In this volume, Rifat Bali has collected American consular reports about the state of cinema in the early years of the Turkish republic. The history of early Turkish cinema has been heavily influenced by a 1932 work by Hilmi Malki. However, Bali’s research has demonstrated that this work is in fact a translation of a report prepared by the American Embassy in Ankara. In The Turkish Cinema in the Early Republican Years, Bali presents the original text in print for the first time along with the State Department’s appraisal of the Hinkel report. Bali has also included diplomatic reports on the filming of Atatürk in the 1930s and the opening of a Turkish production “The Awakening of a Nation”. The final document is a report on the state of the film market in Izmir during the Second World War.