Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın’s View to Turkish Revolution in Magazine “Fikir Hareketleri”

Abstract

Hüseyin Cahit (Yalçın) (1875-1957), is a famous journalist and politician had issued the well-known newspaper "Tanin" within three diffrent periods (1908-1914, 1922-1925, 1943-1947) over his fifty years occupational life. He was one of the very important members of the party of "İttihat ve Terakki". During the Independence War, although he supported the war in his daily, Tanin, issued in İstanbul, at the same time he had some disputes with TGNA Governement with some spesific issues and therefore his name was started to be called as opponent journalists. The President Mustafa Kemal and the governement criticized of his attitude about the proclamation of republic and abolishment of caliphate, the editor underwent a trial at Liberty Court and was accused in "Nutuk" severely. The aim of this article is to follow-up Hüseyin Cahit's explanation of Turkish revolution and his relations with the politicial power from weekly magazine "Fikir Hareketleri" which was publihed in the period of 1933-1940. The editor was seeking for an elimination of the negative impressions of 1920s and comprime with the politicial power. In the journal he had made a middle-class expression based democracy defending. The editor of Tanin, who had criticised the infringement of requirement of representative democracy (for example combination of the presidency of republic and the leadership of "Cumhuriyet Halk Fırkası" on the same figure) very hardly is replaced with the Hüseyin Cahit, who took into consideration the world conditions (dictatorship became widespread and democracies became unpopular of the period between two wars) commended short term dictatorship when necessary for protecting the democracy, not adopted the economic liberty as an indispensable requirement and made the anti-communist expression as the basic expression for his journal in the "Fikir Hareketleri".