PROVINCIAL NEWSPAPERS AS A HISTORICAL SOURCE: BÜYÜK CİHAD AND THE GREAT STRUGGLE FOR THE MUSLIM TURKISH NATION (1951–53)
Gavin D. Brockett
PROVINCIAL NEWSPAPERS AS A HISTORICAL SOURCE: BÜYÜK CİHAD AND THE GREAT STRUGGLE FOR THE MUSLIM TURKISH NATION (1951–53) - Volume 41 Issue 3
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Employing rhetoric all too familiar to Turks today, major metropolitan newspapers in Turkey in December 1952 and January 1953 raised the specter of widespread Islamic or religious “reaction” (irtica). Staunch defenders of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's policy of secularism, or laiklik, journalists in Istanbul and Ankara identified the existence of a “black press” (kara basın) manipulated by religious “reactionaries” (mürteci) determined to use print media to challenge the very secular foundations of the modern Turkish nation and to upset the established order. To prevent this, the time had come to prosecute vigorously both individuals and organizations that used newspapers or journals to exploit religion and promote obscurantist propaganda. Chief among these was not a metropolitan publication but, rather, an incendiary religious newspaper produced in the Black Sea city of Samsun—the very same city in which Mustafa Kemal had first set foot in 1919 in his efforts to lead what became the Turkish War of Independence. This black newspaper was Büyük Cihad, “The Great Struggle.”

13 Although political histories of the period do address this debate, the actual newspapers and journals remain to be studied in any depth. Leftist publications included not only the better-known Tan, Görüşler, Marko Paşa, Yeni Dünya, and La Turquie but also Gün, Gerçek, and Sendika in 1946; Zincirli Hürriyet in 1947 and 1948; Hür Gençlik in 1947; Baştan in 1948 and Yeni Baştan in 1950; Beşer in 1949; Nazim Hikmet in 1950; and Nuhun Gemisi in 1949–50. Pan-Turkist publications included Çınaraltı in 1948, Yeni Bozkurt in 1948, Tanrıdağ in 1950, and Orkun in 1950–52.

23 Yeşil Nur's subtitle changed from “Siyasi” to “Dini, Içtimai ve Siyasi” with its seventh issue on 6 June 1951. Its first four issues were described as gayri siyasi (nonpolitical). Yeşil Nur published reasonably regularly between May 1951 and 17 August 1951 (six issues), between 28 December 1951 and 23 June 1952 (eleven issues), and occasionally between 31 October 1952 and 3 April 1953 (five issues).

29 In his interview Bülbül recalled that Bağışlayıcı had died at a young age in an automobile accident. He could not be more specific. On 21 December 1951 Büyük Cihad reported that Bağışlayıcı had traveled to Istanbul to participate in an Islam Democrat Party meeting. Efforts were under way to establish a branch of the Islam Democrat Party in Samsun, but it does not appear to have actually opened.

30 Bülbül went by the surname Kavaklıoğlu, although this does not appear in the newspapers. On Bülbül's life, see Nasrattınoğlu, Irfan Ünver, Samsunlu Aşık Kemali Bülbül (The Samsun Poet Kemal Bülbül) (Ankara: Esengür Matbaası, 1976)Google Scholar. This differs in some details from an autobiographical vignette, “K. Bülbül Kavaklıoğlu Kimdir?” Vicdan Sesi (Samsun), 31 January 1953. I have taken the latter to be the most accurate source.