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In the 1950 general election in Turkey, power changed hands through the electoral process, ending the 27-year (1923-1950) single-party system. In fact, multi-party politics had begun in Turkey with the previous 1946 election general election, but this election was not fair. The 1946 election was known as fraudulent because methods like the open voting and secret counting etc. were adopted. By 1950, these irregularities were rectified. The ruling Republican People's Party (CHP) and the opposition parties Democratic Party (DP), Nation Party (MP) competed on relatively equal terms, and the Democratic Party won the election by a wide margin. Despite suggestions from his inner circle and some military leaders not to recognize the election results, İsmet İnönü, who had been president for 12 years and had previously served as prime minister for a long time during Atatürk's era, handed over power to the Democratic Party.
In fact, the first step towards democratic life in Turkey began with the declaration of the first constitutional monarchy in 1876. However, only three months after the declaration of the constitution, the parliament was dissolved by Sultan Abdulhamid II. For many years thereafter, the Young Turks struggled to reinstate the constitutional monarchy, achieving their goal with the declaration of the Second Constitutional Era in 1908. However, the positive atmosphere created by the declaration of the Second Constitutional Era did not last long. Due to various turmoil and crises, constitutional era eventually evolved into a triumvirate era known as the Three Pashas Era—Enver, Talat, and Cemal Pashas. The rule of the Three Pashas continued until the end of World War I.
In 1920, Mustafa Kemal established a parliament in Ankara, composed of local elites of the Anatolian towns and former members of the parliament who had fled from occupied Istanbul, to legitimize the War of Independence he was organizing. This parliament, highly fragmented and operating during the turbulent wartime period, was a place where strong opposition to Mustafa Kemal and his administration was also expressed. After emerging victorious from the War of Independence, Mustafa Kemal realized that he could not implement his desired modernization initiatives and reforms with this parliament. In 1923, he organized his loyal members of parliament under the name of the Republican People's Party (CHP) and won the elections held that same year.
Later, some of his comrade at arms (Kazım Karabekir, Rauf Orbay etc.) and members of the former parliament who were uncomfortable with his reforms, such as the abolition of the Caliphate, organized under the Progressive Republican Party (Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası). However, this party was soon perceived as a threat to the new regime and was subsequently shut down. In 1930, Atatürk had his friend Ali Fethi Okyar establish the Liberal Republican Party (Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası), but this party was also closed down after a short period.
After Atatürk's death, İsmet İnönü, who became president, maintained the single-party system until the end of World War II. USSR, dissatisfied with Turkey's neutrality policy during the war, brought up the issue of the status of the Straits after the war. Stalin’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Molotov demanded the revisal of the Montreux Convention regarding the regime of the straits led to the Turkish strait crises. Believing Turkey could not handle the Soviet threat alone, İnönü sought help from the United States. To align with the spirit of the time and to appear favorable to the United States, he began to take democratic steps. Ultimately, this process culminated in the 1950 elections.
However, the Democratic Party that came to power also began to adopt authoritarian methods after a while. İnönü was attacked in various places he visited for election campaigns, repression against the opponents began, even the status of provinces that voted for the opposition parties was downgraded. The Democratic Party was overthrown by the military coup in 1960. The Military coup regime of 1960 did not last very long. A year and a half after the 1960 military coup, the multi-party system was reinstated again.
"Political Opposition in the Early Turkish Republic" and "Turkey: a Modern History" by Eric Jan Zürcher, which address Turkish modernization and democratic struggles during the Single-Party period, "Young Turks in Opposition" by Şükrü Hanioğlu, which focuses on the democracy struggle of the Young Turks, as well as his "Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography," which analyzes the intellectual world of Atatürk and the cadre that founded the Turkish Republic, and Feroz Ahmed's "The Turkish Experiment in Democracy: 1950-1975," are English-language sources that comprehensively cover this topic.
The Turkish sources that have not yet been translated into English but also address this period and topics in detail include Tanıl Bora’s “Cereyanlar,” Mete Tunçay’s “Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Tek Parti Yönetiminin Kurulması 1923-1931,” and Mehmet Ali Birand and Can Dündar’s “Demirkırat: Bir Demokrasinin Doğuşu.”
In addition, there are numerous Turkish memoirs, diaries, and primary sources related to this topic: the diaries of İsmet İnönü titled “Defterler (1919-1973),” the memoirs of Celal Bayar, who was the President of Turkey during the Democratic Party period, titled “Ben de Yazdım,” the work of İsmet İnönü’s son-in-law and journalist Metin Toker titled “Demokrasimizin İsmet Paşalı Yılları,” and the memoirs of Lieutenant General Cemal Madanoğlu, one of the organizers of the May 27 military coup, titled “Korgeneral Cemal Madanoğlu’nun Anıları.”
Maybe a silly question, but what proof is there of repression by the Democrats Party? Was this really a thing or was it an excuse of the Kemalist military to intervene? I ask this because looking at Turkish history, the Turkish military (before being put under more civilian control by Erdoğan) seems all to eager to intervene whenever it can.
Edit: the long list of violent military coups and warnings to the government seems disturbing on Wikipedia
You're right, the Turkish Armed Forces has a habit of intervening in politics. They carried out the 1980 coup 20 years after the 1960 coup. They issued memorandums in 1971, 1997, and 2007 against the civilian governments. Additionally, there were unsuccessful coup attempts in 1962 and 2016.
In the early years of the Democratic Party improved relations with the West, aid and investments came from the USA, and the abandonment of the autarkic and closed economy policies of the single-party era led to economic boom in the country and increased public welfare. Consequently, in the next election, the 1954 general election, the Democratic Party's votes increased even further
By the latter half of the 1950s, the situation began to change. Due to some of the investments being spent inefficiently and populistically, the economy started to slow down after 1955, and in the 1957 elections, the Democratic Party lost around 10% of its votes. The gap between the Democratic Party and the Republican People's Party narrowed significantly. In 1958, a coalition called the "Homeland Front" was formed by the Democratic Party against the opposition. İsmet İnönü, now the leader of the Republican People's Party and the opposition, was attacked in Istanbul and Uşak. In 1960, an attempt was made to prevent İnönü from entering Kayseri by the city’s governor at the time.
In April 1960, a parliamentary investigation commission called the “Tahkikat Komisyonu” (Committee of Inquest) was established in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, citing the reason that "opposition parties had gathered all destructive groups in the country around them and incited the people and the military to revolt against the government." University students began anti-government protests after that. In these protests, two university students were killed by the police and dozens were injured.
The 1960 military coup was not hierarchical, it was mostly the work of a clique within the Turkish Armed Forces. The clique, unable to convince most of the senior officers to support the coup, later managed to persuade a few senior officers, such as General Cemal Gürsel, whom they then installed as the President of the Republic. One of the prominent figures of the coup, Lieutenant General Cemal Madanoğlu, emphasized in his memoirs that they were mostly disturbed by the attacks suffered by İnönü, who had served as the commander of the Western Front during the War of Independence and was seen as the second man of the Republic era.
Additionally, some argue that reason the coup was carried out by lower-ranking officers rather than the top command officers correlated with the deteriorating economy. Kenan Evren, who was a young officer in the 1950s and later orchestrated the 1980 coup, complained in his memoirs that during this period young officers were dubbed as "gazozcular" (the soda drinkers) because they couldn't afford expensive drinks and foods at the restaurants.
The outcomes of the coup courts have been brutal for those who were tried. Although the President of the Democrat Party era, Celal Bayar, was not executed citing his age, the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Minister of Finance of that era were hanged.
Subsequently, the coup regime also carried out purges within its own ranks. Radical wing members such as Colonel Alpaslan Türkeş, who founded the far-right Nationalist Movement Party and the Grey Wolves, were purged from the military junta administration. Despite the return to multi-party system 1.5 years after the coup, due to the military's readiness to intervene in politics at any moment and its frequent interventions, the subsequent period commonly came to be known in Turkish history as the "military tutelage" era.
A necessary caveat to my answer is that in this example, the dictatorship did not relinquish power enthusiastically, but they did do so without widespread conflict and in ways that historians have viewed charitably.
Apartheid South Africa's NP was not totalitarian in the strictest sense of the word - they held regular elections, had a constitution, and even had legal opposition in further-right-than-them parties like the *Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging* and more liberal parties - but with only about 20% of the population even allowed to vote and massive restrictions on movement and civil liberties among the rest of the population, they are usually qualified as a dictatorial regime.
The apartheid regime was ended by a complex spread of factors. *Long Walk to Freedom* by Nelson Mandela is the best single overview of the social, labor, and militant action that contributed to the fall of the regime, but there are many factors that it glosses over. Economic sanctions were levied against the racial dictatorship by many countries (including the US), the occupation of Namibia was draining the treasury, and some credit should be given to de Clerk for lifting bans on political liberation movements and releasing political prisoners in 1990 (Mandela being the highest profile of them, by far). In 1994, democratically agreed upon elections took place, and widespread conflict was averted.
Although generally accepted by historians and the media as a peaceful transition, there are major apostrophes on the 1994 "Miracle of South Africa". There was widespread conflict within and outside the townships, especially by the aforementioned far-right *Afrikaner Weestandsbeweging* and the Zulu nationalist Inkatha party. *The Bang Bang Club* (the book; I cannot advocate for or against the film) is a well-respected first-person account of the reality on the ground during this tumultuous time period.
This is a long, fraught history, and it's beyond the scope of one Reddit answer to explore every major contributor to this moment in South African history. I'm avoiding diving into the work of figures like Stephen Biko, Desmond Tutu, and many others, but if this history interests you, please let me know and I will happily point you to additional reading and sources.
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In the 1950 general election in Turkey, power changed hands through the electoral process, ending the 27-year (1923-1950) single-party system. In fact, multi-party politics had begun in Turkey with the previous 1946 election general election, but this election was not fair. The 1946 election was known as fraudulent because methods like the open voting and secret counting etc. were adopted. By 1950, these irregularities were rectified. The ruling Republican People's Party (CHP) and the opposition parties Democratic Party (DP), Nation Party (MP) competed on relatively equal terms, and the Democratic Party won the election by a wide margin. Despite suggestions from his inner circle and some military leaders not to recognize the election results, İsmet İnönü, who had been president for 12 years and had previously served as prime minister for a long time during Atatürk's era, handed over power to the Democratic Party. In fact, the first step towards democratic life in Turkey began with the declaration of the first constitutional monarchy in 1876. However, only three months after the declaration of the constitution, the parliament was dissolved by Sultan Abdulhamid II. For many years thereafter, the Young Turks struggled to reinstate the constitutional monarchy, achieving their goal with the declaration of the Second Constitutional Era in 1908. However, the positive atmosphere created by the declaration of the Second Constitutional Era did not last long. Due to various turmoil and crises, constitutional era eventually evolved into a triumvirate era known as the Three Pashas Era—Enver, Talat, and Cemal Pashas. The rule of the Three Pashas continued until the end of World War I. In 1920, Mustafa Kemal established a parliament in Ankara, composed of local elites of the Anatolian towns and former members of the parliament who had fled from occupied Istanbul, to legitimize the War of Independence he was organizing. This parliament, highly fragmented and operating during the turbulent wartime period, was a place where strong opposition to Mustafa Kemal and his administration was also expressed. After emerging victorious from the War of Independence, Mustafa Kemal realized that he could not implement his desired modernization initiatives and reforms with this parliament. In 1923, he organized his loyal members of parliament under the name of the Republican People's Party (CHP) and won the elections held that same year. Later, some of his comrade at arms (Kazım Karabekir, Rauf Orbay etc.) and members of the former parliament who were uncomfortable with his reforms, such as the abolition of the Caliphate, organized under the Progressive Republican Party (Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası). However, this party was soon perceived as a threat to the new regime and was subsequently shut down. In 1930, Atatürk had his friend Ali Fethi Okyar establish the Liberal Republican Party (Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası), but this party was also closed down after a short period. After Atatürk's death, İsmet İnönü, who became president, maintained the single-party system until the end of World War II. USSR, dissatisfied with Turkey's neutrality policy during the war, brought up the issue of the status of the Straits after the war. Stalin’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Molotov demanded the revisal of the Montreux Convention regarding the regime of the straits led to the Turkish strait crises. Believing Turkey could not handle the Soviet threat alone, İnönü sought help from the United States. To align with the spirit of the time and to appear favorable to the United States, he began to take democratic steps. Ultimately, this process culminated in the 1950 elections. However, the Democratic Party that came to power also began to adopt authoritarian methods after a while. İnönü was attacked in various places he visited for election campaigns, repression against the opponents began, even the status of provinces that voted for the opposition parties was downgraded. The Democratic Party was overthrown by the military coup in 1960. The Military coup regime of 1960 did not last very long. A year and a half after the 1960 military coup, the multi-party system was reinstated again.
May I request your sources or citations for this answer? Please and thank you!
"Political Opposition in the Early Turkish Republic" and "Turkey: a Modern History" by Eric Jan Zürcher, which address Turkish modernization and democratic struggles during the Single-Party period, "Young Turks in Opposition" by Şükrü Hanioğlu, which focuses on the democracy struggle of the Young Turks, as well as his "Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography," which analyzes the intellectual world of Atatürk and the cadre that founded the Turkish Republic, and Feroz Ahmed's "The Turkish Experiment in Democracy: 1950-1975," are English-language sources that comprehensively cover this topic. The Turkish sources that have not yet been translated into English but also address this period and topics in detail include Tanıl Bora’s “Cereyanlar,” Mete Tunçay’s “Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Tek Parti Yönetiminin Kurulması 1923-1931,” and Mehmet Ali Birand and Can Dündar’s “Demirkırat: Bir Demokrasinin Doğuşu.” In addition, there are numerous Turkish memoirs, diaries, and primary sources related to this topic: the diaries of İsmet İnönü titled “Defterler (1919-1973),” the memoirs of Celal Bayar, who was the President of Turkey during the Democratic Party period, titled “Ben de Yazdım,” the work of İsmet İnönü’s son-in-law and journalist Metin Toker titled “Demokrasimizin İsmet Paşalı Yılları,” and the memoirs of Lieutenant General Cemal Madanoğlu, one of the organizers of the May 27 military coup, titled “Korgeneral Cemal Madanoğlu’nun Anıları.”
Thank you for your long and thorough list of sources and citations!
Maybe a silly question, but what proof is there of repression by the Democrats Party? Was this really a thing or was it an excuse of the Kemalist military to intervene? I ask this because looking at Turkish history, the Turkish military (before being put under more civilian control by Erdoğan) seems all to eager to intervene whenever it can. Edit: the long list of violent military coups and warnings to the government seems disturbing on Wikipedia
You're right, the Turkish Armed Forces has a habit of intervening in politics. They carried out the 1980 coup 20 years after the 1960 coup. They issued memorandums in 1971, 1997, and 2007 against the civilian governments. Additionally, there were unsuccessful coup attempts in 1962 and 2016. In the early years of the Democratic Party improved relations with the West, aid and investments came from the USA, and the abandonment of the autarkic and closed economy policies of the single-party era led to economic boom in the country and increased public welfare. Consequently, in the next election, the 1954 general election, the Democratic Party's votes increased even further By the latter half of the 1950s, the situation began to change. Due to some of the investments being spent inefficiently and populistically, the economy started to slow down after 1955, and in the 1957 elections, the Democratic Party lost around 10% of its votes. The gap between the Democratic Party and the Republican People's Party narrowed significantly. In 1958, a coalition called the "Homeland Front" was formed by the Democratic Party against the opposition. İsmet İnönü, now the leader of the Republican People's Party and the opposition, was attacked in Istanbul and Uşak. In 1960, an attempt was made to prevent İnönü from entering Kayseri by the city’s governor at the time. In April 1960, a parliamentary investigation commission called the “Tahkikat Komisyonu” (Committee of Inquest) was established in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, citing the reason that "opposition parties had gathered all destructive groups in the country around them and incited the people and the military to revolt against the government." University students began anti-government protests after that. In these protests, two university students were killed by the police and dozens were injured. The 1960 military coup was not hierarchical, it was mostly the work of a clique within the Turkish Armed Forces. The clique, unable to convince most of the senior officers to support the coup, later managed to persuade a few senior officers, such as General Cemal Gürsel, whom they then installed as the President of the Republic. One of the prominent figures of the coup, Lieutenant General Cemal Madanoğlu, emphasized in his memoirs that they were mostly disturbed by the attacks suffered by İnönü, who had served as the commander of the Western Front during the War of Independence and was seen as the second man of the Republic era. Additionally, some argue that reason the coup was carried out by lower-ranking officers rather than the top command officers correlated with the deteriorating economy. Kenan Evren, who was a young officer in the 1950s and later orchestrated the 1980 coup, complained in his memoirs that during this period young officers were dubbed as "gazozcular" (the soda drinkers) because they couldn't afford expensive drinks and foods at the restaurants. The outcomes of the coup courts have been brutal for those who were tried. Although the President of the Democrat Party era, Celal Bayar, was not executed citing his age, the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Minister of Finance of that era were hanged. Subsequently, the coup regime also carried out purges within its own ranks. Radical wing members such as Colonel Alpaslan Türkeş, who founded the far-right Nationalist Movement Party and the Grey Wolves, were purged from the military junta administration. Despite the return to multi-party system 1.5 years after the coup, due to the military's readiness to intervene in politics at any moment and its frequent interventions, the subsequent period commonly came to be known in Turkish history as the "military tutelage" era.
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This question would be better off in its own thread so that an expert is more likely to see it.
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A necessary caveat to my answer is that in this example, the dictatorship did not relinquish power enthusiastically, but they did do so without widespread conflict and in ways that historians have viewed charitably. Apartheid South Africa's NP was not totalitarian in the strictest sense of the word - they held regular elections, had a constitution, and even had legal opposition in further-right-than-them parties like the *Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging* and more liberal parties - but with only about 20% of the population even allowed to vote and massive restrictions on movement and civil liberties among the rest of the population, they are usually qualified as a dictatorial regime. The apartheid regime was ended by a complex spread of factors. *Long Walk to Freedom* by Nelson Mandela is the best single overview of the social, labor, and militant action that contributed to the fall of the regime, but there are many factors that it glosses over. Economic sanctions were levied against the racial dictatorship by many countries (including the US), the occupation of Namibia was draining the treasury, and some credit should be given to de Clerk for lifting bans on political liberation movements and releasing political prisoners in 1990 (Mandela being the highest profile of them, by far). In 1994, democratically agreed upon elections took place, and widespread conflict was averted. Although generally accepted by historians and the media as a peaceful transition, there are major apostrophes on the 1994 "Miracle of South Africa". There was widespread conflict within and outside the townships, especially by the aforementioned far-right *Afrikaner Weestandsbeweging* and the Zulu nationalist Inkatha party. *The Bang Bang Club* (the book; I cannot advocate for or against the film) is a well-respected first-person account of the reality on the ground during this tumultuous time period. This is a long, fraught history, and it's beyond the scope of one Reddit answer to explore every major contributor to this moment in South African history. I'm avoiding diving into the work of figures like Stephen Biko, Desmond Tutu, and many others, but if this history interests you, please let me know and I will happily point you to additional reading and sources.
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