The Republic of Turkey was created after the overthrow of Sultan Mehmed VI by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1922 by the new Republican Parliament in 1923. This new regime delivered the coup de grâce to the Ottoman state which had been practically wiped away from the world stage following the First World War.
Late Ottoman Era
The Ottoman Empire was, since its foundation in , ruled as an absolute monarchy. Between 1839 and 1876 the empire went through a period of reform.Cleveland, William L & Martin Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East: 4th Edition, Westview Press: 2009, p. 82. The Young Ottomans who were dissatisfied with these reforms worked together with Sultan Abdülhamid II to realize some form of constitutional arrangement in 1876. After a two year implementation of a constitutional monarchy, Sultan Abdülhamid II restored the absolute monarchy in 1878 by suspending the constitution and parliament.A History of the Modern Middle East. Cleveland and Buntin p.78
Two decades later a new reform movement under the name of the Young Turks conspired against Sultan Abdülhamid II in what was to be called the Young Turk Revolution. This forced the sultan to reintroduce the constitutional rule in 1908, leading to a rise of active participation of the military in politics. In 1909 they effectively removed the de facto power of the sultan. By 1913, the Committee of Union and Progress became the leading faction of the Young Turks and in 1913 seized power in a coup, converting the constitutional monarchy into a dictatorship controlled by the Three Pashas. In 1914 the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers as an ally of the German Empire and subsequently lost the war. The goal was to win territory in the East to compensate for the losses in the West in previous years during the Italo-Turkish War and the Balkan Wars. In 1918 the leaders of the Young Turks took full responsibility for the lost war and fled the country into exile leaving the country in chaos.
The Armistice of Mudros was signed, which granted the Allies, in a broad and vaguely worded clause, the right to further occupy Anatolia "in case of disorder". Within days French and British troops started occupying the remaining territory controlled by the Ottoman Empire. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and other army officers started a resistance movement. Shortly after the Greek occupation of Western Anatolia in 1919, Mustafa Kemal Pasha set foot in Samsun to start the Turkish War of Independence against the occupation and persecution of Muslims in Anatolia. He and the other army officers alongside him dominated the polity that finally established the Republic of Turkey out of what was left of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey was established based on the ideology found in the country's pre-Ottoman history and was also steered towards a secular political system to diminish the influence of religious groups such as the Ulema.
One-party period (1923–1945)
Atatürk era (1923–1938)
The history of modern Turkey begins with the foundation of the republic on 29 October 1923, with Atatürk as its first president. The government was formed from the Ankara-based revolutionary group, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his colleagues. The second constitution was ratified by the Grand National Assembly on 20 April 1924.
For about the next 10 years, the country saw a steady process of secular Westernization through Atatürk's reforms, which included the unification of education; the discontinuation of religious and other titles; the closure of Islamic courts and the replacement of Islamic canon law with a secular civil code modeled after Switzerland's and a penal code modeled after the Italian Penal Code; recognition of the equality between the sexes and the granting of full political rights to women on 5 December 1934; the language reform initiated by the newly founded Turkish Language Association; replacement of the Ottoman Turkish alphabet with the new Turkish alphabet derived from the Latin script; the dress law (the wearing of a fez, is outlawed); the law on family names; and many others.
Chronology of Major Kemalist Reforms:Webster, The Turkey of Atatürk: social process in the Turkish reformation 1 November 1922: Abolition of the office of the Ottoman Sultan. 29 October 1923: Proclamation of the Republic of Turkey. 3 March 1924: Abolition of the office of Caliphate held by the Ottoman Caliphate. 25 November 1925: Change of headgear and dress. 30 November 1925: Closure of religious convents and dervish lodges. 1 March 1926: Introduction of the new penal law. 4 October 1926: Introduction of the new civil code. 1 November 1928: Adoption of the new Turkish alphabet. 21 June 1934: Introduction of the law on family names. 26 November 1934: Abolition of titles and by-names. 5 December 1934: Full political rights, to vote and be elected, to women. 14 October 1935: Closure of the Masonic lodges."TURKISH BAN ON FREEMASONS. All Lodges To Be Abolished". Malaya Tribune, 14 October 1935, p. 5. The Government has decided to abolish all Masonic lodges in Turkey on the ground that Masonic principles are incompatible with nationalistic policy.Atatürk Döneminde Masonluk ve Masonlarla İlişkilere Dair Bazı Arşiv Belgeleri by Kemal Özcan 5 February 1937: The inclusion of the principle of secularism in the constitution.
The first party to be established in the newly formed republic was the Women's Party (Kadınlar Halk Fırkası).Zihnioğlu, Yaprak. Kadınsız İnkılap. Metis Yayınları, 2003. It was founded by Nezihe Muhiddin and several other women but was stopped from its activities, since during the time women were not yet legally allowed to engage in politics.Çakır, Serpil. Osmanlı Kadın Hareketi. Metis Yayınları, 1994. The actual passage to multi-party period was first attempted with the Liberal Republican Party by Ali Fethi Okyar. The Liberal Republican Party was dissolved on 17 November 1930 and no further attempt for a multi-party democracy was made until 1945. Turkey was admitted to the League of Nations in July 1932.
Development policy Infrastructure In 1927, Atatürk ordered the integration of road construction goals into development plans. Prior to this, the road network had consisted of 13,885 km of ruined surface roads, 4,450 km of stabilized roads, and 94 bridges. In 1935, a new entity was established under the government called Şose ve Köprüler Reisliği (Headship of Roads and Bridges) which would drive the development of new roads after World War II.
Foreign policy Historically, Turkey continued the Foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire to balance regional and global powers off against one another, forming alliances that best protected the interests of the incumbent regime.William Hale, Turkish foreign policy since 1774 (Routledge, 2012). The Soviet Union played a major role in supplying weapons to and financing Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's faction during the Turkish War of Independence but Turkey followed a course of relative international isolation during the period of Atatürk's Reforms in 1920s and 1930s. International conferences gave Turkey full control of the strategic straits linking the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, through the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 and the Montreux Convention of 1936.J.M. Hakov, "The Great States, Turkey and Issue Concerning the New Regime of the Straits during the First Years of World War Two." Archiv Orientální 54 (1986): 47-60.
Post-Atatürk era (1938–1945)
Atatürk's successor after his death on 10 November 1938 was İsmet İnönü. İnönü started his term in office as a respected figure of the Independence War. However, because internal fights between power groups and external events like World War II caused a lack of goods in the country, he lost some of his popularity and support.
In the late 1930s Nazi Germany made a major effort to promote anti-Soviet propaganda in Turkey and exerted economic pressure. Britain and France, eager to outmaneuver Germany, negotiated a tripartite treaty in 1939. They gave Turkey a line of credit to purchase war materials from the West and a loan to facilitate the purchase of commodities.Yücel Güçlü, "Turco-British relations on the eve of the Second World War." Middle Eastern Studies 39.4 (2003): 159-205.
Afraid of threats from Germany and Russia, Turkey maintained neutrality.Onur Isci, "The Massigli Affair and its Context: Turkish Foreign Policy after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact." Journal of Contemporary History (2019): DOI: 10.1177/0022009419833443. online Ambassadors from the Axis powers and Allies intermingled in Ankara.For example, see this 1942 Life magazine photograph İnönü signed a non-aggression treaty with Nazi Germany on 18 June 1941, 4 days before the Axis powers invaded the Soviet Union. Nationalist magazines Bozkurt and Çınaraltı called for the declaration of war against the Soviet Union and Greece. In July 1942, Bozkurt published a map of Greater Turkey, which included Soviet controlled Caucasus and central Asian republics. In the summer of 1942, Turkish high command considered war with the Soviet Union almost unavoidable. An operation was planned, with Baku being the initial target.
Turkey traded with both sides and purchased arms from both sides. The Allies tried to stop German purchases of chrome (used in making better steel). Inflation was high as prices doubled.Erik J. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History (3rd ed. 2004) pp 203-5A. C. Edwards, "The Impact of the War on Turkey," International Affairs (1946) 22#3 pp. 389-400 in JSTOR It was clear by 1944 that Germany would be defeated and the chrome sales to Germany stopped.Gül İnanç, "The politics of 'active neutrality'on the eve of a new world order: The case of Turkish chrome sales during the Second World War." Middle Eastern Studies 42.6 (2006): 907-915.S. Deringil, Turkish Foreign Policy During the Second World War: An 'Active' Neutrality (Cambridge 1989).N. Tamkin, Britain, Turkey and the Soviet Union, 1940–1945 (London 2009).
By August 1944, the Axis was clearly losing the war and Turkey broke off relations. Only in February 1945, Turkey declared war on Germany and Japan, a symbolic move that allowed Turkey to join the future United Nations.
On 24 October 1945 Turkey signed the United Nations Charter as one of the fifty-one original members.
Multi-party transition (1945) In 1945, the first opposition party in the multi-party system in Turkey, the National Development Party, was established by industrialist Nuri Demirağ. In 1946, İnönü's government organized multi-party elections, which were won by his party. He remained as the president of the country until 1950. He is still remembered as one of the key figures of Turkey.
Multi-party period (1945–present)
Early period (1945–1987)
Although the multi-party period began in 1945, the election of the Democratic Party government in May 1950 marked the first victory by a non-CHP party.
The government of Adnan Menderes (1950–1960) proved very popular at first, relaxing the restrictions on Islam and presiding over a booming economy. In the latter half of the 1950s, however, the economy began to fail and the government introduced censorship laws limiting dissent. The government became plagued by high inflation and a massive debt.
Military coups On 27 May 1960, General Cemal Gürsel led a military coup d'état, removing President Celal Bayar and Prime Minister Menderes, the second of whom was executed. The system returned to civilian control in October 1961. A fractured political system emerged in the wake of the 1960 coup, producing a series of unstable government coalitions in parliament alternating between the Justice Party of Süleyman Demirel on the right and the Republican People's Party of İsmet İnönü and Bülent Ecevit on the left.
The army issued a memorandum warning the civilian government in 1971, leading to another coup which resulted in the fall of the Demirel government and the establishment of interim governments.