President and Founder Fethi Okyar Headquarters Ankara, Turkey | General Secretary Nuri Conker Ideology Liberalism | |
Founded August 12, 1930 (1930-08-12) Dissolved November 17, 1930 (1930-11-17) | ||
The Liberal Republican Party (sometimes referred to as the Free Republican Party; in Turkish: Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası) was a political party founded by Fethi Okyar in the early years of the Turkish Republic.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk requested that Okyar create it as an opposition party to confront the ruling Republican People's Party with the aim of establishing the tradition of multi-party democracy in Turkey.
However, the party was quickly embraced by the conservatives who saw it as an opportunity to reverse the reforms of Atatürk, particularly regarding secularism, and was personally dissolved in November 1930 by Okyar who himself was an ardent supporter of the reforms.
The closure of the Liberal Republican Party left Turkey as a one-party state until the establishment of the National Development Party (Milli Kalkınma Partisi) in 1945 and the Democratic Party in 1946.