. And I discussed that more in chapter four. So what emerges is not just like one way transfer of American media, but a hybrid infrastructure shaped by US institutional models, but reworked through Turkish cultural and linguistic and political conditions.

[Eileen Zhou]

And there's one person that caught my eyes. Her name is Sadun Katipoklu. Pardon me if I, if I mispronounce her name. So but you were saying this Turkish woman became the director of USIS Turkey Cinema Services. So would you like to talk more about her? And I'm wondering what was the gender dynamic like in that situation? And in any sense, did she deviate from, you know, the top down, US Dominate mode of film diplomacy?

[Professor Juliet Atom]

Yes. Saldum Kot is a star example of local agency. She was a Turkish woman educated at Robert College, an American school founded by Protestant missionaries in Turkey. And this school still exists. It has nothing to do with missionaries now. It's still considered one of the top schools in Turkey. And she worked with the United States Information services in the 1950s in a cultural and media capacity. She was a communicator, she was a host, she was a translator, she spoke fluent English, she of course spoke Turkish. So she was able to facilitate communication between two sides. Later on, she went on to direct the Turkish American University association and build a career in international public Relations. And she became one of the first women in Turkey to be recognized at that level. So that's why I call her a pioneering woman in public relations, because she broke barriers in a male dominated field. And the way she got into that is through film. She was in charge of this program, the usis, Turkish Cinema Services.

[Eileen Zhou]

And then I think she might also be seen as a bridge between the US side and also the Turkish side, because in your book you describe this diplomatic relationship not completely as US led, because Turkey also made use of that for its, what you call the internal visual governance. So I'm wondering, what does that really mean in practice?

[Professor Juliet Atom]

Yeah, that's a great question. So this is where diplomacy turns inward. So film isn't just about influencing foreign audiences, but it's also a tool that is used domestically to shape citizens, to shape their opinion, their behavior, to help them align with the set national identity. So governments happens through images and audio through which people see, hear and eventually learn. So internal visual governance means using film as a domestic management tool to some extent, not just for foreign influence. And we see this very clearly in the work of the educational Film center of Turkey from, I would say, late 1990s 50s onward. So they circulated thousands of films in schools, villages, public spaces, teaching everything from industrial production to national identity and geography, to how to walk on the street, even how to pay attention to the traffic. So by the 1960s, I think it becomes a little bit more intimate because they produced films about family planning and health and everyday life, following citizens into the home space. And one example I have is Suffering of Elephantilesse from 1966. And in this film you have a scene where villagers attend a lecture and the lecture is given by government agents. And you also see an imam and Muslim cleric, and he uses an official document and participates in legitimizing birth control methods. So that moment shows how state policy, religion and media converge on screen to regulate reproductive life. So Turkish agents used film to shape citizens from within. So in the book I examine how these films mediated ethnicity and religion and to some extent gender to fit a secular national identity. And this meant that the Turkish state told people through images how to live. Softom became a tool for managing differences, regulating visibility and also audibility.

[Eileen Zhou]

So apparently the US and the Turkish state had their own agendas, like things they wanted to achieve through this film diplomacy or the production and distribution of educational films. I'm wondering if, if there were any tensions or conflicts or even contradictions across different institutions or different state agendas.

[Professor Juliet Atom]

Yeah, there were definitely tensions. And as you beautifully described different institutions were working toward overlapping but not necessarily identical goals. On the US side, film was a tool of geopolitical influence, promoting modernization, capitalism and anti communism. On the Turkish side, it was about consolidating national identity and a particular vision of modernity. And even when you think about the missionaries, their use of them, one of their primary goals was to disseminate Christian values. So film diplomacy works precisely because it holds these contradictions together. It's a negotiated system, it fits the agendas of all these different entities. And what brings them together is also the meaning of modernization. So modernization has a different meaning for each one of them. So like for the Protestant missionaries, it means spreading the Christian values, right? Or the American agents, government agents, it aims to disseminate capitalism and to communism. For the Turkish Asians, it's about disseminating a very particular kind of nationalism.

[Eileen Zhou]

And then since we've Talked through the 30s to the 80s, I'm wondering, how about today? What is it like for the U.S. turkey Film Exchange or film diplomacy, if that still exists? Because, you know, today is a totally different geopolitical situation. So I'm wondering if you see any legacy or major shifts there.

[Professor Juliet Atom]

Yeah, that's a great question. So the infrastructure has definitely changed, right? Digital media platforms. But the logic is the same. States still used media to shape perception, manage audiences, control populations, gather data. What's different here is I would say the speed, the scale, the visibility, but the feedback loop is still there. So film diplomacy is still there. And film diplomacy is about the feedback loop. So think about it. States, NGOs, corporate actors now use YouTube TikTok algorithms to shape opinions, behaviors, and they also collect that data to design better communication strategies.

[Eileen Zhou]

That's interesting. And it seems like without understanding the history that you wrote in your book, it's hard for us to really understand what's going on now. And actually, because of time limit, there's a lot of fascinating stories and examples we couldn't cover in our conversation. So I really encourage your listeners to go read the book and to read your beautiful analysis. But for you, I'm wondering, is there anything that when you wrote the book, you wish you could have included in it, but ended up not being able to?

[Professor Juliet Atom]

I would say one limit was access to the archival materials. In the book, I describe how the Educational Film Centre made at least 3,000 films and I could track down about a third of them via catalogs and other archival materials. And that's already a lot.

[Eileen Zhou]

That's almost a thousand films, right? Or even over a thousand and I

[Professor Juliet Atom]

was only able to watch 86 of them and I would have loved to watch more of these films. And I can say something similar about the USIS films. So answering this question, I would say the book leaves a lot of space for expanding on this research, so there's a lot of room to dive into those archival materials. And I know that they are in Turkey in the Turkish archives. They're working on digitizing more of these films, so there's a lot of space to develop what I started.

[Eileen Zhou]

So are you continuing this journey, this research trajectory, or are you working on anything new at this moment, now that the book has published?

[Professor Juliet Atom]

Yeah, I'm taking this framework that I developed in the context of US Turkey and expanding it to other transnational contexts because it's so applicable. You can talk about film diplomacy in the context of U.S. iran relations, in the context of U.S. china relations, and so on and so forth. So I'm looking into other transnational contexts and I'm interested in how film operates and circulates and shapes institutional responses and other contexts. Great.

[Eileen Zhou]

We look forward to reading more from you and more surprises you might take out of from the archives. Thank you so much for your time and I really appreciate this amazing conversation.

[Professor Juliet Atom]

Thank you so much, Aylin. It's always a pleasure to chat with you.

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