Kadri Kayabal, 1921-1979
Published in Kadri Kayabal, ed. Bedri Kayabal, Adalı Yayınları,
İstanbul, 2024 (Turkish)
In my memory, Kadri Bey is bathed in light. The day I started as stringer for the BBC in İstanbul he took me in, opened his offices to me, and allowed me to draw on the resources of THA as I sought to make my way in a new profession in a country I scarcely knew and in a language which I was struggling to learn.
I was entrusted to the foreign news section of his agency. This was supporting UPI and it was staffed by Bedri, his son, and Niyazi Dalyancı. We could draw on the resources of the agency and this had led the way in technology - it was the first to deliver stencilled news bulletins to newspapers by hand - and grew to become the largest private sector news agency in the country. Its competitor was Hürriyet Haber Ajansı rather than Anadolu Ajansı. And it was effective. There were earthquakes in 1967 - at Mudurnu Valley & east of Erzincan - and Pope Paul VI’s “Apostolic Journey to İstanbul, Ephesus and Smyrna” to bridge the historical divide between the Orthodox and Catholic churches. But the story which I remember developing with THA was of the border meetings between the Greek and Turkish Prime Ministers, Konstantinos Kollias and Süleyman Demirel, at first Keşan and then Alexandroupolis (Dedeağaç).
Those took place in September and, returning from them, Nuyan Yiğit (1927-2016), then the Reuters correspondent, described how the leading figure on the Greek side was a Colonel to whom few had previously given heed, George Papadopoulos. It was he, not the Greek ministers and generals in power since the coup of April that year, who dictated the Greek position. And so it proved when three months later Papadopoulos emerged as head of the government which took over after the failed countercoup of King Constantine.
I had another job at that time, representing the Economist Intelligence Unit as we sought commercial consultancy work. But what gave focus to my life was the time I would spend on the THA’s welcoming top floor in Cağaloğlu. By 1968, I had also become the stringer of the Observer and often I would work late into the night, filing from the agency’s telex. Leave too late and I could no longer drive my BMW R25/3 across the Galata Bridge - in the small hours each morning they would open the central section to let large ships pass to and from the Haliç.
Kadri Bey seemed always to be there. A round and bald presence, radiating a bonheur and enthusiasm which encouraged us all. Others have written how THA was an ekol, a university for them, and many of these later became distinguished in those fine days for journalism when it was a respected profession and its practitioners concerned with describing what they saw and not others wanted them to have seen. It was a golden era and I was lucky to be a foreigner to benefit from Kadri Bey’s encouragement, as did so many of his compatriots.
Bağımsız Basın Ajansı
Founded in 1950 by Kadri Kayabal, the agency began by a stenciled news bulletin distributed by hand in Istanbul. His son, Bedri Kayabal expanded the agency in the 1970s making it a source of video news provider to international broadcasters from Turkey and neighboring regions. Now, Kayabal's two grandsons, Ferit and Kadri are running the company that offers production and satellite broadcast services worldwide.
Sledge & snow
Radio from studios
Telex - read ribbons
Building Babıali 107