Turkey's future, Doğan Avcıoğlu, and the effort of theoretical endeavor...

Doğan Avcıoğlu has been attracting the attention of the younger generation in recent times, and his books are frequently found on bestseller lists. My esteemed professor, Prof. Dr. Barış Doster, also frequently mentions this development in his articles, interviews, and the events he attends.
This interest in and embrace of Atatürk, Turkish history, and the history of the National Liberation is a positive development.

Doğan Avcıoğlu holds a unique and special place in our political history and intellectual life. He was a Kemalist, a patriot, a progressive, a statist, a researcher, a writer, and a journalist... A diligent man of a cause...
His seminal works include "The Order of Turkey," "History of National Liberation," "History of the Turks," "Foreign Finger in March 31st," and "On Revolution and Democracy."

Avcıoğlu is a leading figure in the theoretical effort to unite Kemalism with socialism. It was an effort to develop and complete the Six Arrows and carry them even further...

The "Yön" and "Devrim" magazines, which began publication under his leadership, became the voice, eyes, and ears of this effort.

When the calendar showed December 20, 1961, the "Yön" magazine, which would leave its mark on the era, began publication. Beyond being just a magazine, it became the name of a movement. The "Yön Declaration," signed by numerous intellectuals and creating a great impact, also emphasized the idea that Turkey could not develop through a capitalist path.

Yön formed its basic theses by reinterpreting Kemalist principles using Marxism to complete Kemalism, centering them around a development strategy. An intense intellectual effort was made to determine how socialism could be implemented in accordance with the conditions of Atatürk's Turkey.

The magazine, which published a total of 222 issues, was closed for 14 months starting from its 77th issue dated June 5, 1963, and its final issue was published on June 30, 1967.

The pioneer, editor-in-chief, ideologue, and in short, the veteran of Yön, is Doğan Avcıoğlu.

While the "Yönists" persistently sought an answer to the question "How can Turkey develop?", they also emphasized that a true nationalist must answer the following questions:

"How will we feed the growing population, how will we provide jobs for this population, how will we stop unemployment, how will we educate our children, how will we put an end to major cities becoming lands of shantytowns, how will we stop the exploitation of the peasant, how will we save the nation from poverty?"

The century they were in was a century of social and national revolutions, and the struggle against imperialism had to be carried out as a nation through a national liberation front... The national economy, national foreign policy, populism, and the national front were all subject to this strategy...

It is impossible to ignore Doğan Avcıoğlu's intellectual and practical contributions to Turkish political history. It is because of his Kemalist, pro-independence, collectivist, and anti-imperialist stance that his books are being passed from hand to hand today...

With the belief that we will understand and make sense of this theoretical effort even better in Turkey's future and in the days to come...