Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi

Öz

Von Papen, the German Ambassador to Ankara, was unsuccessfully
assassinated on February 24, 1942. Both the assassination attempts, and the post-
assassination trial had a great impact on world public opinion. The press made many comments
and assessments. The aim of the study is to comparatively examine the evaluations of the
foreign press on the Von Papen assassination. The scope of the study is newspaper news
published about the Von Papen assassination, especially in the French press, as well as in
countries such as Germany, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and Italy. For this purpose,
the sources of the study, except for French newspapers, were obtained from the Turkish
Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. French newspapers were taken from the
French Gallica library. The findings of the study are as follows: The Soviet Union press,
especially the Izvestiya and Pravda newspapers, claimed that the incident was carried out by
the Germans and that the blame was placed on the Soviet Union. During the trial process,
Turkish courts were criticized harshly. The German press believes that the assassination was
organized by the British and Soviet secret services. However, it was emphasized that the United
Kingdom handed over Europe to the Bolsheviks and that international law was violated with the
assassination. In addition, the German press made propaganda that Turkish German relations
were not damaged. The British press also claims that the assassination was carried out by the
Germans. On the Free French side of the French press, the Allied interpretation was seen. The
Vichy side of the French press made an assessment along the same lines as the German press.
The Italian, Hungarian, Swedish and Albanian press also evaluated the incident from an anti-
Soviet perspective.