The purpose of this study was defined as to examine the organisation and activities of the Beirut Military Censorship Inspectorate that the Ottoman Government founded by being attached to the Second Army Commandership as per the Censorship Regulations dated August 1914 during the First World War. In the research, the organisational structure of military censorship applied to communication during the First World War was tried to be analysed based on the sample of the Beirut censorship centre. The research precisely determined the achievement or failure of military censorship application, official censorship regulations, legal and juridical structures of the control, sanctions, and halting points of the censorship system and the precautions taken for this in the Ottoman State by examining the organisational structure and activities of the Beirut Military Censorship Inspectorate. Together with having the characteristic of a seaport opening abroad, Beirut was also one of the critical points of overseas communication. For this reason, in the Censorship Regulations, it was emphasised that the Beirut Military Censorship Inspectorate was one of the critical censorship centres because Beirut was one of the three centres where the letters going from inside to outside would be censored. The others were determined as & Idot;stanbul and Baghdad. The Beirut Censorship Inspectorate had to deal with many problems starting from the moment that it was founded because in the censorship centres, there was a need for officers knowing a language with the purpose that letters and telegraphs would be appropriately censored. However, it was difficult to find officers who knew several languages, and it was also not considered a preferred situation that the officers knowing a language left the active army ranks and sealed letters and telegraphs on a deskwork. As the war progressed, this problem became an impasse of the Ottoman security bureaucracy. It was nearly impossible to find an officer knowing five or six languages due to the deep language diversity in Beirut. In this case, civil government officials were also appointed in the censorship centres. In the study, data gathered from the Republic of Turkey Presidency State Archives Ministry of National Defense Military History Archive, ATASE Fund and Presidency of State Archives Ottoman Archives were utilized.
