Adnan Menderes

Adnan Menderes is a Turkish landowner and politician. A famous (and infamous) conservative populist, he is a member of the National Democratic Party.

Background

Born to a landowner in a rural town, Menderes' political journey started with impressing Atatürk with his innovative ideas about how to improve rural life, which made the Ghazi sit down and listen to him for four hours in the middle of a busy schedule. He was invited to the Republican People's Party and became the youngest member of the Assembly.

After Atatürk's death in 1938 allowed Prime Minister Recep Peker to consolidate power, Menderes and Celâl Bayar, Mehmet Fuat Köprülü and Refik Koraltan, his allies in the liberal faction of the CHP, were purged by Peker, who called them opportunists for wanting democracy and traitors for going against the party's strict anti-opposition principle.

In 1948, as opposition to Peker's modernist, authoritarian and secular policies grew, Menderes, Köprülü and Koraltan, with the endorsement of Bayar, formed the Democrat Party in 1948, which became the most prominent opposition to the CHP. Peker, outraged, banned the Democrat Party, which furthered anti-government protests. At this crucial time, Bayar was assassinated by a rogue assassin, whom Menderes has continued to blame on Peker.

After Peker's death in 1950 and the fall of his protégé Falih Rıfkı Atay in 1954, President İsmet İnönü initiated the democratisation of Turkey by meeting with Fuat Köprülü and Tevfik Rüştü Aras and asking them to form their opposition parties. Menderes joined Köprülü's National Democratic Party and quickly became its uncontested face, with a new cadre of young conservatives under him, Süleyman Demirel and Sadettin Bilgiç.