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 government. For example, Vatan sharply opposed the Wealth tax, a new tax directed at the wealthy majorly non-muslim citizens of Turkey 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 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 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 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. The former newspaper Vatan which continued publishing between 2002 and 2018 is not related to the former Vatan except for its title.
