Ayşehan Jülide Etem, "Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations" (Columbia UP, 2026)

About this episode

Ayşehan Jülide Etem discusses her book on how film influenced Turkey-US relations and shaped national identity.

Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations (Columbia UP, 2026) offers a powerful new account of how film shaped international relations and national identity. Drawing on previously unexamined and recently declassified archives in Turkey and the United States, Ayşehan Jülide Etem demonstrates how both countries used educational films to align institutional agendas and geopolitical interests. By tracing the transnational network of educational cinema, Etem uncovers how film functioned as infrastructure, circulating ideologies, organizing institutions, and training citizens. Moving beyond conventional accounts of propaganda and soft power, this book exposes how film was central to the making of modern Turkey and sheds new light on the media’s role in global politics. Author Ayşehan Jülide Etem is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, where she also directs the Film Studies Concentration. A media studies scholar, Dr. Etem’s research examines how film operates within infrastructures, how it is strategically sponsored, produced, exhibited, and circulated to shape public behavior, manage populations, and mediate power.

People in this episode

Guest: Ayşehan Jülide Etem

Topics covered

• film diplomacy
• international relations
• national identity
• educational films
• media studies
• Turkey-US relations

Keywords

• film
• diplomacy
• Turkey
• United States
• media history
• educational cinema
• international relations

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Virginia, Columbia UP

Books & works: Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations

Places: Turkey, United States

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