History of the Turkish Republic

The Turkish Republic was born from the disastrous World War I defeat of the Ottoman Empire.

Ottoman war hero Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later called Atatürk) fled Istanbul to Anatolia in 1919, organized the remnants of the Ottoman army into an effective fighting force, and rallied the people to the nationalist cause.

By 1923 the nationalist government had driven out the invading armies, abolished the Ottoman Empire, promulgated a republican constitution, and established Turkey's new capital in Ankara.

The new government carried out drastic reforms in order to bring medieval Ottoman society into the 20th century. Polygamy was abolished, women were granted equal status with men before the law (which included the right to vote), government and religion were separated, the Arabic alphabet was replaced with the Latin alphabet for written Turkish. Fez and veil were outlawed, and European dress put in their place.

Atatürk took great pains to establish democratic institutions, but it was difficult to teach democracy to a people who had been ruled by an absolute monarch for 600 years. Until Atatürk's death in 1938, Turkey was a one-party state under Atatürk's Republican People's Party (RPP) with one undisputed leader.

Upon the founder's death, his place at the head of the party and the nation was taken by his comrade-in-arms General Ismet Inönü, another hero of the War of Independence. Following Atatürk's advice, Inönü preserved Turkey's precarious neutrality during World War II, figuring that the war could only end in disaster for Turkey.

Between 1946 and 1950 multi-party elections were held, and Inönü's RPP ceded power to the Democrat Party (DP) and its charismatic Peron-style leader, Adnan Menderes. Like Peron, by 1960 Menderes had the government entirely in his control and democracy was threatened.

The Turkish armed forces, charged by Atatürk with the task of protecting and preserving Turkish democracy, stepped in, ousted Menderes and put the country under martial law. Menderes and other top government officials were tried and convicted of subverting Turkish democracy. Many were sentenced to death, but all death sentences were commuted except that of Menderes, who was hanged.

The army withdrew, elections were held in 1961, and the Democratic Party, successor to Menderes's Democrat Party, won. By 1970 the party had subverted democratic norms again to the point where the army again stepped in, ousted the leadership, and held new elections.

The Cyprus crisis and the oil crisis of the 1970s hit Turkey particularly hard. With the economy a shambles and its communist neighbors sending in agents provocateurs, Turkish society destabilized into near civil war. Leftist and rightist factions carried out several dozen murders daily. By 1980 most Turks were ready for the army to step in, which it did on September 12. By 1983 a new constitution was in place, elections were held, and the army went back to barracks.

The new Motherland Party (MP), headed by a World Bank economist named Turgut Özal, won the elections, defeating the parties favored by the military caretakers. Özal liberalized Turkey's restrictive economic policies, leading to a boom in commerce, industry and tourism.

Ironically, Kurdish separatist terrorism became a big problem during Özal's time as prime minister and pesident--Özal was proud that he had both Turkish and Kurdish ancestors. Tens of thousands of Turks, Kurds, soldiers, terrorists and innocents died during two decades of conflict instigated by the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party).

Özal died unexpectedly in 1993, leaving a power vacuum in Turkish politics. Unstable coalition governments boiled and burbled until the divisive elections of December 1995 when the Islamist Welfare Party came to power with a mere 21% of the vote. The Islamists soon pushed their religious agenda too hard, and the army told them to leave in the interests of secular government.

More unstable coalitions ruled until the moderately Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a parliamentary majority in 2002. Former Istanbul mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan, became prime minister, and in 2007 his close ally Abdullah Gül became president, solidifying the AKP's hold on power.

Although unapologetically Islamist in their personal lives and in some aspects of their political philosophy, the AKP leaders frequently express their support for Turkey's traditional secular state and the separation of state and religion.

For an insightful summary of Turkey's foreign and domestic policies in recent decades, read Scott Ritter's essay "The Not-So-Sick Man of Europe Does Matter."

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Kemal Atatürk

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Above, the first home of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (parliament) in Ankara.
Below, honor guard at Anitkabir, the Mausoleum of Atatürk.