Ahmet Emin Yalman

Ahmet Emin Yalman (14 May 1888 – 19 December 1972) was a Turkish journalist, publisher, professor and influential policy-advisor in the Republic of Turkey. He was a liberal and opposed the spread of the Nazi ideology in his home country.

Early life and education Ahmet Emin Yalman was born in 1888 in Selanik (Thessaloniki), at that time part of the Ottoman Empire. His early education was diverse and he attended several schools in Thessaloniki, amongst them a primary school with Sabbatean influences, then the military middle school where his father Osman Tevfik Bey was the teacher of calligraphy and history. Following some difficulties Yalman ran into with his teachers, his father decided to enroll him into the German school in Selanik. In 1903, as his father was employed in the Ottoman Press directorate in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), he attended the Deutsche Schule Istanbul in Beyoğlu where he learned German and English. He joined the Committee of Union and Progress, as well as the Freemasonry lodge Obedience of Véritas. From 1911 onward, Yalman studied political science at Columbia University, from where he earned a Ph.D in 1914. Atatürk sent him to cover the several battle fronts in the Turkish War of Independence. When he was allowed to resume his journalistic activities he worked for the Tan newspaper. At the end of the Menderes era, he was imprisoned and condemned to over one-year imprisonment, but was released after the military coup of 1960. He died on 19 December 1972 in Istanbul. Titles include The Development of Modern Turkey as Measured by Its Press (1914), An Experiment in Clean Journalism (1950), Turkey In My Time (1956), and Turkey in the World War (1930).

Yalman received numerous awards, including the Golden Pen of Freedom of the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers in 1961 and The Gold Medal of the British Institute of Journalists.