The first step toward resumption of civil administration was elections for the Senate and the Assembly on October 15, 1961. Fourteen parties were in the field, but only four were of any importance. The results of the balloting were inconclusive; no party received a majority. The immediate consequence was coalition government under Ismet Inönü, Ataturk's successor, who opened the door to political pluralism in 1945, by ending the monopoly of Atatürk's party, the Republican People's Party (RPP—Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) on political affairs.

During the period 1961-65 coalition government became the order of the day. The two chambers of the Grand National Assembly elected General Gürsel to the presidency, a step that was mandatory for national unity. The chief of staff resigned from the army and took office. The presence of the army was still felt in forcing the Republican People's Party and the Justice Party to cooperate under Inönü. In practice coalition government did not turn out well, whether between the major parties or between the Republican People's Party and the independent parties.

Notwithstanding the difficulty in reestablishing the normal political functioning of the government, the army was willing to retire from politics. It remained in the wings, while waiting to see whether the politicians took the ship of state off the course set by Atatürk.

In early 1962 and mid-1963 there were abortive efforts by younger officers, impatient with the slow economic and social progress, to regenerate political life. These outcroppings of discontent served to question whether political pluralism could root itself in the atmosphere of coalition government. Early in 1965, the third Inönü coalition dominated by the Republican People's Party lost on a budget vote in the Assembly. Guided by its new leader Süleyman Demirel, who had been educated in the United States, the Justice Party (JP-Adalet Partisi) established a new coalition with three minor parties under the nonpartisan leader, Suat Hayri Urgüplü. Preparations were made for new elections in October 1965 in which six parties took part. The Justice Party won an absolute majority-53 percent of the total vote, a performance comparable to the sweep of the subsequently discredited Democrat Party in 1950.

While the country was in the process of finding itself politically in 1963, trouble arose over Cyprus (see ch. 15, Foreign Relations). This volatile issue unified the country and subjected its allies to embarrassing questions.

A consequence of the Cyprus flareup was that Turkey became more responsive to Soviet efforts to improve relations. In 1964 a Turkish parliamentary delegation went to the Soviet Union; in

the following year a group of Soviet parliamentarians paid a return visit. Also in 1964, a Soviet-Turkish trade agreement was arranged (see ch. 23, Foreign Economic Relations). Notwithstanding these developments, Turkey did not give up its friendship with the United States nor its status as an associate member of the European Economic Community.

POLITICAL AWARENESS AND SOCIALIZATION

In late 1968, 43 years after the founding of the First Turkish Republic and 8 years after the coup of May 1960, a national political system had rooted itself in the Turkish consciousness. The benchmarks of this consciousness as determined by Atatürk and his successors, established the framework for the evolution of a national political system.

These historical and cultural points of reference stemmed from an activated interest and pride not only in the early Turkish history of Central Asia, but also in the background of the preTurkish peoples of Anatolia, the Trojans and the Hittites. A significant achievement of the post-Ottoman period was the establishment of an awareness of the unity of the Turkish past. Heavy emphasis was placed on language and history as the core of a common Turkish nationality.

The national political system which evolved, republican in form, democratic and secular in spirit, is accepted by most elements of the population. Right and left extremists reject all or part of the philosophical basis of the system. Included as supporters of the system are by and large the landowning peasants, urban intellectuals, the bureaucratic elite, the growing commercial and industrial middle class, and urban labor. In its position as guardian of the Atatürk heritage, the army serves as a channel of orientation concerning the values of the system.

Methods of Political Education

The decision of the leaders of the early Republic to attempt to modernize and politicize the urban element of the country proved to have been taken at the expense of the rural classes. This judgment represented an attempt to establish enclaves of modernity in urban centers, but because of limited resources, it actually resulted in the postponement of a total effort to integrate the peasantry.

Atatürk emphasized the place of education and the improvement of communications in the total program of reforms designed for social change (see ch. 13, The Governmental System). In 1931 he gave the principles of his program: republicanism, nationalism, populism, statism, secularism, and revolutionism

(reformism) (see ch. 3, Historical Setting). These were the "Six Arrows" that guided the RPP, and in 1935 they were incorporated into the constitution. He attempted to spread these goals through education, and also put a stress on the glories of nationhood with such symbols as the flag and national holidays. There was also brief mention of a Sun Language Theory, to give the Turks pride in themselves by claiming that all languages had descended from Turkish. This claim was not pressed, but a Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu) was established with the responsibility of insuring grammatical correctness and purity of the language.

Universal service in the army was another method used by the government to increase people's awareness of their own country. Peasants were taken from remote villages and sent to other parts of Turkey. Training programs included classes in government. In 1931 the RPP Congress established People's Houses (Halkevleri) to help the revolution to reach the people by eradicating ignorance. The People's Houses were set up in most towns and cities, and their activities ranged from publications work to rural activities. All Turks could participate in these programs, but each Halkevleri chairman was to be chosen from the local party committee. The People's Houses were supplemented by People's Rooms (Halkodalari), set up after 1940 in small towns and villages. By 1949, there were 478 People's Houses and in 1950 there were 4,322 People's Rooms.

The People's Houses and Rooms were attempts to establish agencies for political communication and socialization, sponsored by the RPP through its organizations all over the country. By 1935 it was estimated that 1 million of Turkey's 16 million people belonged to the RPP, but they were mainly from the alreadypoliticized groups, not the peasantry. The members of the party were expected to spread the ideas of its leaders, and the congresses held every 4 years were attended by representatives from all over the country. In this manner provincial members of the party became acquainted with the ideas of the party elite and gave their endorsement to them.

Although the government leaders were careful to preserve the forms of representative government and to utilize them to the fullest, the situation in the early years of the Republic was still one in which the elite decided which measures were most important and pressed them upon the people. Little attention was given to agriculture, for the government was concentrating on economic reforms and innovations. As a result in spite of RPP efforts to organize the peasantry, farmers remained largely outside the modernizing trend. The Village Law of 1924 was designed

to promote self-help in the village, but was really irrelevant to conditions and served more to illustrate the elite's ignorance of rural life. Village women, for example, in late 1968 still did not enjoy the positions constitutionally granted to all females of the country.

The end of World War II and Turkish entry into the United Nations brought a new phase to Turkish political life. Nearly a quarter of a century of one-party rule and its attempts to politicize the people had finally borne fruit. A new generation, unfamiliar with traditional ways, had grown up in the urban areas: professional men and merchants, who formed the base of a middle class previously unknown in Turkey.

POLITICAL PARTIES

The Republican People's Party

On September 9, 1923, about 2 months before the proclamation of the Republic, Kemal Atatürk founded the People's Party (Halk Firkaşi), later renamed the Republican People's Party. It remained in power until 1945 in what was essentially a oneparty system. Opposition groups, when their activities were permitted, were suspect as subversive. The leaders of the People's Party were unwilling to tolerate opposition, but they were not totalitarian in their ideals nor did they insist on universal conformity to a specific ideology.

Atatürk combined the roles of President of the Republic and president of the RPP, as did his successor Inönü until 1947. He surrendered his active duties, but not his title to an executive vice-president. The "Six Arrows" of the People's Party program were written into the Constitution in 1937.

The Kemalists aimed at transforming Turkey into a modern nation-state, and recognized that the task was no less social and economic than political. Their models were European and they sought to impose them not only in public administration and law, but in family relations, the status of women, education, economics, the writing system, manners, and dress. They were determined to create the social foundations as well as the form of a modern republic, and in their 25-year rule they were so successful that about 89 percent of the electorate went to the polls.

As an opposition party, the RPP favored creation of a second chamber to serve as a check on the power of the Assembly. Through the device of proportional representation the Grand National Assembly's seats were distributed in 1956, in a manner more closely reflecting the popular vote and the representation of opposition parties increased (see ch. 13, The Governmental System).

In late 1968 the RPP enjoyed the prestige of the country's oldest political party, and being associated with Atatürk. Its authoritarianism was not forgotten, but was balanced by its attitude toward Inönü. His defeats in 1950 and in subsequent elections did not remove him from the political scene. Because of the respect in which he is held, he was called upon to head three coalition governments after the 1960 coup.

Merger with the Freedom Party

The Freedom Party was founded in late 1955 when 19 dissident Democrats were joined by about 14 other politicians critical of the Democrat Party (DP). Lüfti Karaosmanoglu, one of the original 19, headed the party until it merged with the RPP in November 1958. The party's program was essentially one of opposition to the DP; the issue on which the founders left that party was their insistence that proof of the accuracy of a statement leading to prosecution under the Press Law be made relevant to a trial. The program was later broadened to include demands for proportional representation, bicameral legislature, stronger constitutional guarantees of individual rights and a general extension of democratic principles. The Freedom Party (Hürriyet Partisi) was not strictly committed to the Kemalist program, but in merging with the RPP in the interest of more effective opposition to the Democrats, its leaders agreed on the general retention of Kemalist reforms.

After its defeat in the 1965 elections, the RPP stated that it favored closer adherence to the original Atatürk ideals on which it was founded. Ismet Inönü and Bulent Ecevit, the party secretary, endorsed a position known as "Left of Center" (Ortanin Solu), to attract elements of the electorate that might otherwise support a more leftist party. They also adopted a more distinct position in respect to the Justice Party. In 1967 a group of party members who favored a more conservative approach broke off from the RPP and formed the Reliance Party (GP-Güven Partisi). Under the leadership of Turhan Feyzioğlü the GP attacked the RPP for its socialist leanings and supported the JP. The GP is essentially a small group of intellectuals. It has no provincial organization and no program to appeal to the masses. The RPP remains a party closely controlled by city intellectuals, and has few real roots or close relationships in the countryside. It has not adapted its larger reform policies to local issues.

The Democrat Party

The Democrat Party resulted from a split in the RPP. Dissatisfied with the World War II policies of the RPP and opposed to its