Abstract:

The period of Second Constitutional Monarchy (1908-1918) is the most prominent years of Turkish political life and democracy experience. This ten-year period, which has been quite miseasy, has been the years when the Committee of Union and Progress took an active part in politics, and political and military failures followed one after another. The declaration of Second Constitutional Monarchy, the 31 March Incident, the dethronement of Abdulhamid II, the wars of Tripoli, Balkan and World War I are the first events that come to mind in this period. In these years, when political factions were prevalent, conflicts were generally carried out over the media, and these polemics sometimes resulted in murder. While the views of the parties are mostly shaped within the administrative offices of the newspapers, these newspapers are separated from each other with very sharp lines. Intellectual structures and ideologies, which were so different to the certain extent, generally met on a common point against the palace administration of the period and the being supporter of constitutionalism. The Volkan Newspaper, which is the subject of our study, has been accused of being anti-constitutional and antagonist of the ideas of Committee of Union and Progress, both in the history of the press and in our political history, and accused of opposing the Committee Union and Progress, which is the biggest supporter of the constitutionalism. However, when we go into detail, it is seen that the articles in the newspaper are in a different course. In the study, the pro-constitutional articles in the Volkan Newspaper and how the military wing of the Committee was handled by the newspaper was evaluated. In the study, which also examines the dialogues of Volkan with other newspapers and magazines of the period, its aim to draw attention to how the idea of constitutionalism and democracy found a middle ground with the opposing factions, beyond the general oppositional perception.

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