| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
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 bas?n) 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."
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