The Rehabilitation of Adnan Menderes

85 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XXXVI, No.1, Fall 2012 The Rehabilitation of Adnan Menderes Peter Brampton Koelle* Introduction This article consists of an examination of the confluence of interests that led to the posthumous rehabilitation of Adnan Menderes, Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey from 1950 to 1960. Menderes was overthrown in the coup d’état of 27 May, 1960. He was tried on Yassıada Island1 along with top officials from his government in a trial that lasted eleven months consisting of 872 sessions in which 1086 witnesses gave testimony.2 The trial, which began with 400 prisoners, served as a firm indictment of the Menderes years and Democrat Party (DP: Demokrat Partisi) rule and took on the characteristics of a show trial.3 The court found Menderes guilty of all but one of the *Peter Brampton Koelle earned his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He is an independent scholar who has held positions at Widener University, the University of Pennsylvania, Universite de Bordeaux III, Bryn Mawr College, Widener University, Swarthmore Academy. This article was first published in the Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XXXV, No.2 Winter 2012. However after its publication, the author called our attention to the fact that several mistakes have appeared in the published draft. We agreed with the author and regret the appearance of these errors. In the interest of the article’s integrity and accuracy we decided to republish it. 1 Yassıada and the later mentioned İmralı are islands in the Sea of Mamara visible from the shore of Istanbul. Yassıada became a symbol as a place of reckoning for those deemed to be reactionaries as seen in Adalet Ağaoğlu’s novel Bir Düğün Gecesi (A Wedding Party), which first appeared in 1979, when Tezel Dereli rails at her brother İlhan for his rightist political views, “We’re going to send you too to Yassıada!” Adalet Ağaoğlu, Bir Düğün Gecesi (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1984): 56. With the exception of Istanbul and Izmir, in this article, Turkish spelling is used for all toponyms in Turkey. 2 Yeliz Kızılarslan, “27 Mayıs Darbesi Kronolijisi ve Yassıada Duru maları,” Obianet, BIA Haber Merkezi, 27 May, 2008, and Walter W. Weiker, The Turkish Revolution 1960-1961 (Washington: Brookings Institute, 1963): 2-47. 3 Andrew Mango, The Turks Today (Woodstock: Overlook Press, 2004): 53-54, and Hugh Pope and Nicole Pope, Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey (Woodstock: Overlook Press, 1997): 97-98. sixteen charges brought against him. Amongst the charges were embezzlement; violations of the constitution by the abuse of power; complicity in the officially organized pogrom against the Greek community of Istanbul on 6-7 September of 1955 that in which the Armenian and Jewish communities suffered as well; and the establishment of a parliamentary organization to shut down the Republican People’s Party (RPP; Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi). The court sentenced Menderes to hang along with his Finance Minister Hasan Polatkan and Foreign Minister Fatim Rüştü Zorlu. In spite of pleas for clemency by standing heads of state John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Queen Elizabeth II, Charles DeGaulle, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, and Ayub Khan, the three men were hanged on İmralı Island in September of 1961. In part, the military wanted to make him life-size, after cult trappings had developed about him, especially after he had survived, seemingly miraculously, an airplane crash at London’s Gatwick Airport.4 As the trial was in progress, a new constitution was written and approved by the referendum of 9 July, 1961. This constitution was a repudiation of the past ten years of the rule of the Menderes governments. In 1963, the day of 27 May, the anniversary of the coup, was declared a national holiday: Freedom and Constitution Holiday (Hürriyet ve Anayasa Bayramı). Criticism of the 27 May coup was seen as tantamount to criticism of the constitutional legitimacy of the state, even an attack on the armed forces as the defender of the Kemalist legacy of the Republic.5 In 1990, as the result of a parliamentary process set in...