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Ismet Inönü
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Mustafa Ismet Inönü (September 24 1884 – December 25, 1973) was a Turkish Army General, Prime Minister and the second President of the Republic of Turkey. He is widely referred to as "Milli Sef" (National Chief), a title he bestowed upon himself when he was elected as the President of Turkey in 1938.
as born in Izmir to a family originally from Malatya with mixed Turkish-Kurdish heritage.
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Mustafa Ismet Inönü (September 24 1884 – December 25, 1973) was a Turkish Army General, Prime Minister and the second President of the Republic of Turkey. He is widely referred to as "Milli Sef" (National Chief), a title he bestowed upon himself when he was elected as the President of Turkey in 1938.
Family and early life
He was born in Izmir to a family originally from Malatya with mixed Turkish-Kurdish heritage. His father was Haci Resid Bey, a member of the Ottoman bureaucracy, an examining magistrate born in Malatya, and his mother was Cevriye Hanim, daughter of Russo-Turkish War refugees from Bulgaria. Due to his father's assignments, the family moved from one city to another. Thus, Ismet Inönü completed his primary education in Sivas.
For more than half his life, Ismet Inönü was known as Ismet Pasha. He changed his name in the early 1930s when President Atatürk decreed that all his countrymen had to have surnames. Ismet Pasha decided to take as his surname "Inönü", from the Central Anatolian town where he commanded the Turkish forces in his greatest battles as a general, known as the First Battle of Inönü and Second Battle of Inönü, victories which played an important role in the Turkish War of Independence.
His son, Erdal Inönü, was a Wigner medal winner mathematical physicist and a former deputy prime minister of Turkey, as well as the former leader of the Social Democracy Party and the Social Democratic Populist Party, and the honorary leader of the Social Democratic People's Party.
Early military career
Inönü graduated from the Military Academy 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 as a miralay (colonel) on the Ottoman eastern front in Syria, and was later appointed as the commander of the western fronts. He worked together with Mustafa Kemal Pasha during his assignment at the Caucasus front.
Independence war
After losing the Battle of Megiddo against General Edmund Allenby during the last days of World War I, he went to Anatolia to join the Turkish nationalist movement and was appointed the commander of the Turkish Western Army, a position in which he remained during the Turkish War of Independence. He was promoted to brigadier general after the "Battles of Inönü", in which he successfully defeated the Greek Army in western Anatolia. During the Turkish War of Independence he was also a member of the Turkish Grand National Assembly in Ankara.
Inönü was replaced by Fevzi Pasa as the Chief of Staff of the Turkish Army after the Turkish army lost a battle against the advancing Greek Army in July 1921, as a result of which the cities Afyon, Kütahya and Eskisehir were lost. Later, he was appointed as the chief negotiator of the Turkish delegation at the Treaty of Lausanne. He became famous for his resolve and stubbornness in defending Turkey's demands while conceding very little to the other side at the negotiating table, causing the peace conference to last longer than expected. Partially deaf, Inönü simply turned off his hearing aid when the British foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, launched into lengthy speeches opposing Turkish demands for recognition of the national pact, and then would restate the Turkish position as if the British foreign secretary had not said a thing.
Political career
Inönü later served as the Prime Minister of Turkey for several terms, maintaining the system that Atatürk had put in place. He acted after every major crisis (such as the rebellion of Sheikh Said or the attempted assassination of Atatürk in Izmir) to restore peace in the country. 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, resembling the now-defunct Soviet Union. Desiring a more liberal economic system, Atatürk forced Inönü , from the government leadership in 1937 and appointed Celal Bayar, the founder of the first Turkish bank Türkiye Is Bankasi as Prime Minister.
"National Chief" period
After the death of Atatürk, Inönü was viewed as the most appropriate candidate to succeed him, and was elected the second President of the Republic of Turkey and 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 Inönü to bring Turkey into the war on their side. The Germans sent Franz von Papen to Ankara, while Winston Churchill secretly met with Inönü inside a train wagon near Adana on January 30, 1943. Inönü later met with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Second Cairo Conference on December 4-6, 1943. Until 1941, both Roosevelt and Churchill 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. Inönü 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. Inönü also 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. The fear of Soviet invasion and Stalin's unconcealed desire to control the Turkish Straits eventually caused Turkey to give up its principle of neutrality in foreign relations and join NATO in 1952.
The economic conditions in Turkey during his Presidency can be described as "depression", as evidenced by the negative economic growth between 1938 to 1950, which may explain why he could not win any democratic elections (in 1950, 1954, 1957, 1961, 1965 and 1969) in his country. Yet, overcoming strong opposition within his own party, he still switched Turkey to a multi-party democracy which allowed the previously mentioned elections to be held in the first place. He probably is the only leader in the World History who gave up absolute ruling power and continue as the leader of the opposition party. It may be that Inönü's greatest political achievement was keeping his country out of World War II until February 1945, when Turkey entered the war on the side of the Allies against Germany and Japan.
Multi party period
Under international pressure to transform the country to a democratic state, Inönü resided over the infamous 1946 elections, in which votes were cast in the open with onlookers (most probably secret police) able to observe to which party the voters had cast their votes and ballots were tallied behind closed doors by only his own party's officials. In 1950, his party lost the first free elections in Turkish history, and Inönü presided over the peaceful transfer of power to the Democratic Party of Adnan Menderes. Inönü 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 in which he allegedly conspired. 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 Süleyman Demirel and then in 1972 he lost his party's leadership race to Bülent Ecevit.
Ismet Inönü was by the standards of his time a highly educated man, speaking Arabic, English, French and German in addition to his native Turkish.
Inönü died in 1973. He was interred next to Atatürk's mausoleum at Anitkabir in Ankara and a massive tomb was constructed there.
Legacy
Inönü University in Malatya is named after him, as is a stadium in Istanbul, home of the Besiktas football club.
Media
- (The sound file of the message by President Ismet Inönü on Kemal Atatürk, November 10, 1963)
- (The Text of the message by President Ismet Inönü on Atatürk)
See also
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