Bir Post-Kemalist Gazete Olarak Cumhuriyet

Abstract

The 1980s witnessed important breaks and transformations in the world and in Turkey. The main movement that established this period is neoliberalism. Neoliberalism, as an economy-based transformation process that takes place globally, has a hegemonic power because non-economic areas are also transformed within the framework of the ground determined by it. The crisis of left modernism and the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc strengthens the hegemony of neoliberalism. In this framework, neoliberalism appears as a founding and transformative force in which material and intellectual transformation constantly interact. The fact that liberal ideas aroused interest at an unprecedented level in the history of the Republic of Turkey in the 1980s should be considered within the framework of the interaction of the factual and the conceptual. Because the rise of liberal political thought in Turkey is related to neoliberalism, which started with the January 24 Decisions, was institutionalized with the September 12 military coup, and became popular under the leadership of Turgut Özal. Cumhuriyet appears as a newspaper that makes it possible to follow the ideas of this rising liberal intelligentsia. During Hasan Cemal's editor-in-chief, the newspaper appeared as a place where the rising liberal intelligentsia, described as post-Kemalist, left liberal and second republican, increased its popularity. Cumhuriyet, as a place of intellectual popularity, makes it possible to identify the references of emerging liberal thought and to correlate these sources with the process of neoliberal transformation. Criticisms of military tutelage, official ideology and official history has played a founding role in the formation of liberal thought. The solution to the problem of non-democratization described from this critical framework is seen in supporting all kinds of policies that will cause the state associated with Kemalism to lose its power and in making possible a social contract based on civil society. On the other hand, the symbolic value of Cumhuriyet Newspaper and its inclusion of left Kemalist intellectuals allow us to observe the antagonistic relationship between rising liberalism and left Kemalism.