Sports in the Early Republican Period: The Turkish Sports Association Magazine as an Ideological Apparatus

Abstract

During the birth of the Turkish nation-state as a republic, sports became one of the dynamics of social transformation, and physical training and sports were described as a “case” in this period. The goal of this study is to reveal the role the journal of the Turkish Sport Association in the concretization and dissemination of the ideology of the regime. The study’s theoretical foundations are based on Althusser’s theory of the “ideological apparatus of the state”. The magazine published by this institution between 1936 and 1938 became the spokesperson of the official ideology in sports. This qualitative study, which explores the meanings and obligations attributed to sports in the Early Republic Period and the ways in which those messages were propagated throughout society, employed the descriptive analytic approach. The study reveals that sports in the magazine serve to embody and spread the official ideology through nationalism, which is one of the basic principles of the Republic; the “new woman” as the symbol of the Republic; and the relationship of the state with population-national defense, which is one of the most important problems of the state.