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Revision as of 15:04, 25 June 2008
Ali Adnan Ertekin Menderes | |
|---|---|
| 9th Prime Minister of Turkey | |
| In office May 22, 1950 – May 27, 1960 | |
| President | Mahmut Celal Bayar |
| Preceded by | Şemsettin Günaltay |
| Succeeded by | Cemal Gürsel (military) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1899 Aydın |
| Died | September 17, 1961 (executed) İmralı |
| Political party | Democratic |
Ali Adnan Ertekin Menderes (1899 - September 17, 1961) was a Turkish liberal statesman and the first democratically elected leader in Turkish history who served as prime minister between 1950–1960. He was one of the founders of the Democratic Party (DP) in 1946, the third legal opposition party of Turkey. He was hanged following the 1960 coup d'état, along with two other cabinet members, Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and Hasan Polatkan. He is one of the three political leaders of the Turkish Republic (along with Ataturk and Turgut Özal) to have a mausoleum built in his honour.
Early life and career
He was born in 1899 in Aydın, as the son of a wealthy landowner, whose roots are from Crimean Tatars. After primary school, Menderes attended the American College in İzmir. He graduated from the Law School of Ankara Üniversitesi. In 1930, Menderes organized a branch of the short lived Liberal Republican Party (Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası) in Aydın. After the ban of this party, he was invited by Atatürk himself to join Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party) and was elected 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.
Rise to power
On January 7, 1946, he formed the Demokrat Parti (Democratic Party), the fourth legal opposition party in Turkey, after the Progressive Republican Party (Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası) formed by Ret. Gen. Kazım Karabekir in 1924, the Liberal Republican Party (Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası) established by Ali Fethi Okyar in 1930, and the National Development Party (Milli Kalkınma Partisi) established by Nuri Demirağ in 1945. He was elected deputy of Kütahya in the fairly undemocratic 1946 elections, in which the votes were cast out open and were counted in secret. He became the highest-ranking man in the party after Celal Bayar. When the DP won 52% of the votes in the first free elections in Turkish history on May 14, 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. No other politician has ever been able to win three general elections in a row in Turkey.
During the 10 years of his term of prime ministry, Turkish domestic and foreign politics underwent great changes. Industrialization and urbanization, which were started by Atatürk, but staggered by nationalization policies of Inonu and the effects of war, underwent rapid acceleration in Turkey. Turkish economy grew at an unprecedented rate of 9% per annum over his 10 year reign, a feat which had and so far has not yet been duplicated. Turkey was admitted to NATO as a full fledged member. With the economic support of USA via Marshall Plan, agriculture was mechanized; transport, energy, education, health care, insurance and banking progressed.[citation needed] In 1955, Menderes was implicated by the opposition CHP in the organisation of the Istanbul Pogrom, which targeted the city's substantial Greek minority.[1]
Plane crash survival
On February 17, 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 to London Gatwick Airport crashed a few miles before the runway, near Rusper, Sussex in heavy fog and caught fire. 9 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 to the London Clinic 90 minutes after the first aid given by Margaret Bailey, a resident who rushed to the crash site as one of the first helpers.
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.[2]
Menderes signed the London Agreement on February 19, 1959 in the hospital. He returned home on February 26, 1959 and was welcomed by even his arch rival İsmet İnönü and a huge crowd.
Political style and beliefs
Menderes became quite famous for selling or distributing most of the estate he had inherited to small shareholders. He was more tolerant towards traditional lifestyles and different forms of practice of Islam than Atatürk and his party had been - he campaigned in the 1950 elections almost exclusively on the single-issue platform of legalizing the Arabic language adhan, which had been banned by İsmet İnönü. 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. 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 the image of the President of the country would be placed on the banknotes, in this case Celal Bayar.
While remaining pro-Western, he was more active than his predecessors in building relations with Muslim states. Menderes had a more liberal economic policy than earlier prime ministers, and allowed more private enterprise. In general his economic policies made him popular among the poor half of the population, but it also brought the country to insolvency due to an enormous increase in imports of goods and technology.
He was most intolerant towards criticism, so he instituted press censorship and had journalists arrested, as well as attempted to oppress the opposing political parties (predominantly CHP) and take institutions such as universities under his control.[citation needed] Menderes who was well liked by the people in general 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. This eventually brought about his fall from power.
Coup, trial, execution
On May 27, 1960, a military coup organized by 37 "young officers", removed the government, and Menderes was arrested along with some other party members. They were charged with violating the constitution. He and all the leaders of the DP were put on trial by a hastily formed ad-hoc court on the island of Yassıada. In addition to the charges of violating the constitution, the trial also referenced the Istanbul Pogrom, for which he and his fellow defendants were blamed.
Menderes was sentenced to death for violating the Constitution, ironically by the same officers who themselves had violated the Constitution by conspiring against a democratically elected government. Despite pleas for forgiveness by Head of State Cemal Gürsel, and similar pleas from several world leaders, he was executed by hanging on the island of İmralı on September 17, 1961. The age of Democratic Party was over after this execution. Two months later, İsmet İnönü formed a new government, in coalition and with the help of the newly emerging Adalet Partisi, after these two parties among themselves took the majority of the votes in 1961 election. Adalet Partisi, which was seen as the successor of the heritage of Menderes, would win victories in later elections and İnönü would end up losing his support in 1972 among the CHP faithfuls as well, three-and-a-half decades after he had lost the confidence of Atatürk who sacked him as Prime Minister in 1937.
Legacy
On September 17, 1990, he was posthumously pardoned and his grave was moved to a mausoleum in İstanbul. Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and Hasan Polatkan, the two other members of his cabinet who were hanged, were similarly pardoned. 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.
In 2006, Mehmet Feyyat, Attorney General of İstanbul 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 cut the lines off" (see below).
Quotes
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 May 27 revolution. 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.
— Mr. Aydın Menderes, Author, the Son of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, September 2006
They cut off our phone lines. Adnan Menderes was hanged against the regulations. I was supposed to oversee the execution. The revolution tribunal's chief prosecutor Altay Egesel conducted the execution despite not being authorized. İsmet İnönü and Cemal Gürsel were already phoning for him (Menderes) not to be executed but the telecommunications' office cut off the lines and Egesel made use of the (communication) gap to conduct the execution.
— Mehmet Feyyat, District Attorney General, Istanbul Province Prosecutor General 1961, The Administrator of the Imrali Prison, The Lawyer of the Year, Senator., Reported by Özkan GÜVEN, STAR Newspaper, November 13, 2006 with a summary in Turkish at Law in the Capital
Film and television
- The last period of Menderes' life beginning with his 1959 aircraft crash survival until his execution was depicted in the television series Hatırla Sevgili (English: Remember Darling) as background events.[3]
