The founding
editor-in-chief of
Cumhuriyet was
Zekeriya Sertel, a Turkish journalist. Following the death of Yunus Nadi on 28 March 1945 in
Geneva,
Switzerland,
Cumhuriyet was owned by his eldest son until his death on 20 August 1991. Nadir Nadi's wife Berin then published the newspaper.
Cumhuriyet has been owned by the Cumhuriyet Foundation since the death of Berin Nadi on 5 November 2001. One of its publishers was the renowned political
columnist İlhan Selçuk, who was also chairman of the board of trustees and lead writer (from 1992) until his death in 2010.
Cumhuriyet contributors such as
Uğur Mumcu,
Bahriye Üçok,
Ahmet Taner Kışlalı,
Muammer Aksoy,
Ümit Kaftancıoğlu,
Onat Kutlar, and
Cavit Orhan Tütengil were assassinated between the 1970s and 1990s. During the
Gulf War,
Cumhuriyet suffered a collapse in advertising revenue, and following an unrelated dispute over editorial policy, nearly 40 journalists and commentators walked out in November 1991: "Circulation fell by half, and it was saved only by an extraordinary campaign by readers to buy extra copies and even pay money into a special account." resigned in January 1992 over the dispute: "I tried to widen the spectrum, to keep the balance. But they (old-guard intellectuals) always resisted, calling us plotters, tools of big business and the
United States". Since 17 October 2005, the newspaper's headquarters have been located in Istanbul's
Şişli district, after being the last newspaper to leave the traditional press district of
Cağaloğlu. The newspaper also has offices in
Ankara and
İzmir. The newspaper's advertisements before the
2007 Turkish presidential election and
general election with the message "Are you aware of the danger?" were controversial. 's office in Istanbul was the site of a
molotov attack in 2008. In 2010, the newspaper was one of the first
up-market newspapers in Turkey to abandon the established
broadsheet format for the midi-sized
Berliner format. In January 2015, the newspaper reprinted cartoons from
Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine which had
depicted the
Islamic prophet Muhammad and been subject to
a terror attack. As a result,
Cumhuriyet received threats and was placed under police protection. In 2015, it was awarded the
Freedom of Press Prize by international
NGO Reporters Without Borders for making a stand against the
AKP government's mounting pressure. The editor-in-chief of the online edition, Oğuz Güven, was arrested on 12 May 2017 in connection with an article on the "accidental" death of Mustafa Alper, the first public prosecutor to file an indictment about the Gülenist Terror Organization (
FETÖ). Güven was released pending trial on 14 June 2017. Today, the newspaper is struggling financially due to a low daily circulation figure that has fallen from more than 150,000 in the mid-1990s, in addition to plummeting advertising revenues as companies are not willing to advertise in media critical of the government. Turkish President
Erdoğan publicly targeted Dündar, stating: "I suppose the person who wrote this as an exclusive report will pay a heavy price for this." In spite of the threats,
Cumhuriyet published further material on June 11, including photos and videos confirming that MİT trucks transported both weapons and militants between Turkey and various locations in neighboring
Syria. In November, the newspaper was awarded the 2015
Reporters Without Borders Prize for its "independent and courageous journalism." Shortly thereafter, editor-in-chief Dündar and Ankara bureau chief
Erdem Gül were arrested on charges of being members of a
terror organization,
espionage and revealing
confidential documents, facing sentences up to
life imprisonment. ==Circulation and online edition==