| Summary/Abstract |
This article aims to demonstrate the role of the children’s periodicals and magazines in the process of formation of the divine and the greatest sultan character in the minds of children between 1876 and 1908. By examining seven newspapers and magazines from that period, this article points out that these materials emphasized merciful, generous, protective, progressive, reformer, religious and powerful sultan images, which played a considerable role in indoctrination and political socialization of children. In this way, as this article argues, the regime tried to form primarily loyal, and then moral, religious, and well-educated generations who would support the regime’s values and norms. The close examination of the children’s periodicals indicates how the patriotism was closely connected to loving and obeying the rules and laws of the owner of the state, which reduced the meaning of patriotism to being loyal to the sultan, praying for his health and continuation of his rule, and celebrating his birthday. While elucidating the children’s periodicals, this article also provides a glimpse on the bilateral relations between the regime and the publishers and the censorship policy of the period.
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