Abstract:

Keriman Halis was born in Istanbul on February 16, 1913 as a child of a Caucasian family. She participated twice in the Türkiye Beauty Contest, the first of which was organized by Cumhuriyet newspaper in 1929. Halis, who participated in the first one in 1930, could not go to the second tour due to her family's disapproval. However, two years later, with the permission of her family, she participated in the fourth Türkiye beauty contest, which was held in 1932, and was chosen the first in Türkiye on July 2, 1932. Later, on July 31, 1932, she came first in the Miss World pageant held in Spa, Belgium. Thus, Keriman Halis played an important role in determining the country's identity of the republic and its place among other countries in the Republic of Türkiye, which was founded on October 29, 1923. After this event, which gave an important mission to Turkish women and could be considered important in the struggle for women and women's rights, Atatürk given the surname "Ece" in 1934 within the scope of the Surname Law to her. While this success, which is very important for the Republic, created a great enthusiasm among the Turkish people, an important place was reserved for her in the national press. At the same time, Keriman Halis has undertaken the task of being the advertising face of many projects in order to introduce the Republic of Türkiye to the world, to popularize it and to have it accepted. After the competition, Keriman Halis received many invitations from Türkiye and abroad as the "1932 Miss Türkiye and the World" and attended most of them with her father Halis Bey. In this context, she made her first visit abroad to Egypt. Keriman Halis, who went to Egypt on February 17, 1932, returned home on May 17, 1932 from Egypt, where she stayed for 3 months. Both domestic and foreign press followed this trip closely. Although Keriman Halis, who made many visits as Miss Türkiye in Egypt, were showed great interest, many allegations were made about herself and her father during the days she was in there. Both the Egyptian press and the national press gave these claims from their first pages for days. In this study, the positive and negative news about Türkiye’s first Miss World Keriman Halis and her father Halis Bey during their trip to Egypt in 1933 and about them in the press were revealed.