This chapter examines the hand-written prison camp newspapers in which the prisoners of war discussed, at length, the weaknesses in their nation, state, society and culture while they awaited the end of the war, and then their long-delayed repatriation. Their literary efforts were nothing less than an earnest self-examination of their society with its shortcomings and mistakes. In the prisoners' formulations, these weaknesses had brought the nation to the brink of imminent destruction at the end of the Great War. As they diagnosed the causes of neglect, slumber and decline, they also offered hopeful suggestions for fixing those problems. The prisoners' views were remarkably candid and passionate, not only because these writings were not meant for public consumption, but also because they were produced under difficult circumstances when apprehension about being direct likely disappeared. Given their personal situations as prisoners of war, the fact that they did not resign themselves to their own and their nation's fate is remarkable in itself.

In the process of self-examination, the prisoner-authors identified a number of problems they deemed to be causes of the weaknesses in their nation, state, society and culture. These problems included the ignorance of the majority of the Ottoman population; a misinterpreted Islam, where the misinterpretation discouraged people from working for a modern world and materialistic achievements; and an educated and politically important elite engaged in self-aggrandisement, rather than acting for the common good. In their writings, as the officer prisoners identified problems and offered solutions, they constructed a national community by ‘performing’ the nation.