French Orientalism Representations of Ottoman in Caricatures in Le Petit Journal

Abstract

This study attempts to answer a number of questions inspired by popular geopolitics literature on how the French newspaper, Le Petit Journal, depicted the Ottoman Empire (including the Sultan Abdulhamid II and the Turkish parliament) and reflected their views to their readers in their publications. And how the Ottoman 'other' was constructed by the journal in relation to France's political position during the Balkan Wars. The examination of the newspaper from 1908 to 1913 suggests that the journal's understanding of the Ottoman subject rests parallel to that of France, especially during the years of the Balkan Wars in Europe. This study also expresses that war-time knowledge production via quotidian channels inform the geographical imaginations of the masses in particular ways. In the end, the authors re-emphasize that knowledge production on the orient involves a whole set of image constructions as introduced in orientalism studies.