The Anatomy of the 1948 FLHG Liquidation: A Mirror of Intra-elite Conflicts in Early Cold War Turkey

Semih Gökatalay

Niyazi Berkes, Pertev Naili Boratav, and Behice Boran¹ were dismissed from Ankara University (AU) in June 1948 and stood trial lasting until June 1950. The professors were accused of being advocates of communism and subverting the Turkish regime. Influential politicians and journalists waged a campaign against and criminalized the three professors² before the court made its ultimate decision that found Berkes, Boran, and Boratav innocent of all charges against them. The campaign against the three professors symbolized the changing balance of power in the governing party before and during the trial.

As Barbara Falk rightfully asserts, political trials reflect the political changes of the period within which courts operate.³ The professors’ trial was typical of such trials. For historians of modern Turkey, it was the anti-communist policies of the government and the worsening of the Turkish-Soviet relations in the post-war period that brought about the professors’ trial.⁴ On the eve of the Cold War, the direction of the Turkish foreign policy took on a new salience. With the end of the Second World War and Soviet territorial demands from Turkey, the Turkish government could no longer preserve its pre-war neutralist foreign policy. Faced with the Soviet threat, Turkey initiated closer relations with the West, particularly with the United States.⁵ From the United States’ viewpoint, Turkey was a strategic ally that could aid the United States stop the Soviet containment in the Middle East.⁶ The setbacks in Turkish-Soviet relations and post-war Turkish-American rapprochement laid the groundwork for the growth of anti-communism in Turkey. The government and opposition parties united in crushing leftist groups. Although leftist groups in Turkey had been neither powerful nor organized,⁷ the transition from single to multi-party system led to the formation of leftist parties. These leftist parties were soon closed down due to the increased anti-communist environment,⁸ which led to the professors’ trial for many scholars.

This view is not necessarily wrong but it neglects that the professors’ trial mirrored the complexity of intra-elite conflicts that were mostly a result of the transition from single-party rule to the multiparty system. As will be explained below, the trial emerged as a result of the conflicts within the governing party, which predated anti-Soviet feelings. Although Turkey managed to preserve its neutrality during most of the course of the Second World War, popular unrest in Turkey grew out of high rates of inflation and the mobilization of a serious percentage of the Turkish population. Confronted with the increasing domestic dissent, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) (the Republican People’s Party), the ruling party of the early Republican period, conducted a set of liberal reforms in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.⁹ Moreover, after the war, four MPs broke away from the CHP to found Demokrat Parti (DP) (the Democratic Party). Founded on January 7, 1946, the DP soon became the main opposition party in Turkey.

The formation of the DP, however, did not put an end to conflicts within the CHP. Instead, these conflicts expressed themselves in the ideological terms of the so-called radicals versus the so-called moderates. Scholars of modern Turkey labeled these two groups as radicals and moderates due to their approach to political and economic liberalization that took place in post-war Turkey. The first group was against the transition to multiparty system and the liberalization of the Turkish economy, whereas the second supported Turkey’s post-war openness to the capitalist West.¹⁰ Instead of “radicals” and “moderates,” I prefer the terms ‘pro-liberalization’ and ‘anti-liberalization’ in defining the two main groups within the CHP. As will be discussed below, a similar division took place also within the DP.

As such, the currently prevalent understanding in the scholarly literature of the trial in particular and the political conflicts in general have neglected other political groups in the CHP. Two of the groups were smaller in scope but affected the party politics and were pro-Nazi and left-oriented groups (see Fig. 1 for leading politicians and intellectuals of these groups). Although these two small groups were not influential as much as the two main groups, their effect on the Turkish political environment in the post-1945 period cannot be ruled out, especially in terms of educational and cultural spheres.

While the Second World War years radically changed balances between these two small groups, the early Cold War period and the increased anti-communism in Turkey gave a pretext to the radical right group in fighting against the left-oriented group. In the elimination of the left-oriented group from the political sphere, most of the DP members supported the efforts of the CHP administration.

In this study, by ‘left-oriented,’ I mean pro-Enlightenment, populist, advocates of free public education and health, defenders of the Kemalist revolutions, anti-racist, and anti-Nazi politicians in the CHP. For sure, the CHP was neither a leftist party until the-1970s (even in the early-1970s it became a ‘center-left’ party), nor were most of the party members anti-anti-communist in the late 1940s. More importantly, among the three professors, the only person who was claimed to have a secret affiliation with socialists groups was Behice Boran.¹¹ Pertev Naili Boratav and Niyazi Berkes only showed sympathy for left-wing ideologies and were not members of a political party and advocates of any political group. Rather they were members of a faculty that was the scene of a rivalry between two different groups within the Turkish political elites, as will be discussed below.

The struggle between the radical right wing and the left-oriented group within the CHP continued from the Second World War until the Turkish general elections of May 14, 1950, which brought the DP into power. All of this tied in with the professors’ trial. Only after the DP came to power were accusations against the professors completely dropped. In that regard, the professors’ trial symbolized the transformation of the CHP in particular and Turkish politics in general in the mid-to-late 1940s.

Before the analysis of the trial of Berkes, Boran, and Boratav, the methodology of this paper will be provided. This study focuses on the background of the trial rather than on the trial itself, and it examines the course of the trial in a chronological order within the larger framework of Turkish politics.

Based on plenty of primary and secondary sources, this article makes the argument that the post-war trial of Berkes, Boran, and Boratav was a result of, and simultaneously an indicator of, ideological conflicts within the single-party regime of the CHP during the transition from the single-party regime to the multiparty system in the late-1940s. It argues that rather than being the result of a deep-rooted antipathy within the CHP toward communism or the Soviet Union, the trial of the professors mirrored the complexity of intra-elite conflicts and should be seen in the context of conflicts among different groups within the CHP: the extreme right wing seeking to marginalize the three professors and the left-oriented group seeking to protect them. It is important to acknowledge plenty of studies that directly or indirectly deal with the trial.¹² Some of them have provided excellent accounts of the trial and the prosecution of the three professors. Benefiting from these studies, the current paper aims to evaluate the professors’ trial within a larger framework of the Turkish politics in the 1940s.

Methods and Sources

To show the complexity of the intra-party conflicts in the Turkish politics that eventually brought about the professors’ trial, this paper draws from a body of primary and secondary resources. To demonstrate the crucial role of the parliament during the trial and the ways in which parliament politicized it, this paper explores minutes and meetings of the Turkish National Assembly as well as speeches of the outstanding political figures that Turkish newspapers used as a reference point in their campaign against Berkes, Boran, and Boratav. It also uses a few official documents regarding the trial that are held in Başbakanlık Cumhuriyet Arşivi (BCA) [Republican Archive of the Prime Ministry].

In addition, this investigation uses the coverage of the trial by both pro-government newspapers – in this paper, Akşam [Evening], Tanin [Resonance], and Ulus [Nation] – and anti-government newspapers – in this paper, Cumhuriyet [Republic], Kudret [Power], Tan [Dawn], Vatan [Homeland], Yeni Sabah [New Morning], and Zafer [Victory].¹³ These critical sources reveal that Turkish newspapers, pro- and anti-government, did their part to keep the professors’ trial in the forefront of their pages to shape public opinion in support of their campaign against the professors, with priority given to the demonstrations of the Turkish youth. They also show that not only pro-CHP but also most of the pro-DP newspapers expressed full appreciation for the dismissal of the three professors.

The last category of sources is memoirs that were written either by people who witnessed the trial or by central figures of political parties of the period. These memoirs are not always even-handed and might show a certain degree of bias, a factor that needs to be considered in interpreting them. Nonetheless, these memoirs, especially that of Niyazi Berkes, contain information that cannot be found in news columns and official documents.

Setting the Stage for the Trial

The professors’ trial was neither an ordinary trial, nor was it connected with only the three professors. An examination of its background and its motivations would reveal that such a political trial was a result of the multi-layered and complicated transitions taking place in Turkish politics and internationally. After the death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic, on November 10, 1938, political confrontation between different groups within the CHP escalated, and extreme right-wing groups increasingly amassed power and influence.¹⁴ During the Second World War, the CHP cadre decided to replace some of the old members of the party with young people who would represent the pro-liberalization group after the war.¹⁵ Accordingly, a set of intense conflicts within different groups in the party emerged.

Intra-party Conflicts in the Ministry of Education

The Ministry of Education was one of the arenas in which an intense rivalry between pro-Nazi and anti-racist (or left-oriented) members of the CHP took place. As one of the anti-racist CHP members, Saffet Arıkan served as the Minister of Education in the late Atatürk period. Arıkan initiated a nation-wide program called "village trainer" (köy eğitmeni),¹⁶ which became a model of the Village Institutes (Köy Enstitüleri), a project that began on April 17, 1940, to increase the literacy rate among Turkish peasants and to speed up the economic development of rural parts of Turkey. In December 1938, Saffet Arıkan was replaced by Hasan Âli Yücel, who was Minister of Education from December 1938 to August 1946. Before and during the Second World War, Hasan Âli Yücel became a prominent figure in the left-oriented group, which largely dominated cultural and educational affairs of the party and government. At the same time, Yücel protected anti-racist professors whereas Reşat Şemsettin Sirer, General Director of the Higher Education until August 1946 and then Minister of Education until June 1948, backed the radical right-wing people, especially supporters of Turanism, the idea of Pan-Turkism.¹⁷

Some well-known and conservative liberal scholars of the period have discussed that Hasan Âli Yücel was not a left-oriented politician but instead he was categorically against the left. In one of the volumes that he presented very detailed accounts of Turkish political history in the early Cold War period, for example, political scientist and journalist Cemil Koçak claimed that Minister of Education Hasan Âli Yücel was a staunch anti-leftist politician.¹⁸ Later, Cemil Koçak repeated his claim in his column in pro-AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) Star.¹⁹ Nevertheless, many people who were either university students or instructors in Ankara at that time claimed the opposite.²⁰ Even more importantly, the three professors who had been persecuted in this period clearly and evidently explained how Hasan Âli Yücel protected them against the campaign of the pro-Nazi and radical right-wing group.²¹ Regarding the fact that Koçak was aware of such memoirs,²² it is possible to claim that Koçak’s biased view is most probably related to his family’s relations with the DP.²³ Aside from such politically-biased views, an examination of both primary and secondary documents suggests that Hasan Âli Yücel was a patron of left-oriented academics with the three professors being a key example.

In the wake of the Nazi advances through Europe, the rivalry between Yücel and Sirer increased the ideological gap between members of the Faculty of Languages, History and Geography (FLHG), a ministerial faculty,²⁴ which was founded to promote Atatürk’s ideologies in Ankara in 1936. Supported by Sirer, the pro-Nazi group held the majority in the faculty whereas the other group, including Berkes, Boran, and Boratav was in the minority.²⁵ Indeed, Sirer’s hatred of the three professors had begun long ago. Pertev Naili Boratav had travelled to Berlin in 1936 to study for a Ph.D. degree in folklore but had to leave the program as a result of the interference of Reşat Şemsettin Sirer who was an inspector of Turkish students at that time and the leader of the campaign against the professors.²⁶ Sirer’s pressure on the three professors increased proportionally based on his power in the CHP.

The Trial of Turanists

The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 further encouraged the supporters of Turanism, some of whom had contacts with Nazi agents in Turkey.²⁷ Nihal Atsız, one of the leaders of the Turanist movement and the owner of Turanist journal Orhun [Orkhon],²⁸ wrote two open letters to Şükrü Saraçoğlu, Turkish Prime Minister from July 1942 to August 1946, on March 1, and April 1, 1944. In these two letters, Atsız claimed that some members of the FLHG such as Behice Boran and Pertev Boratav, who was a former friend of Atsız, were communists working with the Soviet Union. Atsız further claimed that Hasan Âli Yücel, Minister of Education, protected these communist faculty members.²⁹ The cause of Atsız’s accusations lay in the anti-racist and anti-Nazist articles that Berkes, Boratav, and Boran wrote in the journal Yurt ve Dünya [Home and the World], which was published from January 1941 to March 1944.³⁰

Another person that Atsız accused of being a communist and a “traitor” [hâin] was Sabahattin Ali, a leftist novelist and journalist. Sabahattin Ali was one of the contributors of Adımlar [Steps] a cultural journal that was published from May 1943 to April 1944. The editor-in-chief of the journal was Behice Boran. Faced with such defamation, Sabahattin Ali sued Atsız for libel over these false accusations. Starting on April 26, 1944, Atsız and other Turanists were put on trial by the government.

Being the first political trial of the period, the Turanists’ trial was held at the same time as Soviet armies advanced towards Germany and when the tide of war had swung in favour of the Allies. The efforts of the Turkish government to improve its ties with the Soviet Union affected the course of the Turanists’ trial. The trial ended on May 9, 1944, and the court sentenced Atsız to a four-month jail term, but his sentence was suspended.³¹ Among the defendants were two FLHG students, Osman Yüksel Serdengeçti³² and Hikmet Tanyu.³³ It is important to note that both Serdengeçti and Tanyu later gave evidence against Berkes, Boran, and Boratav during their trial.³⁴ Although there was no any direct link between the trial of Turanists and the professors, the course of the Turanists’ trial later affected Berkes, Boran, and Boratav deeply.

The Raid of Tan [Dawn]

The sentence of the Turanists did not stop the rise of the radical right-wing groups in Turkey. On the contrary, the tension between Turkey and the Soviet Union further consolidated the hold of the extreme right views among the Turkish people. On March 19, 1945, Soviet officials informed the CHP government that they would not renew the Turkish-Soviet Pact of 1925, which would be terminated in November 1945.³⁵ Faced with the deteriorating Turkish-Soviet relations, most Turkish newspapers began to use more aggressive language towards the Soviet Union and targeted certain groups in Turkey that journalists considered “communist.”³⁶

One target of the anti-communist newspapers was Tan [Dawn], one of the anti-CHP newspapers of that time and a platform where all three professors intermittently contributed as guest authors. The columnists of Tan criticized CHP’s anti-Soviet attitude and pointed to the need for the Turkish-Soviet rapprochement.³⁷ Pro-CHP newspaper Tanin [Resonance] and its owner Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın, a pivotal figure of the CHP at that time, led the campaign against Tan. Yalçın called on the Turkish youth to protect their republic on December 3, 1945.³⁸ Next day, Tanin accused both Tan and Yurt ve Dünya [Home and the World] of being “fifth columns” [beşinci kollar] of harboring the Soviet Union and “communist propagandist” [komünist propagandacısı].³⁹ On the very same day, a group of college students in Istanbul who were mostly CHP members sacked the office of Tan and destroyed the printing house in Istanbul in which Yurt ve Dünya was also printed.⁴⁰

The role that Yalçın played in the raid of Tan showed his destructive but powerful influence on the CHP youth. Actually, the increased power of Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın in the post-1938 period was another indicator of the changing CHP cadre in the period under consideration. Although he was a vocal opponent of the Kemalist reforms and sent into exile by the CHP government in the 1920s, Yalçın not only emerged as a leading figure in the pro-CHP press but he also became a prominent CHP member, as one of the leaders of the pro-liberalization movement following the death of Atatürk in 1938. Even after the end of the CHP rule in 1950, Yalçın remained as a leading figure of the party.

Despite Yalçın’s accusations, Tan [Dawn] and its editors Zekeriya Sertel and Sabiha Sertel were not communists. Largely due to Yalçın’s accusations, the raid of Tan, and Sertel’s memoirs,⁴¹ historians of modern Turkey have regarded Tan as a leftist newspaper and argued that the Sertels were leftist journalists.⁴² An examination of the Sertels’ political stance, however, casts doubt on this common view in the literature. Since the beginning of the early republican era, the Sertels had always formed good relations with Americans.⁴³ Indeed, the Sertels’ son-in-law was an ‘American’ journalist, who was the representative of the Associated Press, a U.S.-based news agency, in Turkey.⁴⁴ They maintained good relations with the United States during the Second World War. For example, Zekeriya Sertel went to the United States for a three-week tour after his trip in Britain in 1942. President Franklin D. Roosevelt welcomed Sertel and the other Turkish journalists such as Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın on October 2, 1942.⁴⁵ The Sertels retained their sympathy for the United States until the end of the war. But in the aftermath of the war, what the Sertels wanted the CHP government to do was to take the fact that the Soviet Union was also a part of the Allies into account.⁴⁶ Accordingly, Tan was not a leftist but a ‘liberal’ journal.⁴⁷

Indeed, there was a certain, not always vocal, tension between Turkish journalists in regard to their position to the so-called anti-communist disposition. For instance, Necmettin Sadak, CHP Member of Parliament (MP) for the province of Sivas, the owner of pro-CHP Akşam [Evening] and the Turkish Foreign Minister after September 1947, claimed that Turkish youth revolted against “a movement of predisposing that constituted a threat to its own national existence” [millî varlığını tehlikeye koymak istidadını gösteren bir cereyana].⁴⁸ As Berkes claimed in his memoirs, however, Necmettin Sadak, as a former professor of sociology at Istanbul University, approved neither the raid of Tan nor the campaign against Berkes, Boran, and Boratav.⁴⁹ Nevertheless, assuming that Berkes wrote the truth, one can claim that concern over his political career might have led to self-censoring on the part of Sadak.

In effect, like Sadak, most of Turkish journalists had solid academic backgrounds and some of them were even former professors. Despite their academic affiliations, most of them did not write articles in support of left-oriented academics and remained silent. As will be discussed below, some of the intellectual journalists expressed their opposition to the campaign against the professors, but only in a very limited way.

The First Attack on the Professors

The raid of Tan became the first step of the process that finally led to the professors’ trial although the three professors did not write editorials on a regular basis. While a group of the FLHG students showed their support for the raid of Tan, the Ministry of Education took ten days to set up a committee of investigation.⁵⁰ The committee then accused the three professors of provoking Turkish youth against the government. In their reports during the investigation, Enver Ziya Karal, dean of FLHG, and Necmettin Halil Onan, General Director of Higher Education, wrote that these three professors could not stay in the faculty. Accordingly, on December 15, 1945, the Ministry of Education changed the positions of the three professors and made them personnel of the ministry.⁵¹ Newspapers reported this development as “the ministry personnel could not write political essays [bakanlık çalışanları siyasî mahiyette yazılar yazamıyacaklar].⁵² What newspapers emphasized was that the three professors were not solely faculty members but they were also personnel of the Ministry of Education. Accordingly, like other civil servants, they were not allowed to produce any academic or non-academic work regarding political affairs. Regarding the fact that there was the single-party rule at the time, the government’s pressure on the academics meant a decision that the CHP cadre made.

After they lost their positions, Berkes, Boran, and Boratav appealed to the Council of State. On April 26, 1946, the fifth chamber of the Council of State unanimously overruled the ministry’s sanctions against the professors.⁵³ The decision of the Council of State, however, did not put an end to the campaign against the professors. On June 13, 1946, the National Assembly modified the University Law. With this change the National Assembly increased the autonomy of universities by decreasing the control of the Ministry of Education. During the discussions of the law in the National Assembly, General Naci Tınaz, CHP MP for the province of Bursa and former Minister of National Defense, stated that this law represented a very important stage of the Turkish Revolution. Tınaz also likened the power given to the universities to “an extremely sharp knife” [gayet keskin bir bıçak] and wanted the university administrations to be “very skillfully” [mâhirâne] while using this knife.⁵⁴ Although he refrained from sounding off against the three professors by name, using the metaphor of a sharp knife, Tınaz subtly warned the administration of AU about the three professors.

The change in the University Law and Tınaz’s speech took place in a volatile political atmosphere. The first multiparty general elections of Turkey were held on July 21, 1946: while the CHP gained the majority with 390 MPs of 465, the DP only gained 65 MPs, and there were 7 independent MPs. 150 of the former CHP MPs were not re-nominated because of the intra-party tension in the CHP.⁵⁵ Many people who were known by their radical right-wing ideas became a part of the “new CHP.”⁵⁶ In the new assembly, the most powerful member of the radical right group was Reşat Şemsettin Sirer, who replaced Hasan Âli Yücel as the Minister of Education on August 5, 1946. Accordingly, after the general elections, not only was an opposition party present in the National Assembly for the first time but also the radical right-wing in the CHP gained even more power.

The next target of the right-wing group was Köy Enstitüleri (the Village Institutes). After Reşat Şemsettin Sirer became the minister, the Village Institutes became the target of his outright policies. No new village institute was opened after Sirer became the Minister of Education.⁵⁷ The demise of the Village Institutes during the Sirer’s term exemplified the conflicts between the extreme right-wing and left-oriented groups. Although President İsmet İnönü supported the pro-liberalization group in the CHP, his policy of the Village Institutes was very close to that of the extreme right-wing group. Even though the Village Institutes were opened during the presidency of İsmet İnönü in 1940, it was the same president who approved the campaign against the village institutions. According to Altan Öymen whose father was a leading figure of the CHP at that time, the reason behind such inconsistent policies was the attempts of the CHP government to show that it was intolerant of any kind of leftist ideologies after 1945 as Turkey wanted to be on the side of the USA in the Cold War conflicts.⁵⁸

It was exactly in this period when the CHP cadre brought the issue of the three professors into the agenda of the National Assembly. The Village Institutes and the raid of Tan were also among the issues that MPs debated. Minister of Internal Affairs Şükrü Sökmensüer, implying Hasan Âli Yücel, claimed that some former ministers protected communists in the schools and universities.⁵⁹ Sökmensüer’s long speech exemplified both intra-party conflicts in the CHP and the radical change in the party at that time.⁶⁰ Although Yücel was a former minister of the CHP government and a current CHP member, a current minister of the same party accused Yücel of being an agent of the Soviet Union without offering any persuasive evidence.

Nonetheless, the campaign against Yücel and the three professors was not only an internal issue of the CHP. Many members of the DP, too, joined the campaign waged by Sirer and his group against Yücel and his supporters. Samet Ağaoğlu, one of the founders of the DP, wrote in his memoirs that the DP founders waged a vigorous campaign against the three professors as well as their colleagues.⁶¹ Another DP member was Kenan Öner, a lawyer of the Turanists⁶² and the chair of the Istanbul branch of the DP. Öner called Yücel a communist and traitor, and Yücel brought a defamation case in response.

As the second political trial of that period, the trial of Yücel-Öner started on April 17, 1947.⁶³ One of the witnesses for the defense was Orhan Şaik Gökyay. Interestingly enough, Gökyay was an old friend of the three professors. Following the political polarization that took place in Turkey during the course of the Second World War, however, Gökyay fell out with them. Gökyay was also sentenced during the Turanists’ trial.⁶⁴ Another witness was Nihal Atsız who had been also sentenced during the trial of Turanists. Atsız claimed that Hasan Âli Yücel protected communist professors of the FLHG, referring to Berkes, Boran, and Boratav.⁶⁵ The changing role of Atsız came from that fact that many pro-Nazi and racist Turkish figures of the pre-1945 period had become “nationalist” instead of “racist” with the defeat of the Nazis by the Allies.⁶⁶ Accordingly, conflicts between the CHP and the opposition in many issues notwithstanding, not only some CHP members but also members of the other parties, especially the DP, joined the campaign against Yücel and the three professors.

These counterattacks of the radical right-wing groups won the support of pro-CHP Turkish press, particularly after Sirer took the post of Yücel on August 5, 1946. From then on, Turkish newspapers took on a more strident tone and pointed to the existence of “leftist” professors at the universities even more.⁶⁷ The provocations of Sirer and newspapers resulted in protests against the three professors on March 5, 1947. On the same day, Pertev Naili Boratav was to give a speech about Turkish folklore at AU but was prevented by a group of young people, most of whom were not students of AU, violently protesting the conference, which forced Şevket Aziz Kansu, rector of the university, had to cancel the conference.

The same day, sixty-seven members of Milli Türk Talebe Birliği (MTTB) (National Union of Turkish Students),⁶⁸ sent a telegram to the National Assembly, complaining about the three professors “whose roots were outside [of Turkey]” [kökü hâriçte] and urging the government to dismiss them as soon as possible. This telegram appeared in both pro- and anti-CHP newspapers.⁶⁹ A key point about the telegram is that it was the CHP MPs who ordered the MTTB to send it. As Emin Karakuş, a journalist in Ankara at that time, later claimed in his memoirs, Şemsettin Sirer hosted a group of young people at Ankara Palace, one of the most prestigious hotels in Ankara, before all these events took place and ordered them to “do their share” [kendilerine düşen görevleri].⁷⁰

Interestingly enough, sixty of the signatories were not even FLHG students, and several of them claimed that they did not sign such a petition during the professors’ trial.⁷¹ Moreover, although MPs claimed that it was the students of AU who demanded the dismissal of the three professors, as Mübeccel Kıray, who graduated from the department of philosophy at the FLHG in 1944, claimed, Behice Boran was loved by her students, and her students were always looking forward to attending Boran’s lectures.⁷² Nevertheless, both MPs and journalists used this telegram as a reference point in their campaign against Berkes, Boran, and Boratav later. Even more interestingly, although it was obvious that these racist students were the main aggressors in the event, the AU Senate launched another criminal investigation against the professors.⁷³

The Dismissal of the Professors from their Positions

While the professors had to wrestle with another investigation, Harry Truman, president of the United States, recommended to the American Congress the extension of assistance to Turkey and to Greece on March 12, 1947. Truman’s policy, which is known as the Truman Doctrine, aimed to halt the Soviet encroachments in the Middle East. The campaign against the three professors intensified after the declaration of the Truman Doctrine. On March 31, 1947, war-time Turanists (and post-war nationalists) who had been sentenced in May 1944 were found innocent.⁷⁴ Emboldened by these developments, Sirer set out on another campaign against the three professors. Although the investigation of the three professors had to be conducted by the AU Senate according to the University Law, Sirer maintained pressure on the Senate and tried to persuade the public of the evil of the professors.⁷⁵ Sirer’s systematic effort to dismiss the professors found support among the Turkish newspapers, even among the opposition ones. Such a support was explicitly stated in an article in pro-DP Vatan [Homeland] on May 16, 1947. Vatan called on the AU Senate to undertake a series of measures since “the youth was poisoned at the hands of these professors” [gençlik bu hocalar elinde zehirlenirken].⁷⁶ Despite being a vocal opponent of the CHP, Vatan and its editor-in-chief Ahmet Emin Yalman enthusiastically supported the campaign against the left-oriented CHP members and the three professors.

Nevertheless, there were some journalists who criticized the government’s intervention in the academia even though they were not necessarily anti-anti-communist. For example, in his column in anti-CHP Cumhuriyet [Republic], Nadir Nadi expressed such a critique, but Nadi also wrote that there was no place for “a professor who speaks with the mouth of Moscow” [Moskova ağzı ile konuşan bir profesör].⁷⁷ Nadi’s limited criticism can be explained by the radical change in the political stance of Cumhuriyet. Founded by Nadi’s father, Yunus Nadi, who was a close associate of Atatürk, Cumhuriyet became one of the leading pro-CHP newspapers in the early Turkish Republic. With the change of the CHP cadre during and after the Second World War, however, Cumhuriyet adopted an anti-CHP position.⁷⁸ For this reason, its editor-in-chief in this period, Nadi, became one of the few people who criticized the campaign against the three professors even if he did so in a limited way.

Meanwhile, conflicts between different groups within the CHP escalated. One of the anti-liberalization group was Recep Peker who became Prime Minister on August 7, 1946. With a growing influence of the pro-liberalization on the CHP and President İsmet İnönü, Peker was forced to leave his post on September 10, 1947. Peker’s involuntary resignation was one of the many examples of the decreasing influence of the anti-liberalization group on the party and the government. Likewise, Falih Rıfkı Atay, one of Atatürk’s closest associates, quit his position as the editor of CHP-owned Ulus [Nation] while Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın and Nihat Erim, both of whom were staunch supporters of the campaign against the three professors, took this position afterward.

The liquidation of the anti-liberalization group from the government further increased the pressure on the three professors. Faced with pressure from politicians and the press, the AU Senate on December 26, 1947, prohibited the professors from lecturing and limited their interactions with their students. On the same day, right-wing students came to the FLHG to commemorate Mehmet Âkif Ersoy (1873-1936), a Turkish patriotic poet who wrote the lyrics for the Turkish National Anthem. Ersoy was used by the Sirer-led groups to incite the public against the professors and to exploit anti-communist sentiment among the youth.

The next day students demonstrated against Berkes, Boran, and Boratav in Ankara. According to the report sent by the police office in Ankara to the CHP government, even some CHP members found the demonstrations “extreme” and had warned the police about calming down the demonstrators and keeping CHP’s youth under control.⁷⁹ Nonetheless, compared to other newspapers, CHP-owned Ulus [Nation] placed greater importance on the demonstrations. Ulus claimed that Turkish youth all around Turkey protested leftist professors. Ulus further exalted slogans of the demonstrators such as “any foreign ideology, communism being in the first place, could not meddle with this mighty homeland” [başta kızıl komünizm olduğu halde hiçbir yabancı ideoloji bu aziz yurda el uzatmayacaktır].⁸⁰ Although most of the protesters were not even students of the FLHG, Turkish newspapers legitimated the violence of students. Such a campaign against the professors, of course, had a profoundly demoralizing effect on them.⁸¹

As the next step, the AU Senate unanimously dismissed the three professors on January 10, 1948. The Senate declared the professors had committed “a crime against honor and dignity” [şeref ve haysiyet kırıcı bir suç] who were “civil servants” [devlet memurları] and were thus prevented from political activities. Upon the decision of the Senate, the professors appealed both to the Council of State and to the Inter-University Commission. The Inter-University Commission consisted of professors from both Ankara University and Istanbul University, which were two of the only three universities in Turkey at that time.⁸² On February 22, 1948, the Inter-University Commission overruled the AU Senate’s decision that dismissed Berkes, Boran, and Boratav. The professors from Istanbul thought that there was no real evidence to justify the dismissal of the three professors whereas those from Ankara claimed the opposite.⁸³ The disagreement between the professors from Ankara and Istanbul as well as the Inter-University Commission’s decision were indicators of the tension in pro-CHP academia.

The Inter-University Commission’s decision did not solve the three professors’ problem, however. As newspapers reported, governmental authorities planned to reorganize Ankara University in a way that would exclude the three professors from the university.⁸⁴ Compared to opposition press, pro-CHP newspapers were more critical of the Inter-University Commission’s decision. On February 24, 1948, for example, CHP-owned Ulus [Nation] reported a speech by Fahri Kurtuluş, CHP MP for the province of Rize and a former medical doctor. For Kurtuluş, the autonomy of universities was not something above the interests of both country and nation.⁸⁵ At the same time, pro-CHP newspapers and columnists chose not to comment on how the AU Senate unconstitutionally dismissed the three professors.⁸⁶

At that moment, one of the few people who spoke up for the professors among the pro-CHP columnists was Vâlâ Nureddin of pro-CHP Akşam [Evening]. In his article on February 24, 1948, Nureddin stated that the Inter-University Commission’s decision respected constitutional law and congratulated the members of the Commission on the decision that they had reached.⁸⁷ Nureddin’s exceptionality was most probably the result of his friendship with the three professors. Nureddin was one of the few left-oriented pro-CHP columnists at that time.⁸⁸ In the vast majority of cases, however, pro-CHP journalists did not share Nureddin’s exceptional attitude. An article in Akşam, the newspaper for which Nureddin wrote, on February 28, 1948, illustrated the conventional attitude of the newspapers, particularly that of pro-CHP ones. As Akşam reported, the issue had not been concluded yet, it would continue.⁸⁹

As Akşam implied, Sirer brought his demand of dismissing the three professors to the National Assembly for a second time. This time, however, the MPs decided that the Inter-University Commission’s decision required no interpretation.⁹⁰ The Minister of Education appealed to the second chamber of the Council of State one more time. The chamber again decided that there was no real evidence showing that these three professors were guilty.⁹¹

These developments did not discourage the Sirer-led campaign waged against Berkes, Boran, and Boratav. Orhan Seyfi Orhon, CHP MP for the province of Zonguldak at that time who switched to the DP after 1950, brought the issue of the three professors to the National Assembly on May 3, 1948. Orhon asked the Minister of Education about the Inter-University Commission’s decision.⁹² Sirer’s reply to Orhon was a prepared one, implying the existence of a secret agreement between Sirer and Orhon. In the beginning of his speech, Sirer stated that the three professors had kept the governmental authorities “busy” [meşgul] for the last five years. The investigation of the professors, Sirer claimed, was the result of a petition by the Turkish youth to the government imploring an end to the communist activities at AU. Sirer, who endeavored himself to dismiss the three professors, ironically claimed that he could not intervene in the internal affairs of AU. He also asserted that the Inter-University Commission had reinstated the professors “without taking the general public discontent into account” [umumi efkâr üzerinde uyandırdıkları huzursuzluğa bakılmaksızın]. Furthermore, the reason why the professors from Istanbul had overruled the decision that dismissed Berkes, Boran, and Boratav was their ignorance about the academic environment in Ankara; that is, the professors from Istanbul could not grasp how dangerous Berkes, Boran, and Boratav were. According to “his opinion” [kanaatim], it was essential for the universities to get rid of any “foreign ideology” [yabancı ideoloji] that was against “national education” [millî terbiye]. Many MPs expressed their approval of Sirer’s speech by applauding him and yelling “bravo.”⁹³

Taking the floor after Sirer, Orhan Seyfi Orhon stated that while the freest and most democratic nations of the world, Great Britain and the United States, were “taking extraordinary measures” [olağanüstü tedbirlere başvururken] against the danger [of communism], the Inter-University Commission failed to “show the interest that was rightly expected from it” [kendilerinden bihakkın beklenen alâkayı]. After MPs interrupted Orhon’s speech with a flood of applause, Orhon sarcastically asked whether the university’s political autonomy existed at the expense of the state and the nation. Orhon pointed to the necessity of the presence of professors who “wholeheartedly” believed in the principles of Turkish Revolution and asked what exactly the three professors had done for the FLHG, which was Atatürk’s own project. Instead of working for the development of “nationalism,” Orhon claimed, the three professors tried to destroy nationalist principles. Orhon further accused Berkes, Boran, and Boratav of being “traitors” [hâinler]: these three professors were making communist propaganda against Turkish nationalism “behind the mask of progressiveness” [ileri fikirlilik maskesi altında] against Turkish nationalism. As Orhon concluded, this issue was not related to the autonomy of universities, rather it was related to “the freedom, security, and welfare of the Turkish nation” [milletimizin hürriyeti, emniyeti ve selâmeti]. MPs applauded Orhon several times during and after his speech⁹⁴ and Turkish newspapers kept the public informed of these parliamentary debates.⁹⁵

Despite the decision that was taken in the National Assembly, not every CHP member wholeheartedly supported the campaign against the professors. An anonymous article in pro-CHP Akşam [Evening], titled “Komünist, Solcu, Sol Temayüllü” [Communist, Leftist, Left-Oriented], was an example of critical voices in the CHP.⁹⁶ Even though there was no signature under this article, it was written in Refik Halid Karay’s usual column and the writing style was very similar. By hiding his identity, Karay made a distinction between communists, leftist groups, and the ones who had a tendency toward the left. For him, according to the Turkish Constitution, being a communist who believed in the historical materialism of Karl Marx per se was not a crime: the criminal element of communism was being dependent on an international communist party or spreading communist propaganda as a Soviet agent. According to Karay, in free and democratic countries such as Turkey, leftism was not a crime by any means. Socialists, the deadliest enemies of communists, were leftists. Karay, then, asked whether socialism, the number one enemy of communists, could be a crime in Turkey, where communism was a major offense. If being “left-oriented” [sol temayüllü] was a crime in Turkey, then, as Karay asserted, it was necessary to sue those who established etatist policies in the 1930s and who defended the present regime in Turkey. In short, as Karay concluded, if they [implying the three professors] were communists, they had to be taken to court; if they were leftists, they deserved encouragement because of their hostility towards communism, and if they had tendency to the leftism then they deserved to be congratulated for being “progressive scientists.” Therefore, for Karay, communism became a danger and even a crime only if it affiliated with the Soviet Union.

The unsigned article and limited criticism of Refik Halid Karay need to be evaluated within the changing composition of the CHP in this period. As one of Yüzellilikler (the 150 personae non gratae of Turkey), Karay had been exiled from Turkey following the formation of the Turkish Republic due to his support of the Allies, who had invaded Turkey after the First World War. After he returned to Turkey in 1938, Karay changed his political position.⁹⁷ Soon enough, Karay became a permanent columnist in pro-CHP Akşam. Even as a former victim of an official campaign, however, Karay did not have sympathy for the three professors. Nonetheless, he emphasized that being left-oriented was not a crime in Turkey.

Regardless of such criticism, after waging a systematic campaign that was conceived by Reşat Şemsettin Sirer and nurtured by other politicians as well as various newspapers of that time, the radical right-wing groups finally managed to bring the issue to court, and the trial of the three professors began on June 16, 1948. Even though the efforts of Sirer and his supporters were not very successful at the beginning, their campaign was all the more easily fueled by anti-Sovietism and anti-communism. And though the accusation that the professors were “fifth columns” for the Soviet Union was unsubstantiated, Turkish press always criminalized Berkes, Boran, and Boratav by publicly branding them as traitors.

Despite the accusation by radical right groups that the three professors were “fifth columns” of the Soviet Union, the direction of three professors was with the western academia. Both Berkes and Boran held Ph.D. degrees from American universities. In the examined period, several articles of Berkes and Boran appeared in the American Journal of Sociology.⁹⁸ Mübeccel Kıray, a future eminent social scientist of Turkey, was able to apply for American universities thanks to the encouragement and a reference letter of Behice Boran.⁹⁹ Interestingly enough, reporting the dismissal of the professors, even newspapers from the United States called the three professors "liberal" and the Sirer-backed faculty members “extreme rightist members.”¹⁰⁰ Despite such groundless claims, the three professors were sent to trial. More importantly, after they were not reinstated to their positions following the end of the trial, two of the professors (Berkes and Boratav) went to western countries, not to the Soviet Union.

The Trial

The fourth criminal court in Ankara began the trial of such internationally-known and prolific professors on June 15, 1948. The judge was Talât Karay, a person eager to build a career in politics, as Berkes claimed.¹⁰¹ Cemil Bengü, who was a deputy prosecuting attorney, served as the first prosecutor. Lütfi Musluoğlu and Turhan Kapanlı took this position in the upcoming sessions. The defense attorney was Saffet Nezihi, a leftist lawyer who initiated a campaign in 1938 to urge the government to release Nazım Hikmet Ran, a Turkish communist poet.¹⁰² While the professors’ trial took one year, six months and twenty-five days, only thirty-two sessions were held. The court listened to almost one hundred witnesses for the defense while there were forty-nine witnesses for the prosecution.

The Beginning of the Trial

During the first session, the reading of the alleged offense took almost one hour. During the second session, which was held in the afternoon of the same day, the court heard the witness and the accused. Pertev Naili Boratav was accused of being against Turkism [Türkçülük] and disparaging Namık Kemal and his nationalist ideas. Indeed, disparaging Namık Kemal (1840-1888), who was an influential Ottoman poet and intellectual, was deemed a criminal offense because he was accepted as “the poet of the homeland” [Vatan Şairi] who influenced the founders of the Turkish Republic. Boratav was also accused of preventing a nationalist student from reading a patriotic poem. Boratav found the accusations about his anti-nationalism groundless. He claimed that it was impossible for him to be against nationalism and Turkism because he had always appreciated the “positive effects” [müsbet tesirleri] of Ziya Gökalp as well as his friends on the development of the Turkish intellectual life. Like Namık Kemal, Ziya Gökalp (1876-1924) was accepted to be one of the founding fathers of the Turkish nationalism. Through his writings and doctrines, Gökalp played a prominent role in the discourse of Kemalist Turkey.¹⁰³ In other words, being against Ziya Gökalp meant being against the Kemalist regime. Continuing his defense, Boratav further asserted that he was against racism and Turanism. Boratav argued that witnesses for the prosecution confused Turkism with Turanism because the latter was nothing but racism.

Niyazi Berkes was accused of praising communism, indoctrinating students, continuously assigning Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto to students, not bringing a rightist student to a visit to İmralı (an island in the Sea of Marmara), and failing a nationalist student (Nasır Bolayırlı). Berkes denied all the allegations. In his opinion, there was no leftist or rightist student, only lazy or hardworking. As Berkes declared, he mentioned Marxism only while speaking about movements of thought in nineteenth-century Europe. He claimed that there was nothing strange about mentioning Marxism during his lectures on “sociology.” In his response to the claim that he consciously failed a nationalist student, Berkes stated that the same student also failed when he took the same class later from another professor (Hamdi Akverdi). Finally, in his response to the allegation that he did not bring a rightist student on the school trip to İmralı, Berkes claimed that it was the Ministry of Education that prepared the list of students for the trip, not him.

Like Niyazi Berkes, Behice Boran was accused of failing a rightist student and not reading a nationalist student’s thesis. In her defense, Boran claimed that the latter, Osman Yüksel Serdengeçti, submitted his thesis only two days before his thesis committee’s hearing although he was supposed to submit it two months before. Boran was also accused of eulogizing the Soviet regime during her lectures and conference speeches and of claiming that Soviet academics were superior to their western counterparts. In her reply to these accusations, Boran stated that she mentioned the Soviet regime only while comparing communism and capitalism at one of her conferences. Boran claimed that she had never championed the cause of communism, nor did she support the superiority of communism to capitalism. She also claimed that the witness who accused her of being an advocate of communism was a student (Selahattin Ertürk) who meddled in politics. Boran claimed his testimony was thus unacceptable. Furthermore, Boran asserted that she had not even once propagandized in favor of communism during her nine-year academic career. After hearing the accused and some of the witnesses, the judge adjourned the trial to hear other witnesses.¹⁰⁴

The Two Crucial Days in the National Assembly

During the course of the trial, power politics continued to be on full display.¹⁰⁵ MPs discussed the dismissal of the three professors from AU on July 5 and 6, 1948. It was no accident that MPs brought the issue to the assembly at a time when the trial still continued. The debates of the MPs and the decisions that they made undoubtedly affected the course of the trial, according to the judge.¹⁰⁶ Accordingly, an examination of the minutes of these two days will not only give insights into the course of the trial but it also will show the intra-party conflicts in the post-war CHP.

Among all the MPs, there were only two people who opposed the government’s intervention in academia. The first one was General Sadık Aldoğan, MP for the province of Afyon Karahisar. According to Aldoğan, the Assembly needed to leave the issue to the university.¹⁰⁷ It is important to note that Aldoğan and four other MPs broke away from DP and founded Millet Partisi (the Nation Party), the second-biggest opposition party of the period only two weeks later, on July 20, 1948. As such, Aldoğan’s critical approach was most probably related to his and his friends’ opposition to the consensus that many members of the CHP and the DP reached in purging the three professors. In effect, compared to other Turkish newspapers, pro-Millet Partisi Yeni Sabah [New Morning] published more news about the professors’ trial and adopted a relatively more sympathetic approach toward the professors. Regarding the fact that, Yeni Sabah was an ‘anti-communist’ and ‘Islamist’ newspaper and Millet Partisi was a ‘conservative’ party, their position in the professors’ trial further substantiated the argument that anti-communism was not the main motivation behind the trial.

The second person was Adnan Adıvar, an independent DP MP for the province of Istanbul and a pivotal advocate of liberalism in Turkey.¹⁰⁸ At that time, the DP nominated several famous figures such as Adnan Adıvar who were not members of the DP as independent MPs. Although they were elected from the lists of the DP, these independent MPs had no obvious connection with the DP. The rationale behind the DP’s decision was that these popular figures would work for the benefit of the country and they could also enhance the public support of the DP.¹⁰⁹ Adnan Adıvar’s exceptional attitude, therefore, did not reflect the view of the other DP members. Actually, Adnan Adıvar, too, was not against the dismissal of the three professors. Rather, he was against "directly mentioning the professors’ names" [doğrudan doğruya isim zikredilerek] in the assembly. Adıvar further claimed that the National Assembly had the right to cut off funding from the universities, and universities had to appoint professors at the own will of the universities. For Adıvar, however, to mention somebody’s name in the National Assembly was inappropriate for MPs and a violation of the University Law.¹¹⁰ As such, even Adıvar’s criticism was not related to the dismissal of the three professors. Rather than urging other MPs to end the sweeping persecution of the professors, what Adıvar demanded was to dismiss the three professors in a ‘constitutional’ way.

In his reply to Adnan Adıvar, Suut Kemal Yetkin¹¹¹ claimed that there was no other solution for such an “irremediable and chronic disease” [tedavi edilemez müzmin bir hastalık], referring to the presence of the professors. According to Yetkin, the real autonomy of universities had to be a “national autonomy” [millî muhtariyet].¹¹² This was also very much the approach of Fazıl Ahmed Aykaç (CHP MP for the province of Diyarbakır),¹¹³ Behçet Kemal Çağlar (CHP MP for the province of Erzincan),¹¹⁴ and Reşit Tarakçıoğlu (CHP MP for the province of Trabzon).¹¹⁵ These three MPs, too, pointed to the primacy of “national autonomy” for universities. At that time, being “national” [millî] took on the general meaning of being an anti-communist/anti-Soviet. Accordingly, MPs were not supposedly against the autonomy of universities, but they were opposed to the existence of universities whose members supported communism and the Soviet Union. But, of course, as explained above, the three professors did not have any apparent attachment to the Soviet Union.

After these discussions, MPs voted on the positions of the three professors and decided that there was no need to re-appoint them to their positions. Among 259 MPs who voted, only two MPs, Sadık Aldoğan and Nurettin Ünen (DP MP for the province of Çanakkale), voted against the dismissal of the professors.¹¹⁶ As explained above, Sadık Aldoğan’s exceptional attitude was related to the formation of a new opposition party. Nurettin Ünen’s decision, on the other hand, was another convincing proof that the professors’ trial was not simply the result of the increased anti-communism. Nurettin Ünen was a staunch anti-communist and anti-Soviet politician.¹¹⁷ He was also a former CHP MP who criticized the post-war CHP administration after becoming a DP MP.¹¹⁸ First as an anti-communist CHP member and later an anti-CHP member of the DP, Ünen was vocally against the dismissal of the three professors.

Ünen’s concerns about the decision of the MPs were not groundless. Indeed, the validity of the accusations by the MPs against the three professors was open to discussion. For example, the three professors were constantly accused of opposing the republican regime and the principles of Atatürk. As discussed above, some MPs claimed that the three professors were anti-nationalist scholars. Nevertheless, it was Pertev Naili Boratav who founded the discipline of ‘Turkish folklore’ in Turkey. Boratav he had been the chairman of the Department of Folk Literature at AU before losing his position. As Öztürkmen rightfully asserted, the professors’ trial and the dismissal of Boratav from his position led to "the denationalization of Turkish Folklore." Namely, following his dismissal, the government closed the Department of Folk Literature, preventing the progress of scholarly works on the discipline in Turkey. The studies of Turkish folklore developed outside Turkey, accordingly.¹¹⁹

Likewise, despite the claims of the radical right-wing groups that the three professors tried to destroy the regime, Niyazi Berkes was an advocate of Kemalism. Even his field research was conducted in order to search for ways to introduce the Kemalist revolution to the countryside.¹²⁰ His well-known study The Development of Secularism in Turkey, which promoted the Kemalist revolutions, is convincing proof that Berkes was not a political foe of Kemalism.¹²¹

Likewise, despite the claims that Niyazi Berkes was a vehement enemy of Turkish nationalism, Berkes admired Ziya Gökalp, one of the founding fathers of Turkish nationalism.¹²² His article on Gökalp in 1954 was persuasive proof that Berkes was not against nationalism.¹²³ Indeed, it was Berkes who later translated Gökalp’s essays into English.¹²⁴ Regarding the fact that Berkes did not return to Turkey until his death in 1988, one can conclude that he wrote his studies abroad not to ingratiate himself with the Turkish government. Despite this, MPs and journalists who had close affiliations with the radical right-wing groups of the CHP called all the three professors “leftist” and “communist” professors.

The End of the Trial

On February 10, 1950, the judge removed Behice Boran and Niyazi Berkes from public office for three months for malfeasance, while the judge acquitted Pertev Naili Boratav. According to the reasoned decision that took one hour to be read, the speeches of ministers and MPs played a remarkable role in the decision according to the judge. Although Berkes and Boran had the right to appeal, they were demanded to pay the court expenses amounting to 450 Turkish Lira, and the judge refused to grant a reprieve.¹²⁵

During the time Berkes and Boran appealed to the Court of Cassation, the general election approached. Following the election on May 14, 1950, the DP assumed power. The change in government and the DP’s initial liberal policies might have played a role in the course of the professors’ appeal: on June 6, 1950, the Court of Cassation reversed the decision and assigned the trial to another court. On June 30, 1950, Behice Boran and Niyazi Berkes were found innocent.¹²⁶ None of the newspapers that had long waged a campaign against the three professors apologized to Berkes, Boran, and Boratav. More importantly, although Berkes, Boran, and Boratav were found innocent at the end of the trial, the three professors were not reinstated to their positions. In other words, the professors won the battle but lost the war.

Conclusion

This paper has examined one of the most studied and well-known political trials of modern Turkey. There were two factors that played an important role in the conduct of the professors’ trial: an anti-communist/anti-Soviet environment and intra-elite conflict within Turkish political circles, the latter playing a much more central role than the former. The 1948 FLHG liquidation was a turning point in the history of the department of sociology as the department lost two of its most prolific faculty members The liquidation also damaged academic productivity of faculty members.¹²⁷

As has been argued in this paper, the professors’ trial needs to be evaluated not as an isolated phenomenon but within the framework of Turkish politics, where radical transformations took place in the post-Second World War period. Accordingly, the 1948 FLHG liquidation did not only mean the dismissal of Berkes, Boran, and Boratav from academia but it also showed the liquidation of the left-oriented groups in the CHP during the early Cold War period.

The intra-party conflicts in the CHP in the period under consideration also show a need for the revision of the periodization of the early Turkish Republic. There has been a tendency among historians of Turkey in assessing the years from 1923 to 1950 as the single-party rule. As the analysis of the background of the professors’ trial showed, the composition of the ruling party radically changed even in a very short period of time. In other words, the fact that the same party ruled the country does not necessarily mean that political culture of the CHP had always had an internally coherent ideology and the CHP had been a monolithic political entity. To be more exact, it is not easy to regard almost three decades simply as “the years of dictatorship” because such a simplistic approach will neglect the drastic changes that took place in the 1930s and 1940s both within the CHP and in Turkey.

Appendix (Short Biographies of the three Professors)

[sec:Semih_Appendix]

Pertev Naili Boratav (1907-1998) graduated from the Department of Turkish Language and Literature at Istanbul University (IU) in 1930. Boratav went to Berlin to have a Ph.D. degree in folklore in 1936. After his return to Turkey in 1937, Boratav was appointed as an associate professor of folk literature at the FLHG. After he lost his position in 1950, Boratav pursued his academic career in France until his death in 1998. Producing plenty of pioneering works,¹²⁸ Boratav was considered “the founding father of Turkish folkloristics during the Republic.”¹²⁹

Niyazi Berkes (1908-1988)¹³⁰ graduated from the Department of Philosophy at Istanbul University in 1930. Meanwhile, Berkes met Beryl Parker, a faculty member of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago who was invited by Turkish officials to Turkey as a part of the efforts to reform the Turkish educational system. Upon Parker’s invitation and with a fellowship from the department, Berkes went to the United States in 1934. After finishing his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago, Berkes came back to Turkey in 1939. He was appointed as an associate professor of sociology at the FLHG. Berkes translated six books to Turkish including Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo and Aristotle’s Politics. After his dismissal, Berkes went to Canada in 1952 and became a professor at McGill University. After his retirement in 1975, he moved to England where he died in 1988.

Behice Boran (1910-1987)¹³¹ graduated from the American College for Girls (now Robert College) in 1931 in Istanbul as the first Turkish top student of the school. After finishing her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Michigan, she came back to Turkey in 1939. Like Niyazi Berkes, she was appointed as an associate professor of sociology at the FLHG. In addition to her lectures at AU, Boran translated the lectures of Carroll C. Pratt, an influential professor of philosophy who came to AU upon the invitation of Muzaffer Şerif, a close friend of Berkes, Boran, and Boratav. Furthermore, Boran contributed to the translation of internationally known academic books to Turkish which the Ministry of Education published.¹³² Like Berkes and Boratav, Boran’s academic productivity was not limited to translated works. Rather, all of them conducted field research, as required by their disciplines. For example, the Turkish Historical Society, a governmental organization, published Boran’s book, which she wrote following her extensive field research.¹³³ Moreover, Behice Boran was the first Turkish academic who became a member of the American Sociological Society.¹³⁴ With her dismissal from her position, unlike Berkes and Boratav, Behice Boran chose to stay in Turkey. She founded the Association of Pacifists (Barışseverler Cemiyeti) in 1950. When Boran signed a petition to the government protesting the government’s decision of sending Turkish forces to South Korea in 1950, she was sentenced to 15 months in prison. In 1965, she became an MP for the Workers Party of Turkey. After the 1971 Turkish military memorandum, the party was closed down, and she was sentenced to prison until 1974. Following the coup d’état of 1980, she escaped from Turkey and died in Brussels in 1987.

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