An intellectual, a magazine

Hanifi Altaş was the founder, owner, editor-in-chief, and lead writer of Yeni Hayat Magazine.

Yeni Hayat was an Atatürkist / Kemalist magazine. The magazine was a monthly publication. It had a republican, nationalist, populist, statist, secular, and revolutionary line. It adopted the principle of “Peace at Home, Peace in the World” as its foundation and continued its publications on this basis. Yeni Hayat was an enlightenment-oriented magazine; the liberation of the mind was one of its most fundamental priorities; it fought against all forms of authority that restricted this freedom. The magazine accepted Kemalism as a view outside and above all other perspectives; it gathered many intellectuals from very different circles around itself. One of the magazine's contributors, Metin Erksan, described Yeni Hayat as the “main street of Kemalism.” The magazine published articles by many writers, from Alpaslan Işıklı to Çetin Yetkin, Necip Hablemitoğlu, Hüseyin Özbek, Mehmet Osmanoğlu, Şener Eruygur, and Serdar Saçan.

The first confrontations between globalists and nationalists were seen in the pages of Yeni Hayat. Second Republican and Neo-Ottomanist views were subjected to criticism in the pages of this magazine; analytical articles defending the nation-state against these views were given weight.

A pro-public approach against privatizations was among the magazine's fundamental lines.

Many academics from both inside and outside the country joined the magazine's editorial staff and made significant contributions.

The magazine offered a liberal environment to its writers; it also included critical articles written by its contributors about one another in its pages.

Yeni Hayat made an early diagnosis of imperialism's project of deriving power from religion and fought against it. For example, some books that have become legendary in the market today regarding FETÖ first appeared in this magazine as various articles.

The magazine opposed and fought against imperialism's use of ethnic differences as tools to cause the dissolution of nation-states.

Attila İlhan wrote three articles about Yeni Hayat in Cumhuriyet Newspaper; he introduced and praised the magazine.

Many of the grounds for the indictment against a political party that was closed down on the grounds of exploiting religion consisted of data from articles published in this magazine; the subject received wide coverage in the press.

The interest it received from its readers, especially those in public institutions, created panic in some media outlets, and Tercüman Newspaper made Yeni Hayat a front-page headline and attacked it.

The place where Yeni Hayat stood was the front line; it was a publication organ of Kemalism fighting on the front; it fought to the death. It was a magazine that gave martyrs among its writers and continued its struggle. When the current government was given the mandate to form a government, it was published with the following cover: “Cadres besieging the state from within”.

The history of Turkish thought cannot be written without taking Yeni Hayat into account.

Yeni Hayat is the work of Hanifi Altaş and a group of friends who formed its steel core. With Hanifi Altaş's organizational capacity and leadership, the magazine published for fourteen years by rejecting all offers of holding support, with the contributions of a group in the steel core; when the economic contribution limits of this group were reached, the magazine ended its publication.

If it weren't for Hanifi Altaş, there would be no Yeni Hayat Magazine. We lost Hanifi Altaş on 29.10.2023. We offer our condolences to the Turkish Nation, which has lost a very important intellectual.

News Source: Dr. Mehmet SARITAŞ