The Rule of the Democratic
Party, 1950-60
The new assembly and the new cabinet
There is widespread consensus among historians that the Democratic
Party's landslide election victory in May 1950 is a watershed in modern
Turkish political history.There was more competition for the post of
prime minister, but the post went to Adnan Menderes, who was backed
by Bayar because of his popular appeal.Over the years, therefore, state and party tended to coalesce again, especially at the higher levels, but the difference from
the Kemalist era was that the party dominated the bureaucracy, not the
other way around.The most striking difference from the
RPP was the virtual absence of representatives with a bureaucratic and/
or military background.It was clear that a significantly different section
of Turkey's elite had come to power.1
One of the first things the new assembly did was to elect Celal Bayar
president of the republic.There was very little debate about his candidature:
he was the founder of the new party, he had a record as a
statesman going back to the days of Ataturk and he was widely
regarded as a moderate.Under the RPP the state apparatus and the party machine had been
merged (even officially) to the extent that one could say that the party
was just one of the instruments through which the state controlled and
steered society. The character both of the new assembly, in
which the DP held an overwhelming majority (408 seats against the
RPP's 69), and of the new government was very different from the old.When one looks at the social characteristics of the DP representatives,
one is struck by a number of differences from those of the
Kemalist period.The DP representatives were on average younger,
more often had local roots in their constituencies, were less likely to
have had a university education, and far more likely to have a background
in commerce or in law.