During the decades of the 1950s and 60s Turkey experienced not only fundamental political transformations, including the transition to a multi-party system and the 1960 military coup, but also the concurrent consolidation of political ideologies and the development of an increasingly polarized political environment. Since many Turkish writers maintained strong party or ideological identifications and approached authorship as a political act, this evolving political climate profoundly influenced the literature and the literary market. In addition, these decades represent a critical moment in Turkish literary history because of the vibrancy of the literary and publishing scenes, the changeover from the formative authors of the late Ottoman/early Turkish Republican era, and the gradual replacement of serialization with book form as the preferred method of publication. Within this altering political and literary context, censorship—both state and self enforced—provides a productive frame for the analysis of the era’s literature and literary market; it demonstrates the material impact of the political conditions on the literary product as well as its publication, distribution, and readership. This paper will investigate the historical legal alterations to state sponsored pre and post publication censorship and the impact of these practices on the literary market, particularly in relation to the atmosphere of literary freedom that accompanied the 1960 military coup. As illustrated by the works of politically active and prolific authors such as the rightist Necip Faz?l K?sakürek and the leftist Naz?m Hikmet, literature still reached publication, distribution, and popularity despite its being repeatedly targeted by government censors and the periodic imprisonment of the authors. However, censorship was not restricted to the realm of the state but progressively assumed the form of self-censorship within the increasingly politically divisive context of the 60s. While state censorship carried explicit consequences, such as imprisonment or the suppression of publication, it also mobilized political literary markets to ensure the publication and distribution of literature; in contrast, auto-censorship and intensifying political polarization produced significant implicit consequences for the literary market, most especially modifications to the literary product itself.