1960’lı Yıllardan 1970’lerin Başlarına Kadar Türkiye Solunun Çin Algısı: Yön, Türk Solu ve Devrim Dergileri Örneğinde Bir İnceleme

Abstract

This study examines three leftist journals published in Turkey from the early 1960s to the early 1970s—Yön, Türk Solu, and Devrim—in order to analyze how the Turkish left of the period perceived and absorbed the Chinese Revolution, socialist practice in China, and Mao Zedong Thought. It finds that all three regarded China as an important example of anti-imperialist revolution in the Third World, treating the theory of New Democracy, people’s war, and mass mobilization as valuable references for Turkey’s search for an independent path of development. Yet, owing to their differing ideological orientations, the journals diverged: Yön took a cautious stance focused on comparison and lessons; Türk Solu identified strongly with China and treated its experience as a theoretical norm; Devrim placed it within a more radical revolutionary discourse. In short, the image of China in these journals was not an objective reflection of Chinese reality but a construction that each party selectively shaped and reinterpreted according to its own political needs—one that laid the groundwork for the later spread of Mao Zedong Thought in Turkey.