The democrat party's attempt to form a coalition government with the republican people's party

Abstract

The new election bill prepared by the Republican People's Party (RPP) in consultation with the opposition was enacted on February 16, 1950. The new election law, which was to be implemented for the first time on the General Elections of 14 May 1950, was generally democratic due to its features such as secret vote, open counting and judicial control. Despite considering the new election law as democratic, the Democratic Party (DP), bearing in mind the fraudulent and oppressive General Elections of 1946, had great concerns and fears about whether the elections would be held honestly, freely, without pressure and most importantly, without fraud. According to DP, no matter how perfect a law was made, nothing would change unless the mentality of the government that would implement that law changed. In this sense, it did not have confidence in the RPP. DP made an offer to RPP to form a coalition government together in order to ensure the elections to be held honestly with confidence and to soften the election strut: e that would arise during the election period. The task of this government, which would involve only two DP ministers, was to hold the General Elections of 1950 together. If necessary, the coalition government would be continued after the elections in order to deal with the regime issues. On the other hand, the DP could not get the more democratic proportional representation election procedure to be accepted by the government in the new election law. This led to the concern that the opposition would be represented in the Parliament with a lesser number or not at all. DP made some offers to the ruling party in order to eliminate such concerns. Accordingly, parties should leave quotas reciprocally in some provinces while nominating their candidate lists for the parliament. Most importantly, the candidate lists should include their leaders mutually to guarantee that their leaders are elected. The aim of this study is to examine the first ever but failed coalition government attempt in Turkish Democracy History. In addition, it is aimed to present the roles and attitudes of party officials and the press in the face of the coalition idea.