TODAY I propose to present an account of Adnan Menderes, prime minister of Turkey (1950-1960), whom the Turkish generals, aided by his other opponents, overthrew, put through a sham trial, and executed, much to their nation’s subsequent regret.

Ali Adnan Ertakin Menderes (1899-1960), a college graduate with a law degree from Ankara University, joined the ruling Republican People’s Party (RPP) and was elected a deputy to the National Assembly in 1931.

Having a mind of his own, he quarrelled with party leaders and was expelled. Working in collaboration with Celal Bayar, he formed the Democratic Party in June 1946, which emerged as the first officially allowed opposition party in the country. He was elected a deputy on its “ticket” and soon became the highest-ranking functionary in it, next only to Bayar.

The party won a large majority in the elections of 1950 and Menderes became prime minister. He brought an interesting mix of innovative and conservative orientations to office. He was unambiguously pro-West in foreign affairs. Turkish soldiers fought alongside the Americans in Korea. Turkey became a full member of Nato in 1952, and in 1955 it collaborated with the United States in establishing an anti-communist alliance, initially called the Baghdad Pact and later the Central Treaty Organisation (Cento), which also included Iran and Pakistan. The Turkish government allowed the setting up of American military bases on its territory to keep an eye on military movements across the border in the Soviet Union.

Prime Minister Menderes had a secret meeting with David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli prime minister, on August 29, 1958. They met to forge a partnership between their two countries to encourage tourism, and establish military cooperation, including joint defence planning, sharing of intelligence, military exercises, and Israeli transfer of weapons and sensitive technology to Turkey.

Certain developments that brought Israel and Turkey together may be mentioned. Iraq voted against Turkey on the Cyprus issue at the United Nations in December 1957. Egypt and Syria formed a union (United Arab Republic) in February 1958, which both Israel and Turkey perceived as a threat to their security. A military coup overthrew the monarchy in Iraq in July 1958, and the new regime repudiated the Baghdad Pact, suggesting a further hardening of the Arab nationalists’ anti-western attitudes.

In domestic policy, Menderes was perceived as a progressive, committed to poverty alleviation. He sold at low prices, or gave away, his own inherited lands to small peasants and tenants. Urbanisation increased as he encouraged industrialisation, and in the economic domain generally he encouraged private enterprise. In order to make life easier for the consumer, and to help industrialisation, he allowed unrestricted imports of goods and machinery without regard to his government’s foreign exchange reserves, creating a huge balance of payments deficit.

Pro-western in foreign policy, he did not wish to further the kind of westernisation that Ataturk had imposed upon the nation’s domestic culture. He was tolerant of traditional lifestyles, including the dress for men and women. He was supportive of traditional Islamic forms and practices. He contested the election in 1950 on the single issue of legalising the Arabic wording of the azaan (call to prayer), which had been banned by Ataturk.

Menderes was sympathetic towards Islamic groups and funded some of them. It may be interesting to note, however, that they did not lift a finger to help him when he got into trouble with the army (of which more later), on the ground that he had not been Islamic enough.

Menderes was a good public speaker, a man of the people and willing to rub shoulders with them. His rise in politics had been rapid, and that made him think highly of himself. But it also made him intolerant of criticism. He held the press in contempt, imposed censorship, and jailed quite a few journalists. He sought to control political expression on university campuses. These policies turned journalists, intellectuals and students against him. His sympathy for traditional Islam caused the military to suspect that he intended to undo the venerated Ataturk’s legacy.

Another development for which he was later blamed should be mentioned. It was alleged that, with his knowledge and concurrence, hundreds of his party activists descended upon Istanbul on September 6, 1955, as a frenzied mob, to harass the Greek minority of 80,000 in the city. They pillaged and plundered Greek (and some Jewish and Armenian) establishments, including stores, factories, banks, hotels, schools, churches, and private homes. A few Greek men were forcibly circumcised, 15 were killed, and more than 30 were injured.

I have no authentic explanation of why this gross communal violence was allowed to happen. Assuming that Menderes did have something to do with it (and the prosecution during his trial five years later alleged that he did), one of the following considerations might have been at work. It could have been done to further placate the “Islamists,” and the more conservative Turkish Muslims, with an eye to the elections that were to be held less than two years down the road.

Second, it may have been an expression of popular resentment against the Greek oppression of the Turkish population in Cyprus. Third, Greeks may have been driven out of business to make room for the emerging Turkish businessmen. Lastly, rumour had been spread a few days earlier that some Greeks had tried to burn down the home in Salonica where Mustafa Kemal was born.

Tension between the ruling party and its opponents heightened during 1959. Its members in the National Assembly declared on August 7 that the RPP and other opposition groups were instigating the army and the people to rebel against the government. They called upon the speaker to appoint a commission to investigate their conduct. As soon as this commission began its work, students in Ankara and Istanbul launched protest demonstrations. Security agencies clashed with them at the Istanbul University campus as they tried to prevent the students from holding meetings.

Disturbances soon spread beyond the campus. The government imposed a state of emergency in Istanbul and Ankara but incidents of violence continued. In May of the following year (1960) Celal Bayar and Adnan Menderes were manhandled as they got trapped in a scuffle between pro-government and anti-government student groups.

Opposition to Menderes’s government had been developing within the army also. Its men collaborated with the students in the demonstrations in April 1960. On May 21, cadets at the air force academy went out on a protest march. A group of officers formed a National Solidarity Committee headed by General Cemal Gursel. On May 26-27, they took control of strategic points in Istanbul and Ankara, arrested Menderes, Bayar, and many of their associates, and seized the government.

A committee of officers (consisting of five generals, eight colonels, seven lieutenant colonels, 10 majors and eight captains) functioned as the ruling authority. It established a High Court of Justice to try 502 persons, including Menderes and Bayar. The trial began on October 14, 1960 and lasted 11 months. Menderes was charged with violation of the constitutions and six other offences. Proceedings were perfunctory, and he did not get an adequate opportunity to answer the charges. He and 14 others were sentenced to death. He was hanged on September 17, 1961.

Why this military coup? Menderes had been clearly pro-western in his foreign policy, and he went out of his way to negotiate a partnership with Israel that would work to the Turkish military’s advantage. It seems that the officers saw close ties with the West as something to be taken for granted, and looking beyond that fact they found other reasons for dissatisfaction. They referred to the country’s worsening economic situation, recent incidents of violence, the “crisis in our democracy,” and said they had intervened to prevent fighting between brothers.

But I think they also had other things in mind. First, it may be recalled that during Ataturk’s rule both the military and the civil bureaucracy had a larger role in government than did the politicians. Both groups had formal representation in the National Assembly through reserved seats for a time. During the 10 years of Menderes’s rule politicians came to have primacy. Menderes did not regret the officers’ loss of relative prestige. In fact, he once threatened to bring in a conscripted army to replace the volunteer professionals. This threat infuriated the officers. They resented not only the decline in their social status but also the fact — as they perceived it — that they were so poorly paid that they could not afford to buy a drink other than “Gazoz” (a cheap soda).

The higher officers were worried on another score as well. They had regarded themselves as guardians of Ataturk’s legacy that emphasised secularism, modernisation and westernisation of the Turkish society. In their perception, Menderes’s general stance and specific policies worked to undermine that legacy. They saw him giving the state and government a religious (Islamic) orientation and they did not like it.

The Turkish military has wanted the role of an overseer and guardian of good order in government and society. The coup in May 1960 was the first in post-Ottoman Turkey to be followed by several more (1971, 1980 and 1987). The generals seemed to be itching for another intervention in the spring of 2007. A statement issued by a group of retired generals cautioned the current ruling party (Justice and Development Party) against its religious biases. Thousands of secularists have been demonstrating in Turkish cities to express the same concern.

In retrospect many Turks are regretful that Menderes was tried and hanged. He is remembered with a certain amount of fondness, for he was the first opposition politician to have formed a government, befriended the poor, and instituted reforms. He was posthumously pardoned on September 17, 1990, his 29th death anniversary, and his remains were moved to a mausoleum in Istanbul. A few years ago, leaders of several opposition political parties (Democratic True Path, and Rebirth) assembled at his grave to pay homage. A university and an airport are named after him.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US.
E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net

GEN Pervez Musharraf inaugurated his regime on the high note of curbing religious extremism and purging the administration of corruption. His two resolves soon translated into slogans, now clichés, of “enlightened moderation” and “good governance”. How both are in tatters today is a question which lends itself to a quick, albeit incomplete, answer.

On assuming power, Musharraf instantly chose Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain as his political adviser and Tariq Aziz as an expert on administration. Chaudhry Shujaat, though himself not an extremist, is known to give comfort to radical elements. They, too, look to him for sympathy and understanding when hunted down.

Contempt for the law of the land and defiance of state authority by the Lal Masjid clerics dragged on for six months to end in horrendous tragedy only because Chaudhry Shujaat was the chief conciliator. Later, he himself admitted that it was the darkest moment of his political career spanning half a century when the last-minute agreement that he and some ulema had hammered out (permitting Rashid Ghazi and his close collaborators to escape) was not approved by the authorities that be.

It is also well known that it was Shujaat who was chiefly instrumental in persuading the religious parties to agree to the Seventeenth Amendment which saw Musharraf entrench himself in power, but that, at the same time, irretrievably drove the liberal and nationalist elements into the opposition camp. By his own repeated admission, Chaudhry Shujaat considers himself a “soul-mate” of the religious parties. His political objectives, therefore, could hardly be any different.

Chaudhry Shujaat’s worldly political aim which was to keep his arch rival Nawaz Sharif on the run coincided with his spiritual closeness to the religious parties. That he loathes the PPP is also well known. Now that the Jamaat-i-Islami’s hostility towards Musharraf matches that of Nawaz Sharif’s for him, the choice for Musharraf of an electoral ally, so critical for him at this stage, is restricted to Benazir Bhutto’s PPP and Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s JUI. Both, as the London conference showed, are wavering on the brink. Left to Chaudhry Shujaat, his choice, quite predictably, would be the latter and, equally predictably, fatal for Musharraf’s electoral prospects and his enlightened moderation.

The popular upsurge at home and growing world opinion have made it all but impossible for Musharraf either to get himself elected by the present assemblies or to rig the forthcoming elections or to prolong his rule by proclaiming an emergency. Even the prime minister may not feel compelled to advise him to do so. Fair and free general elections before the end of the year thus appear a certainty.

The rump Q League and defectors from other parties, even if Fazlur Rahman’s JUI were to join them, cannot hope to win seats in numbers enough to elect Musharraf as president for another five years. He now has the time and opportunity to choose partners who would elect him of their own free will and not under pressure, who would reject extremism and strive for a tolerant and liberal order. In choosing his partners, he went wrong at the beginning. He shouldn’t towards the end. It would exacerbate terror and add to the woes of the people.

Shedding presidential powers and conceding autonomy to the provinces, both in large measure, should make this switch possible, providing doubts do not linger that the aim is to isolate the extremists and their patrons and not to summon their support once again if Musharraf’s survival in power is threatened.

In such a realignment of political forces, Musharraf’s implacable foes — Nawaz Sharif and the Baloch sardars — may also choose to go along with the liberals rather than with the orthodox clerics. Their moderate colleagues will surely exert pressure in that direction. Raja Zafarul Haq and Shahbaz Sharif, both front-ranking leaders of the Nawaz League, offer such an example. Raja Sahib was Ziaul Haq’s opening batsman and still exhibits that trait. Shahbaz, too, was inducted in public life by Zia but as Punjab’s chief minister he was seen to have disowned his creed.

Suspended between the two, their common leader Nawaz Sharif will have to make his choice observing the cross currents of public opinion. In any case, after years of stumbling from one military rule to another and horse-trading in between, it is time that a shared outlook on politics and economy, rather than the greed for power, became the basis of Pakistan’s politics. Judged on the basis of this criterion, Raja Zafarul Haq would appear much closer to Chaudhry Shujaat than to Shahbaz Sharif.

On Gen Musharraf’s unexpected (maybe also unplanned) incursion into politics, Chaudhry Shujaat became his principal ally only because the two had a common friend and college-day patron in Tariq Aziz. The latter is said to possess many qualities of a gentleman but, admittedly, he is no expert on administration. Indeed, he is known as a shirker. He was always in search of a job where he had little to do, quite contrary to the instinct of most of his colleagues in income tax service who crave for posts which bring them an extensive and rich clientele.

One can only guess that it was this laid-back attitude to life or lack of interest in work that made Gen Musharraf call upon a retired general, Tanvir Naqvi, and later a raw politician, Daniyal Aziz, to give shape to his hazy, weird and vindictive ideas on administration. Both proved holier than the Pope though neither had a day’s experience in administration.

At a time when crime, chaos, bombings and gang warfare are gaining ascendancy, it is not known whose duty it is to enforce law and maintain public order and who is to be held accountable for breaches which are violent and frequent. Lal Masjid at one end and Waziristan at the other with Karachi in between point towards one irresistible conclusion that all of regime’s reforms — administrative, police, democratic and even those pertaining to the madressahs — have wreaked havoc.Realisation of this is dawning hesitantly, and in bits. In dealing with terror in the border regions, what is particularly being missed is the role of the political agent as the deputy commissioner is called in the tribal agencies.

Here is what a chronicler had to say about George Roos-Keppel, political agent of Khyber: “He could make or end a war by his own decision.” (The political agent of today’s Khyber watches helplessly as rival Islamic lashkars battle endlessly). About Arthur Parson: “Nothing pleased him more than moving fast over the hills talking to the Pathans and finding out what they thought and wanted.” And then about our own Iskandar Mirza: “He enjoyed the Frontier and the Frontier game the same way as the Pathan — getting the better of a man by a cunning trick or misleading him into some mistake that would turn the laugh on him.” Most political agents after independence came in the same mould till Musharraf heaped ridicule on them as “kings” who did nothing.

Putting public interest ahead of personal ego, Musharraf would do well to reinstate the system of administration which he calls “colonial legacy” but that to Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, is a “prized inheritance from a great enterprise.” A commission of experts and elected men may then be appointed to determine who is right.