Celâl Bayar

Biography

Celâl Bayar was born in 1883 in Umurbey, near Gemlik in Bursa province, the son of a religious teacher who had fled Bulgaria. He worked as a clerk and for Ziraat Bank and the Deutsche Orientbank in Bursa, and in 1907 joined the Committee of Union and Progress, organising its branches in Bursa and later İzmir. He took part in the 1913 coup that brought the Unionists to full power and, according to his biography, helped organise the 1914 deportations of Ottoman Greeks from the Aegean coast.

After the First World War he joined the nationalist resistance around İzmir, went to Ankara, and became minister of economy in the new Grand National Assembly government in 1921. Under Atatürk he founded İş Bankası in 1924 and, as economy minister from 1932, directed a statist programme of industrialisation. Atatürk appointed him prime minister in November 1937; he resigned in January 1939 after clashing with İsmet İnönü.

In 1945 Bayar broke with the Republican People's Party and in January 1946 founded the Democrat Party with Adnan Menderes, Fuat Köprülü and Refik Koraltan, opening Turkey's multiparty era. After the Democrats won the 1950 election, parliament chose him as president; he was re-elected in 1954 and 1957, years in which Turkey joined NATO but the government grew increasingly authoritarian.

The military coup of 27 May 1960 removed him from office. Tried at Yassıada, he was sentenced to death in 1961, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment because of his age; he was released for health reasons and pardoned in 1966. He later worked to restore the political rights of former Democrats and died in Istanbul in 1986, aged 103.