Mahmut Celal Bayar (16 May 1883 – 22 August 1986) was Prime Minister of Turkey from 25 October 1937 to 25 January 1939, succeeding Ismet Inonu and preceding Refik Saydam, and President of Turkey from 22 May 1950 to 27 May 1960, succeeding Ismet Inonu and preceding Cemat Gursel. He was a Democrat Party of Turkey politician.
Biography[]
Celal Bayar was born in Umurbey, Ottoman Empire on 16 May 1883, and he took up work in a bnak and other employment. He joined the Young Turks in 1907 and Mustafa Kemal's resistance movement in 1919, and he was a member of the last parliament of the Ottoman Empire before joining the Turkish Grand National Assembly on its formation in 1920. He became Minister of Economy in 1921, Minister of Reconstruction in 1924, and Minister of the Economy in 1932-1937, and he promoted both private enterprise and developed important state industries, contributing to the success of the first five-year plan of 1933. Together with Adnan Menderes, he founded the Democrat Party of Turkey in 1945, and he became the country's first civilian president when his party won the 1950 election. Bayar was constitutionally proscribed to be neutral and above day-to-day political events, but he was heavily partisan, and he supported his party as its popularity faded. He was deposed in a 1961 army coup and sentenced to death for violation of the constitution; he escaped the fate of Menderes and was instead sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released from prison in 1964, and he retired from politics before dying in Istanbul in 1986 at the age of 103.