UC San Diego

Turkey’s Democrat Party (Demokrat Parti) dominated politics in the country from its election in 1950 until its removal by a military coup in 1960. During this decade, Turkey was integrated into the economic and security institutions of the American-led Cold War order. At the same time, domestic politics in Turkey became more contentious, polarizing society along partisan lines. I argue that this polarization was a result of Democrat Party leaders’ decision to restrict institutions like the press, opposition, and internal party dissent in order to buy themselves the time necessary to weather politically unfavorable economic conditions.

This dissertation looks at the materials produced by members of the Democrat Party including speeches, newspaper columns, court records, and memoirs in order to understand how party elites justified their actions to the public, how they shifted over time from criticizing single-party rule to attempting re-establish it. I argue that two factors are essential in understanding this return to authoritarian methods of governance. The first concerns the particular individuals overseeing the process of democratization during the 1950s. The second is the Cold War order in which that democratization took place. Turkey’s transition to democracy (starting around 1945) was managed by the same people who had shaped its previous single-party system (1923-45)—this included the founders of the Democrat Party, all formerly influential figures in the single-party regime. This continuity ensured that, once in power, recourse to authoritarian solutions was never wholly unthinkable for DP leaders. Whether authoritarian methods were deemed necessary or practicable, however, depended on the changing political and economic conditions of the American-led Cold War order. As the decade progressed, this order became more authoritarian as regimes in countries ranging from France to Pakistan to Turkey took steps to constrain and de-democratize the political process.