Adnan Menderes
Menderes, Adnan
Born in 1899 in Aydin; died Sept. 17, 1961, on Yassiada Island. Turkish statesman. Large landowner; lawyer by training.
Menderes was the leader of the Democratic Party, a bourgeois-landlord party founded in 1946. As premier from 1950 to 1960, he pursued a reactionary domestic policy and a proimperialist foreign policy. In these years Turkey joined aggressive military blocs (NATO, CENTO) and concluded several unequal bilateral agreements with the USA. On May 27, 1960, the Menderes government was overthrown in a coup and Menderes was put on trial and hanged.