CUMHURİYET’İN KURULUŞUNDAN 27 MAYIS’A TÜRKİYE’DE MUHALİF BASIN: BASIN-İKTİDAR İLİŞKİLERİ (1923-1960)
DISSIDENT PRESS IN TURKEY FROM THE FOUNDING OF THE REPUBLIC TO MAY 27: PRESS-POWER RELATIONS (1923-1960)

Summary/Abstract: The history of the Turkish press has been shaped not by public demand, but by the state’s needs for modernization and the construction of legitimacy. This tradition, beginning with Takvim-i Vekayi established in 1831 as a government organ, has led to the press being positioned as an ideological instrument of power. With the proclamation of the Republic, this instrumental role was further reinforced to instill the new regime’s revolutionary transformation project in society. During the single-party period (1923-1945), dissident voices were systematically eliminated through legal regulations such as the Law on the Maintenance of Order (1925) and the 1931 Press Law, and the press was transformed into a monolithic structure. The period beginning with the transition to a multi-party system in 1946, however, exhibited a contradictory nature. The initial relative liberalization and increase in publication diversity soon gave way to a partisan press reflecting political polarization and the intensified pressures of the Democrat Party government, especially after 1954. This study examines the trajectory of the dissident press under these structural conditions in Turkey between 1923 and 1960. The analysis, conducted within the framework of media systems typology and public sphere theory, reveals that even as political powers changed, the reflex to keep the press under control persisted, and this structural continuity has been the most fundamental obstacle to the institutionalization of a free media tradition in Turkey.

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