Following World War II, however, Turkey witnessed the proliferation of print media, including newspapers, journals, books and pamphlets that emphasized the importance of Islam to Turks. These were published in metropolitan centers and the provinces. Some were devoted simply to educating the people in Muslim beliefs and practices; others actively challenged the efficacy of Kemalist secularism.
This paper addresses a theme common to most of these religious publications: that Turkey belonged to the community of Muslim nations; moreover, despite the legacy of Kemalist secularism, Turkey deserved recognition as a prominent leader within the Muslim world. The paper examines the content of two important periodicals: Selamet, published by Ömer Riza Dogrul between 1947 and 1949; and Islam Dünyasi, published by Mehmet Raif Ogan between 1952 and 1954. Understood in the context of other print media, these publications played an important role in the opening up of a public space in which Turkey’s identity as a Muslim nation might be debated. At the time, secular Kemalists expressed great discomfort with this, but today Turkey increasingly finds itself cast as the model for democratic politics in the Muslim Middle East. To understand how this came about it is essential to examine the earliest stages of free public discourse in Turkey and the contribution to it made by religious print media.