Adnan Menderes in folk culture and folk memory

Adnan Menderes has founded Democrat Party in 1946 with Celal Bayar, Refik Koraltan and M. Fuat Köprülü by saying "Enough, the voice belongs to the nation!". He is an important figure who left his mark on a ten-year period in Turkish political history by serving as Prime Minister between 1950-1960. In addition, before entering politics in 1930, he appeared as a landlord among the people who make up the rural area by farming on the farm inherited from his grandfather, Hacı Ali Pasha, in Çakırbeyli Village of Aydın. Throughout his political life Adnan Menderes has been involved in politics in a way that he claims to derive his power from the people, to represent the people, and to be the spokesperson of the people. For this reason, in our study, by conducting field studies, we found how Adnan Menderes got a place in the folk culture and in the memory of society, and his place in the public and social, political and cultural realms from the past to the present, in the light of written/oral sources, periodicals, archival scans, compilation studies. Folk memory is important since it is always an archive for us. Adnan Menderes' place in the memory and collective consciousness of the society, both as landlord and his political identity in the Free Republican Party, the Republican People's Party and the Democrat Party, constitutes the basis of our study. In this context, the folk's memories of Adnan Menderes, their testimonies of that period, and their experiences are brought together by making use of compilation studies, archive scans and written sources, and evaluations of the events by the public (both before Menderes entered politics, after his entry into politics, and during the period until he was removed from politics and executed by the military coup). The distinguishing aspect of our study is that it compiles the views and attitudes of the people who were involved in his life and the second and third generation of his relatives through a wide field study and puts them into writing beyond the theoretical knowledge-based studies on Adnan Menderes. In this context, many important events such as Adnan Menderes' years engaged in agriculture in his farm in Çakırbeyli, his entry into politics, the distribution of land from his own farm to the public, his meeting with Atatürk, his communication with the people on the way from Ankara to Aydın, his actions during his prime ministry and his days of imprisonment in Yassıada after the military coup are evaluated by the public from today's viewpoint. Those viewpoints are recorded by us with this study.