Hayat Magazine’s view of the United States of America and Kennedy assassination

Abstract

Hayat Magazine is a cultural current affairs magazine that was presented to the Turkish readership with the intaglio printing technique on April 6, 1956. The owner of the magazine was Şevket Rado, who was a lawyer but always had ties with the press. Hayat Magazine reached high circulation shortly after it was presented to the reader. It has drawn a profile of a magazine that undertakes the role of cultural educator, which emerged because of Turkey's political choice of the West in the two-block world that emerged after World War II, by presenting a Western lifestyle. The articles and news written in the magazine always defended the thesis that the West was the most democratic, most humane and most livable place. In this context, since the United States assumed the leadership of the West, US Presidents were also frequently featured in the pages of the magazine. In this context, US President John F. Kennedy was frequently featured in Hayat Magazine. The private trips and diplomatic contacts of the US President and his wife were frequently featured in the magazine in this context. At a time when Kennedy was presented as the important subject of Hayat, US President Kennedy was shot and killed by an assassin in Texas on November 22, 1963. This event shook the world deeply, and Hayat Magazine covered it in full detail, both out of sympathy for the president and admiration for the United States. While news of the assassination took place on the first pages of the magazine, the trial of the assassin in the courts was also presented to the reader in a similar manner in the following years.