page_title: Adnan Menderes
section_title: Political style and beliefs
hierarchical_section_title: Adnan Menderes / Political style and beliefs
caption_attribution_description: English: President Dwight D. Eisenhower meets with President Celal Bayar and Prime Minister Adnan Menderes at the Presidential Residence in Çankaya (December 1959). Photo courtesy of the Eisenhower Presidential Library.
context_page_description: Adnan Menderes was a Turkish politician. He was the Turkish Prime Minister between 1950–1960. He was one of the founders of the Democrat Party in 1946, the fourth legal opposition party of Turkey. He was tried and hanged under the military junta after the 1960 coup d'état, along with two other cabinet members, Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and Hasan Polatkan. One of the accusations brought against him was of him ordering the Istanbul Pogrom against citizens of Greek ethnicity. 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 to have had a mausoleum built in his honor.
context_section_description: 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 on the platform of legalizing the Arabic 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. 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 case Celal Bayar). In one of his speeches, he said that members of parliament could bring back caliphate if they so desired.
  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 of high agricultural spending, especially in infrastructure meant that the peasants of Turkey appreciated his premiership.
  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. 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.
  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.
caption: President Dwight D. Eisenhower meets with President Celal Bayar and Prime Minister Adnan Menderes at the Presidential Residence in Çankaya (December 1959).
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