Political Career
In 1908, he joined the volunteer’s troop of "İttihad Terakki Cemiyeti" (Committee of Union and Progress), a political organization of Young Turks. He served as the secretary-general of the newly founded Bursa branch and later of the İzmir branch of this party.
In 1919, Bayar was elected to the Ottoman Parliament in Istanbul as deputy of Saruhan (today Manisa). As he disagreed with the new constitution determined by the sultan, he went in 1920 to Ankara to join Mustafa Kemal by the Turkish Independence Movement. He became an active member of the "Müdafaa-i Hukuk Cemiyeti" (Association for Defense of Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia), another political organization formed after the World War I. He became deputy of Bursa in the newly established Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The same year, he served as deputy Minister of Economy and on 27 February 1921 he was appointed as Minister of Economy. He led the negotiation commission during the Çerkes Ethem uprising. In 1922, Bayar took part in the Turkish delegation during the Lausanne Peace Conference as an advisor to İsmet İnönü. After the elections in 1923, he served as deputy of İzmir in the parliament. On 6 March 1924 Celâl Bayar was appointed minister population exchange, development and resettlement (until 7 July 1924). On 26 August 1924, he founded Türkiye İş Bankası in Ankara by using as capital the gold bullions sent by the Moslems of India to support the Turkish War of Independence. He was the Managing Director of this largest Turkish commercial Bank until 1932.
On 25 October 1937 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk appointed him as prime minister of the 9th government after İsmet İnönü left the government. He continued to serve as prime minister when Atatürk died and İnönü became president in 1938. Differences of opinion with Inönü led him to lay down his office on 25 January 1939.
Until 1945, he was a member of Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (the Republican People's Party), a republican party. Then on 7 January 1946, he founded Demokrat Parti (the Democratic Party), a socially conservative economically liberal party, along with Adnan Menderes, Fuat Köprülü and Refik Koraltan. The DP won, with 408 of 487 seats, a majority in the first free general elections in Turkish history on 14 May 1950. The parliament elected Bayar, the chairman of the DP, as president of Turkey. He was subsequently re-elected in 1954 and 1957, serving for 10 years as president. In that period, Adnan Menderes was his prime minister. It was under his presidency that the anti-Greek Istanbul Pogrom (6.-7. 1955) took place.
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