OTTOMAN SOCIALIST PARTY COMMUNITY’S IDEAS IN THE FRAME OF ITS OWN PUBLICATIONS

The Second Constitutional Period, had brought a significant revival in press, intellectual and political lives in the Ottoman Empire. Many newspapers had been published under the relatively free atmosphere of that period; new ideas had developed and the politcal parties had begun to be organized. One of the political thoughts, which had occured within this relatively free atmosphere, was socialism. The newspaper, titled ‘İştirâk’, which was the first organized and long-term published socialist publication by Hüseyin Hilmi and his colleagues, had begun to be published on February 26th, 1910. The same political group had estabilished the first Ottoman Socialist Party. It could not show a significant activity, not be a mass party, not participate in the elections and not have any deputy in the Parliament. Its main political activity remained limited within their publications. When their first newspaper, ‘İştirâk’, had been closed, they had published the other newspapers such as ‘İnsaniyet’, ‘Sosyalist’, and ‘Medeniyet’ substituting with each other, as one was closed; and thus, they had maintained their socialist publication activity. The fundamental objectives of such publications of that political group were to introduce the socialist thought, tell the problems of the working class and to impose the conscious to organise to the workers to led them to gain their rights. The political party and its publications had been ceased upon the Ottoman Socialist Party members and its newspapers’ editors were arrested and exiled, after Mahmut Şevket Pasha had been assassinated in 1913.