CHP government The newspaper was relaunched on 19 August 1940 by Ahmet Emin Yalman. During the
Second World War,
Vatan frequently criticized the
Republican People's Party (CHP) government. For example, Vatan sharply opposed the
Wealth tax, a new tax directed at the wealthy citizens most of whom were non-Muslim in 1942, to raise funds to support the defense of the country.
Vatan was punished for this opposition by the court. Its publication was suspended for six months. But after the war,
Vatan was able to continue in a more democratic environment. In the 1945–46 term, it supported the
Democrat Party (DP) against the CHP government.
DP government This support continued after DP won the 1950 election. However, Vatan also began criticizing DP for the latter's
non-secular moves. On 22 November 1952, Yalman barely escaped an assassination attempt in
Malatya. Even after this incident,
Vatan continued to support DP in such operations like closing the
Nation Party and participating in the
Korean War. However DP, once a champion of democracy was no longer democratic and by the 1957 elections, due to the disillusionment with the totalitarian rule of DP,
Vatan ended its DP support. It became one of the notable opposition papers to the DP government. DP government punished
Vatan (like all other opposition papers) by various methods like reducing the advertising revenue and limiting the newsprint paper. Later courts also punished
Vatan by temporarily suspending its publication. In 1959 Ahmet Emin Yalman, as well as the other
Vatan people like Naim Tiralı and Selami Akpınar, were jailed only to be set free by the
1960 Turkish coup d'état.
Later years During the troubled years,
Vatan faced deep financial problems. About half of the shares were bought by a new group and in 1961 Yalman sold his shares to break away. After Yalman's term, the royalty of the newspaper was sold to Naim Tiralı the former executive editor of the paper. Meanwhile, the newspaper infrastructure (buildings and machinery) was sold to
Hürriyet newspaper. In 1976
Vatan was sold to Numan Esin who began publishing
Vatan in
Ankara as an afternoon paper up to 1978. ==Recent Vatan==