Sertels During World War II And Newspaper TAN(1939-1945)

The family name ‘Serteller-Sertels’ refers to two prominent figures in the political and press history of Turkey, Sabiha Sertel and her husband Zekeriya Sertel. From 1915 onwards the Sertel couple had been part of the Turkish elite; yet because of their socialist agenda they had to endure several hurdles leading finally to their exclusion from the social community of which once they were member. The newspaper Tan was an important platform in the Turkish political life, particularly during WW II, which served Sertels to propagate their political opposition that call for preservation of Ataturk’s revolutions but that go beyond it to embrace an anti-fascist and anti-imperialist leftist stance. Diverting from the political position in which they had a pro-government leaning while at the same time retaining their critical approach to the WW II, Tan and Sertels gradually assumed the role of advocates of the Turkish left and started to criticize the government when they realized and was encouraged by the fact that Germany would not able to win the war. At a post WW II time when multi-party political system came into being in Turkey, the role assigned to the opposition by the government was to take form within a controlled framework that denied leftist ideas. To this end, the government sponsored a plot, known as ‘Tan Olayı-Tan Incident’ in the Turkish political history, to prevent Sertels from gaining a leftist ground in the nurturing opposition. After this infamous event Sertels could not pursue their political and journalist activities in Turkey.