Ismet Inonu

Family and early life

Ismet Inonu was born in Izmir, Aidin Vilayet to Haci Resit (Turkish: [hadʒm reʃit]) and Cevriye (Turkish: [dʒevrije]) (later Cevriye Temelli), and was of Kurdish descent on his father's side and of Turkish descent through his mother. Haci Resit was retired from the First Examinant Department of Legal Affairs Bureau of the War Ministry (Harbiye Nezareti Muhakemat Dairesi Birinci Mumeyyizligi), who was born in Malatya and a member of Kumurogullari family of Bitlis. Cevriye was a daughter of Muderris (professor) Hasan Efendi who was ulema and a member of Turkish family of Razgrad. Due to his father's assignments, the family moved from one city to another. Thus, Ismet completed his primary education in Sivas and graduated Sivas Military Junior High School (Sivas Askeri Rustiyesi) in 1894. And then he studied at Sivas School for Civil Servants (Sivas Mulkiye Idadisi) for a year.

Early military career

Ismet graduated from the Imperial School of Military Engineering (Muhendishane-i Berri-i Humayun) in 1903 as gunnery officer, and received his first military assignment in the Ottoman Army. He joined the Committee of Union and Progress. He won his first military victories by suppressing two major revolts against the struggling Ottoman Empire, first in Rumelia and later in Yemen, whose leader was Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din. He served as a military officer during the Balkan Wars on the Ottoman-Bulgarian front. During World War I, he served with the Ottoman military rank of Miralay (arbitrarily the equivalent of Colonel or Senior Colonel (Brigadier)) and worked under Mustafa Kemal Pasha during his assignments at the Caucasus and Palestine fronts.

During the war, on 13 April 1916, Ismet married Mevhibe, who was a daughter of an Ashraf (Esraf) of Zistovi (present day Svishtov) Zuhtu Efendi. They had three children: Omer, Erdal and Ozden (married to Metin Toker).

Turkish War of Independence

After losing the Battle of Megiddo against General Edmund Allenby during the last days of World War I, he went to Constantinople (Istanbul) and was assigned Undersecretary of the Ministry of War and then General Secretary of the Documentation in the Military Council.

After the military occupation of Constantinople on 16 March 1920, he decided to pass to Anatolia to join the Turkish National Movement. He and his chief of staff Major Saffet (Arikan) wore soldier uniform and left Maltepe in the evening of 19 March 1920 and arrived at Ankara on 9 April 1920.

He was appointed the commander of the Western Front of the Army of the Grand National Assembly (GNA), a position in which he remained during the Turkish War of Independence. He was promoted to the rank of Mirliva (arbitrarily the equivalent of Brigadier General or Major General; the most junior General rank with the title Pasha in the Ottoman and pre-1934 Turkish Army) after winning the First Battle of Inonu which took place between 9 and 11 January 1921. He also won the subsequent Second Battle of Inonu which was fought between 26 and 31 March 1921. During the Turkish War of Independence he was also a member of the GNA in Ankara.

Inonu was replaced by Mustafa Fevzi Pasha, who was also the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense at the time, as the Chief of Staff of the Army of the GNA after the Turkish forces lost major battles against the advancing Greek Army in July 1921, as a result of which the cities Afyonkarahisar, Kutahya and Eskisehir were temporarily lost. He participated as a staff officer (with the rank Brigadier General) to the later battles, until the final Turkish victory in September 1922.

Chief negotiator in Mudanya and Lausanne

After the War of Independence was won, Ismet Pasha was appointed as the chief negotiator of the Turkish delegation, both for the Armistice of Mudanya and for the Treaty of Lausanne.

The Lausanne conference convened in late 1922 to settle the terms of a new treaty that would take the place of the Treaty of Sevres. Inonu became famous for his stubborn resolve in determining Ankara's position as the legitimate, sovereign government of Turkey. After delivering his position, Inonu turned off his hearing aid during the speeches of British foreign secretary Lord Curzon. When the secretary had finished, Inonu reiterated his position as if Lord Curzon had never said a word.

Prime Minister

Inonu later served as the Prime Minister of Turkey for several terms, maintaining the system that Mustafa Kemal had put in place. He acted after every major crisis (such as the rebellion of Sheikh Said or the attempted assassination in Izmir against Mustafa Kemal) to restore peace in the country.

Statism in economy

He tried to manage the economy with heavy-handed government intervention, especially after the 1929 economic crisis, by implementing an economic plan inspired by the Five Year Plan of the Soviet Union. In doing so, he took much private property under government control. Due to his efforts, to this day, more than 70% of land in Turkey is still owned by the state.

Desiring a more liberal economic system, Ataturk dissolved the government of Inonu and appointed Celal Bayar, the founder of the first Turkish commercial bank Turkiye Is Bankasi, as Prime Minister.

President

After the death of Ataturk on 10 November 1938, Inonu was viewed as the most appropriate candidate to succeed him, and was elected the second President of the Republic of Turkey. He enjoyed the official title of "Milli Sef", i.e. "National Chief".

World War II broke out in the first year of his presidency, and both the Allies and the Axis pressured Inonu to bring Turkey into the war on their side. The Germans sent Franz von Papen to Ankara in April 1939 while the British sent Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen and the French Rene Massigli. On 23 April 1939, Turkish Foreign Minister Sukru Saracoglu told Knatchbull-Hugessen of his nation's fears of Italian claims of the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum and German control of the Balkans, and suggested an Anglo-Soviet-Turkish alliance as the best way of countering the Axis. In May 1939, during the visit of Maxime Weygand to Turkey, Inonu told the French Ambassador Rene Massigli that he believed that the best way of stopping Germany was an alliance of Turkey, the Soviet Union, France and Britain; that if such an alliance came into being, the Turks would allow Soviet ground and air forces onto their soil; and that he wanted a major programme of French military aid to modernize the Turkish armed forces. The signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939 drew Turkey away from the Allies; the Turks always believed that it was essential to have the Soviet Union as an ally to counter Germany, and thus the signing of the German-Soviet pact undercut completely the assumptions behind Turkish security policy. With the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Inonu chose to be neutral in World War II as taking on Germany and the Soviet Union at the same time would be too much for Turkey, through he signed a treaty of alliance with Britain and France on 19 October 1939. It was only with France's defeat in June 1940 that Inonu abandoned the pro-Allied neutrality that he had following since the beginning of the war. A major embarrassment for the Turks occurred in July 1940 when the Germans captured and published documents from the Quai d'Orsay in Paris showing the Turks were aware of Operation Pike as the Anglo-French plan in the winter of 1939-40 to bomb the oil fiends in the Soviet Union from Turkey was codenamed, which was intended by Berlin to worsen relations between Ankara and Moscow. In turn, worsening relations between the Soviet Union and Turkey were intended to drive Turkey into the arms of the Reich. After the publication of the French documents relating to Operation Pike, Inonu had to fire Saracoglu as Foreign Minister following Soviet complaints and signed an economic treaty with Germany that placed Turkey within the German economic sphere of influence, but Inonu would go no further towards the Axis.

In the first half of 1941, Germany which was intent upon invading the Soviet Union went out of its way to improve relations with Turkey as the Reich hoped for a benevolent Turkish neutrality when the German-Soviet war began. At same time, the British had great hopes in the spring of 1941 when they dispatched an expeditionary force to Greece that Inonu could be persuaded to enter the war on the Allied side as the British leadership had high hopes of creating a Balkan front that would tie down German forces, and which thus led a major British diplomatic offensive with the Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden visiting Ankara several times to meet with Inonu. Inonu always told Eden that the Turks would not join the British forces in Greece, and the Turks would only enter the war if Germany attacked Turkey. For his part, Papen offered Inonu parts of Greece if Turkey were to enter the war on the Axis side, an offer Inonu declined. In May 1941 when the Germans dispatched an expeditionary force to Iraq to fight against the British, Inonu refused Papen's request that the German forces be allowed transit rights to Iraq.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill travelled to Ankara on 30 January 1943 for a conference with President Inonu, to urge Turkey's entry into the war on the allied side. Churchill met secretly with Inonu in January 1943, inside a railroad car at the Yenice Station near Adana. However, by December 4–6, 1943, Inonu felt confident enough about the outcome of the war, that he met with openly with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Second Cairo Conference. Until 1941, both Roosevelt and Churchill had thought that Turkey's continuing neutrality would serve the interests of the Allies by blocking the Axis from reaching the strategic oil reserves of the Middle East. But the early victories of the Axis up to the end of 1942 caused Roosevelt and Churchill to re-evaluate a possible Turkish participation in the war on the side of the Allies. Turkey had maintained a decently-sized Army and Air Force throughout the war, and Churchill wanted the Turks to open a new front in the Balkans. Roosevelt, on the other hand, still believed that a Turkish attack would be too risky, and an eventual Turkish failure would have disastrous effects for the Allies.

Inonu knew very well the hardships which his country had suffered during decades of incessant war between 1908 and 1922 and was determined to keep Turkey out of another war as long as he could. The young Turkish Republic was still re-building, recovering from the losses due to earlier wars, and lacked any modern weapons and the infrastructure to enter a war to be fought along and possibly within its borders. Inonu based his neutrality policy during the Second World War on the premise that Western Allies and the Soviet Union would sooner or later have a falling out after the war. Thus, Inonu wanted assurances on financial and military aid for Turkey, as well as a guarantee that the United States and the United Kingdom would stand beside Turkey in the event of a Soviet invasion of the Turkish Straits after the war. In August 1944 Inonu broke off diplomatic relations with Germany and on 5 January 1945, Inonu severed diplomatic relations with Japan. Shortly afterwards, Inonu allowed Allied shipping to use the Turkish straits to sent supplies to the Soviet Union and on 25 February 1945 he declared war on Germany and Japan.

The post-war tensions and arguments surrounding the Turkish Straits would come to be known as the Turkish Straits crisis. The fear of Soviet invasion and Joseph Stalin's unconcealed desire for Soviet military bases in the Turkish Straits eventually caused Turkey to give up its principle of neutrality in foreign relations and join NATO in February 1952.

Multi-party period

Under international pressure to transform the country to a democratic state, Inonu presided over the infamous 1946 elections, in which votes were cast in the open with onlookers able to observe to which party the voters had cast their votes, yet counting of the votes were not open for the public to observe.

In 1950, his party lost the first free elections in the republic's history. The Democrat Party used a slogan: "Geldi Ismet, kesildi kismet" ("Since Ismet came, fortune was cut" ) for their election campaigns. Inonu presided over the peaceful transfer of power to the Democratic Party of Celal Bayar and Adnan Menderes. Inonu served for ten years as the leader of the opposition before returning to power as Prime Minister after the 1961 election, held after the military coup-d'etat in 1960.

Although the opposition was imprisoned during the 1961 elections, he still did not win a majority and had to form coalition governments until the 1965 elections. He lost both the 1965 and 1969 general elections to Suleyman Demirel and then in 1972 he lost his party's leadership race to Bulent Ecevit.

Ismet Inonu was, by the standards of his time, a highly educated man, speaking Arabic, English, French and German in addition to his native Turkish.

Inonu died in 1973. He was interred opposite to Ataturk's mausoleum at Anitkabir in Ankara and a massive tomb was constructed there.

Legacy

Inonu University and Malatya Inonu Stadium in Malatya are named after him, as is the Inonu Stadium in Istanbul, home of the Besiktas football club.

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