Yön

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Yön
Editor-in-chiefDoğan Avcıoğlu
CategoriesPolitical magazine
FrequencyWeekly
FounderDoğan Avcıoğlu
Mümtaz Soysal
İlhan Selçuk
İlhami Soysal
Year founded1961
First issue20 December 1961
Final issue30 June 1967
CountryTurkey
Based inAnkara
LanguageTurkish

Yön (meaning Direction in English) was a weekly Turkish political magazine published between 1961 and 1967.[1][2] It was a Kemalist and leftist magazine.[3] In fact, Yön was more than a publication in that its contributors represented a political movement in the 1960s, Yön movement, which was a successor of another leftist-Kemalist movement of the 1930s, Kadro movement, which appeared also around a publication, Kadro.[4][5]

History and profile[]

Yön started publication in Ankara on 20 December 1961.[3][6] The founders included Doğan Avcıoğlu, Mümtaz Soysal, İlhan Selçuk and .[6] Its editor was Doğan Avcıoğlu.[6] The first issue of the magazine contained a declaration of 500 Turkish intellectuals about a formal doctrine of socialism.[7]

Yön was an organ of Doğan Avcıoğlu's movement, namely direction-revolution movement, which is one of the most influential leftist movements between 1961 and 1971 in Turkey.[8] In line with this function the magazine had a social democratic and Kemalist stance.[9] For the magazine editors Turkey was a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country which was dependent on the western countries, particularly the United States.[10] Therefore, the magazine supported antifeudalism and Third Worldist approach.[9] It attempted to establish a national front to achieve national democracy in Turkey.[9] Yön paid attention to the collaboration between the working class and progressive state bureaucracy in this endeavour.[11]

Major contributors included Niyazi Berkes, Sadun Aren, Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, Cahit Tanyol, İdris Küçükömer and Fethi Naci.[12] Another significant contributor was Kemal Kurdaş who was the rector of Middle East Technical University.[13] His articles contained bitter criticisms of capitalism and offered a model for Turkish-type socialism.[13] Turhan Selçuk published political cartoons in Yön which published articles on the topics that were taboo in Turkey in the 1960s.[12] One of these topics was the Kurdish issue in Turkey for which the magazine employed the term the Eastern problem.[14]

In addition to political writings, Yön also covered artistic work,[2] including a poem of Nazım Hikmet (published in 1964) whose works had not been published in the country for a long time.[15] In 1964 another influential figure joined Yön, namely Mihri Belli.[13] This incident affected the political stance of the magazine in that Yön began to become closer to the right-wing views and to support the Republican Peasants' Nation Party which had been headed by Alparslan Türkeş, one of the army officers who involved in the military coup on 27 May 1960.[13]

Yön was closed following its 77th issue published on 5 June 1963 due to the allegations of supporting the failed military coup by an army officer, Talat Aydemir, on 21 May 1963.[5] The weekly was restarted after fifteen months on 25 September 1964.[5]

Immediately after its foundation Yön sold 30,000 copies.[9] The magazine was the most popular publication during its lifetime among the university students and faculty members of different universities.[13] However, the circulation of Yön decreased to between 4,000 and 5,000 copies in 1965.[6] The magazine ceased publication in 1967,[16] and the last issue was published on 30 June 1967.[6][8] During its lifetime Yön produced a total of 222 issues.[16]

The closure of the magazine, in fact, reflected a significant change in the ideology of the direction-revolution movement.[8] Yön was followed by Ant and Türk Solu, two political magazines.[9]

References[]

  1. ^ Sinan Ciddi (13 January 2009). Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People's Party, Secularism and Nationalism. Routledge. p. 44. ISBN 978-1-134-02559-6.
  2. ^ a b Gholamali Haddad Adel; Mohammad Jafar Elmi; Hassan Taromi-Rad (31 August 2012). Periodicals of the Muslim World: An Entry from Encyclopedia of the World of Islam. EWI Press. p. 264. ISBN 978-1-908433-10-7.
  3. ^ a b Fahrettin Altun (2010). "Discourse of Left-Kemalists in Turkey: Case of the Journal, Yön, 1961–1967". Middle East Critique. 19 (2). doi:10.1080/19436149.2010.484530.
  4. ^ Şener Aktürk (2015). "The Fourth Style of Politics: Eurasianism as a Pro-Russian Rethinking of Turkey's Geopolitical Identity". Turkish Studies. 16 (1): 54. doi:10.1080/14683849.2015.1021246.
  5. ^ a b c Nurdan Güven Toker (2019). "Turkish Socialism Thesis in the Axis of Yön Journal". Avrasya Sosyal ve Ekonomi Araştırmaları Dergisi. 6 (4): 254.
  6. ^ a b c d e Özgür Mutlu Ulus (8 December 2010). The Army and the Radical Left in Turkey: Military Coups, Socialist Revolution and Kemalism. I.B.Tauris. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-85771-880-8.
  7. ^ İsmet Giritli (Summer 1969). "Turkey since the 1965 Elections". The Middle East Journal. 23 (3): 353. JSTOR 4324477.
  8. ^ a b c Şenol Durgun (2015). "Left-Wing Politics in Turkey: Its Development and Problems". Arab Studies Quarterly. 37 (1): 9–32. doi:10.13169/arabstudquar.37.1.0009. JSTOR 10.13169/arabstudquar.37.1.0009.
  9. ^ a b c d e Ahmet Samim (1981). "The Tragedy of the Turkish Left" (PDF). New Left Review. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
  10. ^ Igor Lipovsky (January 1991). "The Legal Socialist Parties of Turkey, 1960-80". Middle Eastern Studies. 27 (1): 101. doi:10.1080/00263209108700849.
  11. ^ Erkan Doğan (September 2010). "Parliamentary Experience of the Turkish Labor Party: 1965–1969". Turkish Studies. 11 (3): 315. doi:10.1080/14683849.2010.506722.
  12. ^ a b Gökhan Ak (October 2015). "1960'larda Niyazi Berkes: Sol Kemalist Bir Düşünürün Yeniden Doğuş Temrinleri". İ.Ü. Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi (53): 38. doi:10.17124/iusbf.27465.
  13. ^ a b c d e Aslı Daldal (2004). "The new middle class as a progressive urban coalition: the 1960 coup d'etat in Turkey". Turkish Studies. 5 (3): 87, 90. doi:10.1080/1468384042000270335.
  14. ^ Banu İdrisoğlu (2016). Left-Leaning Interpretations of Kemalism within the Scope of Three Journals: Kadro, Markopaşa and Yön (MA thesis). Leiden University. p. 6.
  15. ^ Sina Aksin (1 February 2007). Turkey, from Empire to Revolutionary Republic: The Emergence of the Turkish Nation from 1789 to Present. NYU Press. p. 270. ISBN 978-0-8147-0722-7.
  16. ^ a b Tülay Gencer (April 2020). "Yön Dergisinde Fabiancılığın İzleri". SÜ Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi (in Turkish). 49.
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