World War I According to the Journalists of the Kadro Journal

Kadro is a journal, which was published 36 issues between January 1932 and January 1935. Kadro Journal, which started its publication life with the assertion to constitute a unique ideology of revolution, left its mark on the period and was described as an intellectual movement. Kadro journalists were met up with doubt by various parts of the society because of their leftist pasts and approaches in the process of taking service with Turkish Revolution. Kadro Journal, which was brought up to the agenda by writers such as Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu, Sevket Sureyya Aydemir, Vedat Nedim Tor, Ismail Husrev Tokin and Burhan Asaf Belge most of whom were leftist, featured statism in the 36 issues of the journal. Not only economic issues but also foreign and domestic politics, culture and civilisation, education and similar topics were tackled frequently by Kadro journalists. Besides, the World War I was tackled and generally qualified as a war of colonialism. The Kadro journalists, which discussed the basic contradiction in the world not in terms of labour-capital, but in terms of colonialist country-exploited country, approached the World War I within this framework. They referred to this great war both from their own point of views and from the national and international results caused by the war. They also developed a unique terminology apart from their point of views related to the World War I. They focused not on the military aspects of the war, but rather on its political and economic results and in this context, they made ideological explanations. The assessments about the World War I in Kadro issues can be commented as the opinions, which came into existence approximately 15 years after the war. These opinions can be considered as a perception of war by some of the first generation of the Republic who witnessed the war.