Liberal Reorientation of Turkish Foreign Policy (1950–1960)

Abstract

In June 1945, four leading members of the liberal wing within the Republican People’s Party, former prime minister Celal Bayar, Adnan Menderes, Fuad Köprülü, and Refik Koraltan, gave an ultimatum to the CHP parliamentary group, asking for immediate implementation of democratic procedures in party and governmental affairs. Menderes and Köprülü then published fiercely critical articles in Vatan, a daily close to the liberal group. When the CHP authority expelled Menderes and Köprülü, Bayar resigned from the party. The group then formed the Demokrat Parti (DP) in January 1946. While many CHP leaders came from former military backgrounds, leaders of the new party were civilians. Bayar came from the CUP background but later emerged as the leader of CHP’s liberal wing and Menderes was a prominent landowner in Aydin province in western Turkey. Both Bayar and Menderes fought in the War of National Independence as civilian militia leaders. Köprülü was a prominent professor of history, and Zorlu was a career diplomat. Outside this core leadership, the new party’s support was based on a coalition, comprised of the landowners, the urban mercantile class, and the small peasantry, countering the CHP’s military-bureaucratic elites and intelligentsia.¹