In 1959, Turkey applied for association with the European Economic Community (EEC), which came into force in 1963. With the aim of full membership in the EEC and in the context of cold war and block formation, it is questionable whether reporting on the Eichmann trial - one of the major media events in the 20th century - in Turkey was part of a political and social compliance strategy.
Since existing research results of the media reception on the Eichmann trial are predominantly confined to Western European countries, Israel and the USA, my work, which analyses the reception in the Turkish print media of the 1960's, follows two demands. On the one hand Chakrabarty's call for historiography from a perspective which provincializes Europe[1] and on the other hand Bahar's request to focus on the countries which stayed neutral during WW II. Given that 400 journalists from all over the world were attending the trial and therefore the media coverage reached a global audience, my paper concentrates on three major aspects which were essential for a follow-up communication and thus the consolidation of a common cosmopolitanised memory on the ground of a global discourse: 1. The use of key terms. 2. The emphasis or rather the omission of historical key events 3. The framing of reporting.
Conducting a historical discourse analysis of the Eichmann trial in the Cumhuriyet, both the above-mentioned positioning in the political power structure and the localization by the message processing for the heterogeneous Turkish public must be considered.
[1] Chakrabarty, Dipesh: Europa als Provinz. Perspektiven postkolonialer Geschichtsschreibung, Frankfurt am Main 2010, p. 10.
[2] Bahar, Izzet I.: Turkey and the Rescue of European Jews, New York 2015. p. 75.
