POLİS MECMUASI’NIN GÖRSEL KÜLTÜREL BELLEĞİ
THE VISUAL CULTURAL MEMORY OF POLICE JOURNAL

Summary/Abstract: Cultural memory holds the emotions, thoughts, and creations within it, serving as a significant carrier in cultural studies. Functionally, it possesses the functions of reminding, recreating, and transferring. Visual cultural memory, on the other hand, is a structure that encompasses all visual expression forms in cultural memory. The cultural elements preserved in visual cultural memory are as powerful as elements expressed through writing and speech. In the broadest sense, the images present in the visual cultural memory of a community or group serve as carriers and conveyors of their culture. Therefore, when analyzing visual memory elements, it is essential to focus on their function first and then on their connection to the cultural patterns to which they belong. Furthermore, visual memory elements are not independent of the social, political, and economic conditions of the period in which they were created. Similar to all forms of cultural creations, it is possible to trace all the details of cultural context and texture in visual memory elements, from the ideology of the period to the social living conditions. In this regard, visual memory can encompass all forms of visual expression. Just as a pattern study on an ethnographic inventory is a product of visual cultural memory, a historical photograph is also a product of visual cultural memory. Based on this information, this study examines the visual cultural memory of the “Police Journal”. The magazine, which started its publication in 1913 and continues to be published under the name “Police Magazine” is a longstanding publication that successfully represented the fundamental principles and values of the Police Organization even during periods when publishing activities in Turkey faced various challenges. In addition to articles, photographs have also been used in the magazine. The photos used in the magazine, which has a rich visual content, are important in showing the first and historical images of the Police Organization and also contribute to the formation of the image of the living Turkish police. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the cultural heritage of the Turkish National Police and policing by analyzing images that represent elements of visual cultural memory. In this context, visuals from the 266 issues of the Police Journal published between 1913 and 1928 in Ottoman Turkish have been selected as examples for analysis.

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