Vatan (daily newspaper)

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Vatan

description Turkish daily newspaper
publishing company Demirören Holding
Headquarters İzzet Paşa Mah., Abide-i Hürriyet Cd No, 162, Şişli / Istanbul
First edition September 2, 2002
Frequency of publication Every day
Sold edition 103,501 copies
(January 2017)
Editor-in-chief İsmail Turgut Yuvacan
editor Erdoğan Demirören
Web link Vatan

Vatan (Fatherland) is a Turkish daily newspaper published in Istanbul . Since a change of ownership in 2011, it has been close to the ruling Justice and Recovery Party (AKP). It is the fourth daily newspaper of this name in the history of the Turkish Republic.

First foundation in 1923

The first Vatan appeared on March 26, 1923. Editor was the journalist and writer Ahmet Emin Yalman (1888–1972). The newspaper initially supported the Republican People's Party (CHP) of state founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk , but then switched to the opposition Republican Progressive Party (TCF). The sheet achieved a sales circulation of up to 15,000 copies, which was considerable for that time. With the ban on the TCF in 1925, the Vatan was also banned.

Second foundation in 1940

Although Yalman had escaped conviction by the special courts of the time only through his promise to stay out of the press business in the future , he risked a return in the mid-1930s. Together with the married couple Sabiha and Zekeriya Sertel , he bought the newspaper Tan (“Twilight”) in the mid-1930s . Soon it came to a falling out because the Sertels advocated a socialist direction, while Yalman represented liberal and pro-American views. However, the Vatan, led by Yalman as publisher and chief commentator, also followed a clear line against Nazi Germany .

After the Democratic Party's election victory in 1950, the Vatan initially supported the government of Adnan Menderes and became one of the leading newspapers in the country with a circulation of over 100,000. After 1955 she kept her distance, points of criticism included the incipient disputes with the USA , tendencies towards authoritarianism and finally the increase in religious motives in government policy. In 1952, Yalman escaped an attempt to murder an Islamist assassin, and in late 1959 he was sentenced to 15 months in prison. He was released after the military coup in May 1960 . At the end of the same year, he fell out with his partners who had come across the paper a few years earlier. Yerel left the newspaper and founded a follow-up newspaper called Hür Vatan ("Free Fatherland"), which, however, remained unsuccessful and was closed in 1962 after just one year. The Vatan was henceforth published by journalist Naim Tirali, but had to fight against loss of importance and was set 1975th

Third foundation in 1976

From March 12, 1976, Vatan was issued by a completely different cast. Numan Esin, who had participated as an officer in the military coup of 1960, became the publisher. The 1971 military coup , on the anniversary of which the first edition was published, was rejected by the makers. The third Vatan was shaped by social democratic editors such as İlhami Soysal and Emil Galip Sandalcı. The most important publication of this newspaper, which was discontinued only two years later, was a series of articles by the journalist and writer Nihat Behram about the life and thinking of the left student leaders Deniz Gezmiş , Yusuf Aslan and Hüseyin İnan, who were executed in 1972 . Behram and his newspaper were besieged with complaints. The series of articles later appeared under the title Darağacında Üç Fidan (“Three Buds on the Gallows”) as a book that has been reprinted to the present day and has decisively influenced the general perception of Gezmiş and his companions.

Fourth foundation in 2002

Mutlu / Dogan era 2002–2011

In the summer of 2002 a group of around 70 journalists left the daily Sabah to start a new newspaper. The spokesman was the journalist Zafer Mutlu, who had previously been considered the right hand of the then Sabah publisher Dinç Bilgin. Mutlu appeared in the first years of the fourth Vatan as a publisher, whereupon the assumption quickly arose that an agreement or even silent participation of the Doğan media group had been made. After all, the new newspaper made use of Doğan's infrastructure (printing, distribution, etc.). Some observers interpreted Vatan as an attempt by the Doğan group to wrestle their greatest competitor - the Sabah .

The sheet soon achieved sales of up to 180,000 copies. Politically, Vatan positioned itself liberally and moderately nationalist .

In July 2007, Doğan officially bought the paper, and the publisher Zafer Mutlu received a post on the board of Doğan. Having got into financial distress due to additional tax claims, the Doğan Group sold in April 2011 together with the daily Milliyet to Demirören Holding , a conglomerate with good contacts to the AKP government .

Demiröen era since 2011

In the spring of 2014, in the course of the corruption scandal, the recording of an illegally tapped telephone conversation between the then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the CEO Erdoğan Demirören was made public. In it, the prime minister complained about the publication of internal government documents in the Milliyet and demanded the dismissal of the chief editor Derya Sazak , which then happened.

A similar direct intervention with the Vatan is not known. But even at Vatan , the collaboration with some long-standing editors and authors in recent years has been terminated for political reasons, even if not to the same extent as at Milliyet . So in the summer of 2013, the collaboration with the editor and author Can Ataklı was terminated. In his last comments he had criticized the negotiations with the banned PKK at the time . Shortly afterwards, they parted ways with Mustafa Mutlu and the most famous Vatan author of all, the left-liberal musician Zülfü Livaneli , who had been a columnist from the start. Even when there was talk of financial disagreement in connection with Mustafa Mutlu, some observers spoke of a "political cleansing".

A year later, the journalist Ruşen Çakır , who was also an avowed supporter of a negotiated solution, was fired after criticizing Turkish policy towards the Islamic State and the Syrian-Kurdish Democratic Union Party in several comments . In December 2016, the editor-in-chief refused to print a column by the journalist Reha Muhtar , in which he criticized the measures taken after the attempted coup in July 2016 as disproportionate and raised the question of whether the musician Ahmet Kaya would have been arrested if he had still been on Life would have been. After ten years at Vatan , Muhtar ended his engagement.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Average sold circulation in the week of January 16-22 , 2017 according to Medya Tava.
  2. ↑ a b c Sanem Gök: Türk Siyasal yaşamında Vatan Gazetesi̇ (1950-1960) , Master's thesis at Ankara University, 2003.
  3. ^ Biography of Naim Tirali at www.biyografi.net.
  4. ↑ Nihat Behram: Darağacında Üç Fidan , Everest Yayınları, 101st edition, Istanbul 2016.
  5. ↑ a b Vatan 10. yılını böyle kutluyor , texts by Vatan -Autoren 10th Anniversary, Gazeteciler.com, 4 September 2012 found.
  6. ↑ Ahmet Kekeç: Yurttaş Mutlu , Star, April 8, 2009.
  7. ↑ Aydın Doğan'dan alış-satış atağı  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Birgün, July 19, 2007.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.birgun.net  
  8. ↑ Demirören-Karacan ortaklığı Milliyet ve Vatan'ı satın alıyor , Hürriyet, April 21, 2011.
  9. ↑ Turkey versus YouTube: Erdogan's draconian reaction to silence a scandal , The Independent, March 27, 2014.
  10. ↑ Andrew Finkel: Only one person is allowed to criticize  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Der Spiegel, December 20, 2015.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.spiegel.de  
  11. ↑ Can Ataklı Vatan Gazetesi'nden gönderildi , Türkiye, July 13, 2013.
  12. ↑ Umur Talu: Mesele bir de budur, Hıdır! , Habertürk, September 3, 2013.
  13. ↑ Ruşen Çakır: Kobani ile PKK'yı, PKK ile de (IŞ) İD'i eşitlerseniz , Vatan, October 6, 2014.
  14. ↑ Ruşen Çakır, Vatan'dan ayrıldı! , Habertürk, October 11, 2014.
  15. ↑ 'Ahmet Kaya da mı içeri alınacaktı?' yazısı sansürlenen Reha Muhtar, Vatan'dan ayrıldı , Diken, November 19, 2016.