Celal Bayar

Early years

Bayar was born in 1883 at Umurbey, a village of Gemlik, Bursa as the son of a religious leader and teacher who migrated from Lom, Ottoman Bulgaria. After school, he worked as a clerk, first in the court in Gemlik, then in Ziraat Bankasi, and then in the Deutsche Orientbank in Bursa.

Political career

In 1908, Bayar joined the volunteer’s troop of the Committee of Union and Progress, a political organization of Young Turks. He served as the secretary-general of the newly founded Bursa branch and later of the Izmir branch of the party.

In 1919, Bayar was elected to the Ottoman Parliament in Istanbul as deputy of Saruhan (today Manisa). As he disagreed with the new constitution determined by the sultan, in 1920 he went to Ankara to join Mustafa Kemal and the Turkish Independence Movement. He became an active member of the "Mudafaa-i Hukuk Cemiyeti" (Association for Defence of Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia), another political organization formed after World War I. He became the deputy of Bursa in the newly established Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The same year, he served as Deputy Minister of the Economy and on 27 February 1921 he was appointed as the Minister of the Economy. He led the negotiation commission during Cerkes Ethem's uprising. In 1922, Bayar was a member of the Turkish delegation during the Lausanne Peace Conference as an advisor to Ismet Inonu. After the elections in 1923, he served as the deputy of Izmir in the Parliament. On 6 March 1924 Celal Bayar was appointed Minister for Population, Development and Resettlement (until 7 July 1924). On 26 August 1924, he founded Turkiye Is Bankasi in Ankara by using as capital the gold bullion sent by the Muslims in India to support the Turkish War of Independence. He was the Managing Director of what was the largest Turkish commercial bank until 1932.

On 25 October 1937 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk appointed Bayar as Prime Minister of the 9th Government of Turkey after Ismet Inonu left the government. He continued to serve as prime minister when Ataturk died and Inonu became president in 1938 (10th government of Turkey). Differences of opinion with Inonu led him to resign from the position on 25 January 1939.

Until 1945, he was a member of Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (the Republican People's Party), a republican party which most often during the Ataturk era had been the sole legal party. Then on 7 January 1946, he founded Demokrat Parti (the Democratic Party), a socially conservative economically liberal party, along with Adnan Menderes, Fuat Koprulu and Refik Koraltan. The DP won, with 408 of 487 seats, a majority in the first free general elections in Turkish history on 14 May 1950. The parliament elected Bayar, the chairman of the DP, as president of Turkey. He was subsequently re-elected in 1954 and 1957, serving for 10 years as president. In that period, Adnan Menderes was his prime minister. It was under his presidency that the anti-Greek Istanbul Pogrom took place on 6–7 September 1955.

1960 coup d’etat

On 27 May 1960 the armed forces staged a coup d’etat. On 10 June they sent Celal Bayar along with Adnan Menderes and some other government and party members to a military court on the tiny island of Yassiada in the Sea of Marmara . He and 15 other party members were tried for violating the constitution and sentenced to death by a kangaroo court appointed by the junta on 15 September 1961. The ruling military committee approved the death sentence for Menderes, Zorlu and Polatkan, but the punishment for Bayar and other 12 party members was commuted to life imprisonment. Bayar was sent to a prison in Kayseri, but he was released on 7 November 1964 due to ill health.

Later years and personal life

Bayar was pardoned in 1966. Full political rights were restored to him in 1974, but he declined an invitation to become a life member of the Senate, on the grounds that one can represent the people only if elected. He died on 22 August 1986 in Istanbul at the age of 103.

Bayar was the father of three children: Refii (1904–1940), Turgut (1911–1983) and Nilufer (1921– ).

Refii Bayar was the General Manager of "Milli Reasurans," a reinsurance company, from 1929 to 1939, was the founder of "Halk Evleri", an educational government entity in Istanbul, and was a journalist and published the Halk newspaper between 1939 and 1941 with Cemal Kutay.

Nilufer Gursoy married Ahmet Ihsan Gursoy (1913–2008), who was the Kutahya deputy for the Democratic Party between 1946 and 1960, the Bursa deputy for the Justice Party between 1965 and 1969 and Istanbul deputy for the Democratic Party between 1973 and 1975 and then for the Justice Party between 1975 and 1980.

Awards and legacy

In 1954, Bayar was awarded the Grand Cross Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Sonderstufe des Groskreuzes des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik Deutschland). In 1954, Bayar was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Belgrade. In 1958, the Freie Universitat Berlin (Free University Berlin) awarded him an honorary doctorate. The Celal Bayar University, which was established in 1992 in Manisa, is named after him.