Taş, Burak; Coşğun-Kandal, Sena

This article examines the Turkish Temperance Youth League (Türkiye İçki Aleyhdarı Gençler Cemiyeti, TIAGC), active between 1930 and 1936, as a complex dispositif shaped through both discursive and non-discursive practices. Far from being only an anti-alcohol youth organisation, the League developed strategies to mould young individuals in line with moral, bodily, and national ideals. Its activities–such as oath-taking, wearing badges, theatrical performances, tea parties, Green Day celebrations, and congresses–were designed to transmit ideological messages while mobilising emotions and fostering self-identification with the collective cause. By transforming abstinence from alcohol into a civic duty, the TIAGC moved beyond individual morality to emphasise social responsibility. This study situates the League at the intersection of discipline, leisure, and belonging, offering new insights into how its practices engaged with the politics of the body, emotion, and national identity in early Republican Turkey.

Kandal, Sena Cosgun

Coşğun Kandal, Sena

When the Turkish Republic was founded, it inherited a Western-oriented modernisation project from its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire. The republican ruling class was determined to further this legacy, and education was used as a tool for the eventuation of this project. One of the essential elements of this tool was textbook images. This article explores the relationship between textbook images and the modernisation project embraced by the ruling class. The study examines, by using Barthian semiology, 16 textbook images selected from 44 primary school textbooks taught between 1923 and 1945 in five thematic categories: men and boys, etiquette, women and girls, teachers, and architecture. Our analysis reveals that textbook images were deliberately edited to shape students’ perceptions, attitudes and lifestyles in alignment with the ideals of modernisation.