İsmet İnönü

Mustafa İsmet İnönü (Jawi:مصطفى عصمت إينونو, ; 24 September 1884 – 25 December 1973) was a Turkish Army General, the Prime Minister, and second President of Turkey. In 1938, the Republican People's Party gave him the title of "Milli Şef" (National Chief).

Family and early life
İsmet İnönü was born in İzmir to Hacı Reşit and Cevriye  (later Cevriye Temelli), and was of Kurdish descent on his father's side and of Turkish descent through his mother. Hacı Reşit was retired from the First Examinant Department of Legal Affairs Bureau of the War Ministry (Harbiye Nezareti Muhakemat Dairesi Birinci Mümeyyizliği), who was born in Malatya and a member of Kümüroğulları family of Bitlis. Cevriye was a daughter of Müderris (professor) Hasan Efendi who was ulema and a member of Turkish family of Razgrad. Due to his father's assignments, the family moved from one city to another. Thus, Ismet completed his primary education in Sivas and graduated Sivas Military Junior High School (Sivas Askerî Rüştiyesi) in 1894. And then he studied at Sivas School for Civil Servants (Sivas Mülkiye İdadisi) for a year.

When the 1934 Surname Law was adopted, Mustafa Kemal gave him a surname delivered from İnönü, where he commanded the forces of Army of Grand National Assembly as the Minister of the Chief of the General Staff (Erkân-ı Harbiye-i Umumiye Reis Vekili) during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922. Afterwards these battles became to be known as the First Battle of İnönü and Second Battle of İnönü.

On 13 April 1916, Ismet married Mevhibe, who was a daughter of an Ashraf (Eşraf) of Ziştovi (present day Svishtov) Zühtü Efendi. They had three children: Ömer, Erdal and Özden (married to Metin Toker).

Early military career
Ismet graduated from the Imperial School of Military Engineering (Mühendishane-i Berrî-i Hümâyûn) 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 with the Ottoman military rank of Miralay (arbitrarily the equivalent of Colonel or Senior Colonel (Brigadier)) and worked under Mustafa Kemal Pasha during his assignments at the Caucasus and Palestine fronts.

Turkish War of Independence


After losing the Battle of Megiddo against General Edmund Allenby during the last days of World War I, he went to Constantinople (Istanbul) and was assigned Undersecretary of the Ministry of War and then General Secretary of the Documentation in the Military Council.

After the military occupation of Constantinople on 16 March 1920, he decided to pass to Anatolia for joining the Turkish National Movement. He and his chief of staff Major Saffet (Arıkan) wore soldier uniform and left Maltepe in the evening of 19 March 1920 and arrived at Ankara on 9 April 1920.

He was appointed the commander of the Western Front of the Army of the Grand National Assembly (GNA), a position in which he remained during the Turkish War of Independence. He was promoted to the rank of Mirliva (arbitrarily the equivalent of Brigadier General or Major General; the most junior General rank with the title Pasha in the Ottoman and pre-1934 Turkish Army) after winning the First Battle of İnönü which took place between 9 and 11 January 1921. He also won the subsequent Second Battle of İnönü which was fought between 26 and 31 March 1921. During the Turkish War of Independence he was also a member of the GNA in Ankara.

İnönü was replaced by Mustafa Fevzi Pasha, who was also the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense at the time, as the Chief of Staff of the Army of the GNA after the Turkish forces lost major battles against the advancing Greek Army in July 1921, as a result of which the cities Afyonkarahisar, Kütahya and Eskişehir were temporarily lost. He participated as a staff officer (with the rank Brigadier General) to the later battles, until the final Turkish victory in September 1922.

Chief negotiator in Mudanya and Lausanne
After the War of Independence was won, İsmet Pasha was appointed as the chief negotiator of the Turkish delegation, both for the Armistice of Mudanya and for 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.

Prime Minister
İnönü later served as the Prime Minister of Turkey for several terms, maintaining the system that Mustafa Kemal had put in place. He acted after every major crisis (such as the rebellion of Sheikh Said or the attempted assassination in Izmir against Mustafa Kemal) to restore peace in the country.

Statism in economy
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.

Desiring a more liberal economic system, Atatürk forced İnönü to resign from the Prime Ministry and appointed Celâl Bayar, the founder of the first Turkish commercial bank Türkiye İş Bankası, as Prime Minister.

President


After the death of Atatürk, İnönü 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 Şef", i.e. "National Chief".

World War II broke out in the first year of his presidency, and both the Allies and the Axis pressured İnönü to bring Turkey into the war on their side. The Germans sent Franz von Papen to Ankara while the British sent Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen and the French René Massigli. On 23 April 1939, Turkish Foreign Minister Şükrü Saracoğlu told Knatchbull-Hugessen of his nation's fears of Italian claims of the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum and German control of the Balkans, and suggested an Anglo-Soviet-Turkish alliance as the best way of countering the Axis. In May 1939, during the visit of Maxime Weygand to Turkey, İnönü told the French Ambassador René Massigli that he believed that the best way of stopping Germany was an alliance of Turkey, the Soviet Union, France and Britain; that if such an alliance came into being, the Turks would allow Soviet ground and air forces onto their soil; and that he wanted a major programme of French military aid to modernize the Turkish armed forces. The signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939 led Turkey away from the Allies as the Turks always believed that it was essential to have the Soviet Union as an ally to counter Germany, and the signing of the German-Soviet pact undercut completely the assumptions behind Turkish security policy.

Winston Churchill secretly met with İnönü inside a train wagon at the Yenice Station near Adana on 30 January 1943. İnönü later met with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Second Cairo Conference on 4–6 December 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.

İnönü 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. İnönü 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 post-war tensions and arguments surrounding the Turkish Straits would come to be known as the Turkish Straits crisis. The fear of Soviet invasion and Joseph 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.

Multi-party period
Under international pressure to transform the country to a democratic state, İnönü presided over the infamous 1946 elections, in which votes were cast in the open with onlookers able to observe to which party the voters had cast their votes, yet counting of the votes were not open for the public to observe.

In 1950, his party lost the first free elections in republic's history. The Democratic Party used a slogan: "Geldi İsmet, kesildi kısmet" ("Since Ismet came, fortune was cut" ) for their election campaigns. İnönü presided over the peaceful transfer of power to the Democratic Party of Celâl Bayar and Adnan Menderes. İnönü 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.

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.

İsmet İnönü was, by the standards of his time, a highly educated man; speaking Arabic, English, French and German in addition to his native Turkish.

İnönü died in 1973. He was interred opposite to Atatürk's mausoleum at Anıtkabir in Ankara and a massive tomb was constructed there.

Legacy


İnönü University in Malatya is named after him, as is the İnönü Stadium in Istanbul, home of the Beşiktaş football club.