Literary Analysis of the Articles Published in Öğüt, one of the newspapers of the National Struggle Period

Abstract

The establishment of the Constitutional Monarchy on the 25th of July 1908, newspapers began to be published uncensored.  There has been great increase in the number of newspapers, magazines, and books.  Journalism which was run by Istanbul, provincial press, and minority newspapers in an extremely free environment with the establishment of the Second Constitutional Monarchy ended with the First World War and left its place to strict control.

Newspapers, which were considered as the most effective mass communication tool after the telegraph in the period of National Struggle which started after the First World War, appeared as an ideological struggle field and a tool in conveying the ideas of Occupational Forces, Istanbul Government and Ankara to the masses.

The period of the National Struggle includes literary products about the struggle for the existence of the nation.  It is seen that the echoes of the struggle experienced in these literary products are processed within the framework of various themes such as love of the army, nation, homeland, flag, people, and country.  These themes were encountered in some issues of Öğüt newspaper.  While national issues and values ​​are brought into the forefront especially in the literary texts of the poetry type, the impressions of the Turkism ideology have drawn attention in the texts in the prose type.
In this study, “Ya Allah!”, “My Children's Prayer”;  The texts called “Kara Afak”, “A Vatani Cheer in Sivas”, “Our Future” which appeared in prose, were examined in terms of literature.  First of all the historical development of Öğüt newspaper was analyzed, and then the literary contents in the newspaper were evaluated in the context of the newspaper's publication perception.  The main thesis of the study is that the literary articles published in Öğüt newspaper make an effective contribution to the propaganda of the National Struggle.