Building state authority after empire: foreign schools and republican control in early Republican Turkey-the 1924 Robert College ‘Fisher’ case

This article examines how the early Turkish Republic asserted authority over foreign schools through the 1924 Robert College “Fisher” case. Using newly accessible archival documents from Turkish ministries, the Istanbul Governorate, and Robert College, it reconstructs the dispute chronologically and analyzes it thematically. The study shows that Republican officials treated the issue less as a pedagogical matter than as a question of sovereignty, framing historical narration and visual representation as a national insult. Authority was enacted through investigation, hierarchy, accelerated decision-making, sanctions, and inter-agency coordination, while competing reports reveal bureaucratic “truth” as contested and power-laden.