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May 1950 - May 1960Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Turkey's First Free Election Ends One-Party Rule

The Democrat Party wins in a landslide, then a decade later loses power to the army

On the timeline · around May 1950 - May 1960 · The Republic of TurkeyLate Ottoman and WarThe Republic of TurkeyTurkey's First Free Election Ends One-Party Rule193019401950196019701980

Quick facts

1950 election turnout
c. 88 percent of 8.5 million voters
Winning party
Democrat Party (Bayar, Menderes)
First military coup
27 May 1960
Outcome for Menderes
Convicted at Yassiada trials, executed

What happened

In the May 1950 general election, about 88 percent of Turkey's roughly 8.5 million eligible voters went to the polls in what the Library of Congress's Turkey country study calls the country's first genuinely free and unfettered democratic election, returning a large majority for the opposition Democrat Party under Adnan Menderes and Celal Bayar and ending the Republican People's Party's uninterrupted rule since the republic's founding. Menderes governed for a decade, but on 27 May 1960, army units under General Cemal Gursel seized government buildings and communications centers and arrested President Bayar, Menderes, and most Democrat Party representatives in the Grand National Assembly, justifying the coup by accusing the government of departing from Kemalist principles. Menderes and two former cabinet ministers were later convicted at the Yassiada trials and executed.

Why it matters

The 1950 election proved Kemalist Turkey could transfer power peacefully through a genuine vote rather than only through single-party continuity, but the 1960 coup that followed a decade later established a pattern, the military intervening to remove elected governments it judged had strayed from Kemalist secular and nationalist principles, that would recur in 1971, 1980, and again in a failed 2016 attempt.

How we know

The 1950 election results and the 1960 coup are documented in the Library of Congress's Turkey country study, drawing on official Turkish electoral records and contemporary accounts of the military intervention and the subsequent Yassiada trials of Menderes and his government.

Sources

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Part of a timelineHistory of Turkey27 events · A land bridge fought over by Hittites, Greeks, Romans, and Turks, and the republic that Mustafa Kemal built on its ashes in a single decadeView all →