Adnan Menderes was born in 1899 inKoçarlı,Aydın, as a son of a wealthy landowner ofCrimean Tatar origin.[2] After primary school, Menderes attended the American College inİzmir.[3] He fought against the invadingGreek army during theTurkish War of Independence and was awarded a medal of honour.[4] He graduated from theAnkara UniversityLaw School. In 1930, Adnan Menderes organized a branch of the short-livedLiberal Republican Party (Turkish:Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası) in Aydın.[5] After the party dissolved itself, he was invited byAtatürk himself to join the rulingRepublican 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 thenationalization policies ofİsmet İnönü.
In June 1945, Menderes, together withCelâl Bayar,Fuat Köprülü andRefik Koraltan demanded more political and democratic freedom in theirMotion with four signatures.[6] The motion was not approved by any member of the Turkish parliament except for the four who brought the motion to parliament, and by September 1945,[6] Menderes, Köprülü and Koraltan were all stripped of their membership of theCHP[7] due to their opposition to the Turkish government. Bayar then resigned from parliament and later also the party.[8] On 7 January 1946, the four formed theDemocratic Party (DP)[9] and in the1946 elections Menderes was elected deputy of the Democratic Party representingKütahya.[10]
When the DP won 52% of the votes in thefirst free elections in Turkish history on 14 May 1950 in which votes were cast in secret and counted openly, Menderes becameprime 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, the Turkish economy was growing at a rate of 9% per annum.[11] He supported an eventual military alliance with theWestern Bloc and during his tenure, Turkey participated in theKorean War, and was admitted to theNATO in 1952 with the support of the oppositionRepublican People’s Party (CHP).[1] With the economic support of the United States via theMarshall Plan, agriculture was mechanized; and transport, energy, education, health care, insurance and banking progressed.[12] Some historical studies note that Turkey experienced a significant economic downturn in the mid-1950s during Prime Minister Adnan Menderes’s tenure, including an estimated 11% decline in GDP per capita in 1954.[13]
In 1955, several historical sources link the Menderes government to theIstanbul pogrom, which targeted the city'sGreek ethnic minority.[14] In September 1955 a bomb exploded close to the Turkish consulate in Greece's second-largest city,Thessaloniki, also damaging theAtatürk Museum, site of Atatürk's birthplace. The damage to the house was minimal, with some broken windows.[15] In retaliation, in Istanbul thousands of shops, houses, churches and even graves belonging to members of the ethnic Greek minority were destroyed within a few hours, over a dozen people were killed and many more injured.[16]
The ongoing struggle between Turkey and Greece over control of Cyprus, andCypriot intercommunal violence, formed part of the backdrop to the pogrom. The United Kingdom invited Turkey and Greece to a conference in London, which started on 26 August 1955. The day before the Tripartite London Conference (29 August – 7 September 1955) began, Menderes claimed thatGreek Cypriots were planning a massacre ofTurkish Cypriots. Seeing the opportunity to extricate Britain, Prime MinisterAnthony Eden advised the Turkish delegates that they should be stern. Foreign MinisterFatin Rüştü Zorlu paid heed to Eden and launched a harsh opening salvo, stating that Turkey would reconsider its commitment to theTreaty of Lausanne unless Greece reconsidered its position on Cyprus. The Greek delegates, surprised by the harshness of the speech, held the British responsible for the change in Turkish attitudes.[17] Finally, the conference fell apart on 6 September, the first day the subject of Cyprus would be broached at the conference,[18] when news broke of the bombing in Thessaloniki.[19]
Deflecting domestic attention to Cyprus was politically convenient for the Menderes government, which was suffering from an ailing economy. Although a minority, the Greek population played a prominent role in Istanbul's business life, making them a convenientscapegoat during the economic crisis in the mid-1950s.[13] The DP responded first with inflationary policies, then when that failed, withauthoritarianism andpopulism.[13] DP's policies also introduced rural-urban mobility, which exposed some of the rural population to the lifestyles of the urban minorities. The three chief destinations were the largest three cities: Istanbul,Ankara, andİzmir. Between 1945 and 1955, the population of Istanbul increased from 1 million to about 1.6 million. Many of these new residents found themselves inshanty towns (Turkish:gecekondus), and constituted a prime target for populist policies.[13]
The 1961Yassıada trials after the1960 coup d'état accused Menderes and Foreign MinisterFatin Rüştü Zorlu of planning the riots, finding that the supposed assault was in fact a provocation organised by the Menderes government, which planted the bomb in Thessaloniki and also bussed infuriated villagers from Anatolia into Istanbul with the aim of "punishing" Greeks. Menderes subsequently apologized and offered compensation to those affected.[20]
On 17 February 1959, theTurkish Airlines aircraftVickers Viscount Type 793, registration TC-SEV, carrying Adnan Menderes and a party of government officials on a flight from Istanbul toLondon Gatwick Airportcrashed a few miles short of the runway, nearRusper,Sussex, in heavy fog and caught fire. Nine of the sixteen passengers and five of the eight crew lost their lives. Menderes, sitting in the back part of the plane, survived the accident almost uninjured and was hospitalized atthe London Clinic 90 minutes after receiving first aid from Margaret Bailey, a local resident who rushed to the crash site.
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-rivalİsmet İnönü and a large crowd.
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 ofIslam than Atatürk and his party had been – he campaigned in the 1950 elections on the platform of legalizing theArabic Islamic call to prayer (adhan), which had been banned in order to extirpateArabic influences. One of his first political moves was to exclude the pictures ofİsmet İnönü on Turkish banknotes and stamps and instead putAtatürk pictures back, which were taken off when İnönü became president in 1938.[26] Thanks to the public support and the legacy of Atatürk, it was a successful move, even if the Turkish law under the former president stated that the image of the president of the country would be placed on the banknotes (in this caseCelâl Bayar).
PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower meets with President Celâl Bayar and Prime Minister Adnan Menderes at the Presidential Residence inÇankaya (December 1959).
While remaining pro-Western, he was more active than his predecessors in building relations with Muslim countries. Menderes had a moreliberal economic policy than earlier prime ministers, and allowed moreprivate enterprise. In general, his economic policies of high agricultural spending, especially in infrastructure meant that the peasants of Turkey appreciated his premiership.[27] He also attended theBilderberg Meeting in 1957 and 1959.[28][29]
He was most intolerant towards criticism, so he instituted presscensorship and had journalists arrested, as well as attempting to oppress the opposing political parties and take institutions such as universities under his control. Menderes who was well liked by the people in general and also had the support of the Army Chief of Staff GeneralCemal 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 thatKemalist ideology was in danger.
Amilitary coup on 27 May 1960, organized by 37 "young officers", deposed the government, and Menderes was arrested along with Bayar and all the leading party members.[30] They were charged with violating theconstitution, and embezzling money from state funds, and ordering theIstanbul pogrom, in which dozens of Greeks were killed.
Menderes and other leading figures of the DP were put on trial by a military court on the island ofYassıada, seeYassıada trials. Along with Bayar and two former cabinet ministers, Menderes was sentenced to death. He delayed his execution with a suicide attempt by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.[31] Despite pleas for forgiveness by Head of StateCemal Gürsel and even from İsmet İnönü,[32] in addition to similar pleas from several world leaders, includingJohn F. Kennedy and QueenElizabeth II, Menderes was executed by thejunta at the gallows on the island ofİmralı on 17 September 1961.[33] The sentence of ex-President Bayar was commuted to imprisonment.
Two months later, İsmet İnönü formed a new government under military tutelage, in coalition and with the help of the newly emergingJustice Party (Turkish:Adalet Partisi), after these two major parties among themselves took the majority of the votes in 1961 elections.[34] Adalet Partisi, the successor of the heritage of Menderes, would win victories in later elections especially under the leadership ofSüleyman Demirel.
On 17 September 1990, the 29th anniversary of Menderes' execution, he was posthumously pardoned by the Turkish Parliament and his grave was moved to amausoleum named after him in Istanbul.Fatin Rüştü Zorlu andHasan Polatkan, who were the foreign affairs minister and finance minister, respectively in the last Menderes administration, and who were hanged with Menderes by thejunta in 1961, were also posthumously cleared of any misconduct.[35]Adnan Menderes University inAydın andAdnan 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 city districts, boulevards and streets named after him by city councils in cities large and small, all across Turkey.
In 2006, Mehmet Feyyat, the attorney general of Istanbul at the time, suggested that "İsmet İnönü and Cemal Gürsel placed phone calls to the prison's administration to halt Menderes' execution, but the Communications Office of the junta cut off the lines."
The last period of Menderes' life beginning with his1959 aircraft crash survival until his execution was depicted in the television seriesHatırla Sevgili (English:Remember Darling) as background events.[39]
The period when Menderes was prime minister from 1950 to 1960 were depicted in the television seriesBen Onu Çok Sevdim (English:I Loved Him So Much). Series which began broadcasting at Turkish national broadcaster ATV from September 2013 also focuses on the romance between Menderes and Turkish opera singerAyhan Aydan. He was played by actorMehmet Aslantuğ.
^abHeper, Metin; Landau, Jacob M. (1991).Political Parties and Democracy in Turkey. I.B. Tauris. p. 120.ISBN1850433003.
^Findley, Carter V. (21 September 2010).Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity: A History, 1789-2007. Yale University Press. p. 268.ISBN978-0-300-15260-9.
^abcdKuyucu, Ali Tuna (2005). "Ethno-religious 'unmixing' of 'Turkey': 6–7 September riots as a case in Turkish nationalism". Nations and Nationalism. 11 (3): 361–380. doi:10.1111/j.1354-5078.2005.00209.x.
