| Adnan Menderes | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Prime Minister of Turkey | |
| In office 22 May 1950 – 27 May 1960 | |
| President | Celal Bayar |
| Preceded by | Şemsettin Günaltay |
| Succeeded by | Cemal Gürsel |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1899 Koçarlı, Aydın Province,Ottoman Empire |
| Died | September 17, 1961 (aged 61–62) İmralı, Turkey |
| Political party | Liberal Republican Party Republican People's Party(CHP) Democratic Party (DP) |
| Spouse(s) | Berrin Menderes |
| Children | Yüksel, Mutlu, Aydın |
| Alma mater | Ankara University, Law School |
| Religion | Sunni Islam |
Adnan Menderes (Turkish: [adˈnan mendeˈɾes]; 1899 – September 17, 1961) was the first elected Turkish Prime Minister between 1950–1960. He was one of the founders of the Democratic Party (DP) in 1946, the fourth legal opposition party of Turkey. He was hanged by the military junta after the1960 coup d'état, along with two other cabinet members, Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and Hasan Polatkan. He was the last Turkish political leader to be executed after a military coup and is also one of the three political leaders of the Turkish Republic (along with Atatürk and Turgut Özal) to have amausoleum built in his honour.
Early life and career[edit]
Adnan was born in 1899 in Koçarlı, Aydın Province, as the son of a wealthy landowner, whose roots were from Crimean Tatars.[1][page needed] After primary school, Menderes attended the American College in İzmir. He fought against the invading Greek army during the Turkish War of Independenceand was awarded a medal of honour[citation needed]. He graduated from the Law School of Ankara University. In 1930, Menderes organized a branch of the short-lived Liberal Republican Party (Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası) in Aydın.[2] After this opposition party was banned as well, he was invited byAtatürk himself to join the ruling Republican People's Party and was selected by the party leaders as a deputy of Aydın in 1931. In 1945, he was expelled from the party with two other colleagues due to inner-party opposition to the nationalization policies of the then self-declared "National Chief"İsmet İnönü.[3]
Rise to power[edit]
On 7 January 1946, he and former prime minister Celal Bayar formed the Democratic Party (DP), the fourth legal opposition party in Turkey, after theProgressive Republican Party formed by Ret. Gen. Kazım Karabekir in 1924, the Liberal Republican Party established by Ali Fethi Okyar in 1930, and the National Development Party (Milli Kalkınma Partisi) established by Nuri Demirağ in 1945, the first two of which were banned in at most a few months after their founding by the Republican People's Party (CHP), which was the party in power until 1950 elections in Turkey. He was elected deputy of Kütahya in the 1946 elections, in which the votes were cast out in the open and were counted in secret by the state apparatus working for the governing CHP[citation needed]. He became the highest-ranking man in the party after Celal Bayar[citation needed]. When the DP won 52% of the votes in the first free elections in Turkish history on 14 May 1950 (in which votes were cast in secret and counted openly), Menderes became prime minister, and in 1955 he also assumed the duties of foreign minister. He later won two more free elections, one in 1954 and the other in 1957.
During the 10 years of his term as prime minister, Turkish domestic and foreign politics underwent great changes[clarification needed]. Industrialization and urbanization, which were started by Atatürk, but staggered by nationalization policies of İsmet İnönü[citation needed] and the effects of war[clarification needed], underwent rapid[weasel words] acceleration in Turkey. The Turkish economygrew at an unprecedented rate of 9% per annum over his 10 year administration, a feat which had and so far has not yet been duplicated.[4] Turkey was admitted to NATO. With the economic support of the United States via the Marshall Plan, agriculture was mechanized; transport, energy, education, health care, insurance and banking progressed.[citation needed] In 1955, the Menderes government was blamed by his political opponents for orchestrating the Istanbul Pogrom, which targeted the city's substantial Greek minority.[5]
Plane crash survival[edit]
On 17 February 1959, the Turkish Airlines aircraft Vickers Viscount Type 793, registration TC-SEV, carrying Adnan Menderes and a party of government officials on a special flight from Istanbul toLondon Gatwick Airport crashed a few miles short of the runway, near Rusper, Sussex in heavy fog and caught fire. Nine of the 16 passengers and 5 of the 8 crew lost their lives. Menderes, sitting in the back part of the plane, survived the accident almost uninjured and was hospitalized at The London Clinic 90 minutes after receiving first aid from Margaret Bailey, a local resident who rushed to the crash site.
He was on his way to sign the London Agreements on the Cyprus issue with the British Premier Harold Macmillan and Greek Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis, which gave the three sides the right to intervene in Cyprus in case peace is broken by any of the parties.[6]
Menderes signed the London Agreement on 19 February 1959 in the hospital. He returned home on 26 February 1959 and was welcomed by even his arch-rival İsmet İnönü and a large[weasel words] crowd.
Political style and beliefs[edit]
Menderes became quite famous for selling or distributing most of the estate he had inherited to small shareholders[citation needed]. He was more tolerant towards traditional lifestyles and different forms of practice of Islam than Atatürk and his party had been[citation needed] – he campaigned in the 1950 elections on the platform of legalizing the Arabic language Islamic call to prayer (adhan), which had been banned in order to wean Turkey from Arabic influences. He re-opened thousands of mosques across the country which had been closed down, and as such, he was blamed by his political opponents for using religion as a tool for political gain. One of his first political moves was to exclude the pictures of İsmet İnönü on Turkish banknotes and stamps and instead put Atatürk pictures back, which were taken off when Inönü became President in 1938[citation needed]. Thanks to the public support and the legacy of Atatürk, it was a successful move, even if the Turkish law under the former President was stating that[citation needed] the image of the President of the country would be placed on the banknotes (in this case Celal Bayar). In one of his speeches, he said that members of parliament could bring back caliphate if they so desired[citation needed].
While remaining pro-Western, he was more active than his predecessors in building relations with Muslim states[citation needed]. Menderes had a more liberal economic policy than earlier prime ministers, and allowed more private enterprise[citation needed]. In general, his economic policies made him popular among the poor half[clarification needed].
He was most intolerant towards criticism, so he instituted press censorship and had journalists arrested, as well as attempting to oppress the opposing political parties and take institutions such as universities under his control[citation needed]. Menderes who was well liked by the people in general[citation needed] and also had the support of the Army Chief of Staff General Cemal Gürsel who, in a personal patriotic memorandum, had advocated that Menderes should become the president of the republic to secure the national unity, became increasingly unpopular among the intellectuals, university students and a group of radical young officers in the military, who feared that the ideals of Atatürk were in danger[citation needed].
The most important event that brought his fall from power was probably the establishment of Commission of Inquiries (Tahkikat Komisyonu). The commission, composed only of Democratic Party MPs and bestowed those MPs with the powers of public and military prosecutors along with the right to give verdict. This was against the principle of separation of powers and gave the MPs the power to both prosecute and judge. Furthermore, the Commission's verdicts could not be taken to the Appeal Courts.
Coup, trial, execution[edit]
On 27 May 1960, a military coup organized by 37 "young officers" deposed the government, and Menderes was arrested along with all the leading party members.[7] They were charged with violating the constitution, ordering the Istanbul Pogrom, in which 57 Greeks were killed, and embezzling money from state funds. He and all the leaders of the DP were put on trial by a hastily formed quasi-military[citation needed] kangaroo court on the island of Yassıada. In addition to the charges of violating the constitution, the trial also referenced to the Istanbul Pogrom, for which he and his fellow defendants were blamed[citation needed].
Menderes was sentenced to death for violating the Constitution. Despite pleas for forgiveness by Head of State Cemal Gürsel and opposition leader İsmet İnönü,[8] and similar pleas from several world leaders, including American President John F. Kennedy and Elizabeth II of the UK, Menderes was executed by the junta at the gallows on the island of İmralı on 17 September 1961. Two months later, Menderes' opponent İsmet İnönü formed a new government under military tutelage, in coalition and with the help of the newly emerging Justice Party (in Turkish: "Adalet Partisi"), after these two major parties among themselves took the majority of the votes in 1961 elections[citation needed]. Adalet Partisi, which was seen[weasel words] as the successor of the heritage of Menderes, would win victories in later elections[quantify] especially under the leadership of Süleyman Demirel[citation needed].
Legacy[edit]
On 17 September 1990, the 29th anniversary of Menderes' execution, he was posthumously pardoned by the democratically elected Turkish Parliament and his grave was moved to a mausoleumnamed after him in Istanbul. Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and Hasan Polatkan, who were the Foreign Affairs Minister and Finance Minister, respectively in the last Menderes administration, and who were hanged with Menderes by the junta in 1961, were also posthumously cleared of any misconduct.[9] Adnan Menderes University in Aydın and Adnan Menderes Airport in İzmir are named after him. Two high schools, Istanbul Bahcelievler Adnan Menderes Anadolu Lisesi and Aydın Adnan Menderes Anadolu Lisesi, also adopted his name. There are numerous[weasel words] city districts, boulevards and streets named after him by democratically elected city councils in cities large and small, all across Turkey[citation needed].
In 2006, Mehmet Feyyat, Attorney General of Istanbul at the time, suggested that "İsmet İnönü and Cemal Gürsel placed phone calls to the prison's administration for Menderes' execution to be halted but the Communications Office of the junta cut the lines off" (see below)[citation needed].
Quotes[edit]
An extremely important document that sheds light on the past has been revealed. Testimony from eyewitnesses at the time helped make known that the letter had been modified after May 27, but the location of the original letter was unknown. This important document adds a new dimension to the coup d'etat conspired against his democratically elected government on May 27, 1960. We have come face to face with a new document that changes our written history. It was my greatest wish to obtain just such a document; not for my own satisfaction, but for my father, to prove this reality and obtain genuine evidence. I was thrilled when I heard about this.
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