135. Today in 1920s Turkey: 15 January 1925 (Special Issue of The Illustrated Monthly)

(Cover page, Resimli Ay or “The Illustrated Monthly,” 15 January 1925, no. 12, page 1. Hakkı Tarık Us Collection, Beyazit Library, Istanbul.)

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The periodical "The Illustrated Monthly" or Resimli Ay hit the newsstands on the fifteenth of each month beginning in February 1924. The January 1925 issue celebrates one year of publishing with its stunning, colorful cover illustration. The neo- (or perhaps even pseudo-) Orientalist image depicts a wealthy, beautiful woman riding in a private palanquin (tahtırevan) powered by multiple turbaned men. The finely crafted vehicle is furnished with opulent fabrics and adorned with strands of pearls. The entire scene is framed with a tri-color ornamental border and the magazine’s name Resimli Ay (رسملی آی) is featured in a clean, legible nesih (naskh) script. The text of the magazine’s iconic nameplate remained relatively unchanged over the next couple of years until the October 1928 issue which featured its first Latin-letter logo.

In addition to the journal’s name, the cover page includes the issue number (12) and price (25 kuruş or piasters) printed in roundels located in the lower right and left corners respectively. For comparison, the magazine’s price of 25 kuruş is ten times greater than that of an issue of the popular bi-weekly satirical journal Karagöz which was 2.5 kuruş. Although categorically the two constitute different kinds of publications the discrepancy in prices is still quantitatively fair as a single issue of Karagöz consists of only 4 pages whereas Resimli Ay is a hefty 48 pages long.

But as we mentioned above, the current issue is celebrating a year of publishing and does so not only with a flashy, brightly-colored cover picture but with bonus content! A cloud of text to the right of the palanquin informs the consumer of this extra value with the words “seventy-five pages” (yetmiş beş sayfa) which is slightly over 50% more pages than the average issue of Resimli Ay. Indeed, this was a significant issue for the sake of the paper’s legacy and this is confirmed with the opening editorial located on the first page entitled “Our Magazine Is One Year Old” (Mecmuamız Bir Yaşında) where the journal’s aspirations to offer the Turkish readership a modern publication indistinguishable from its European counterparts are laid out. It also outlines several developments to affect the magazine in its second year including “cleaner, more perfect paper” (daha temiz, daha mükemmel bir kağıt), modern, tri-colored cover art, and a wider variety of stories from authors such as Yakup Kadri, Halide Edip, and Reşat Nuri.