Gunaltay Cabinet as a CHP Power in the transition process to multi-party era in Turkey, and its policies

The Rebuplican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) is no doubt the longest running party in the history of Republic of Turkey. Despite this long historical background and internal transitions until today, apart from the compliments that lead to being Rupublic's founding party, mostly it has never freed from criticism and satire because of the practises of single party period. Indeed, the political opposition to CHP never gave up comparing to CHP with the single party period from past to present and this period has always remained as a burden for the party. In spite of all the contradictory comments, CHP has never been a stable party since it was established and party had a alteration and transform, which returns to Turkey political life parallely, as a result of challenging prosesses of certain part of voluntary and certain part of compulsory caused by internal or external conditions. This study will try to focus on, being one of the most important matter of this transformation until now, in other words on process of transition to multiparty life which is a important milestone both CHP's own internal transformation and to the evolution of Turkish political life and especially within this period, to the role of CHP on behalf of the cabinet of Semsettin Gunaltay.In this process CHP not only discharged the opposition parties and staff that will comes after itself, just like Democratic Party, but also played an active role in the transition to multi-party political life, even though there were a series of resistances. And as a result, Party was able to transform by oneself to a great extent. Gunaltay Government, which was the last power experience of the CHP before handing over its 27 years of power to the Democratic Party in 1950 elections, constitutes the most important and last step of the CHP's adaptation process to the new term. Günaltay Cabinet, lasting a short time, which is complained nobody, expresses a very important CHP power experience in terms of transition to multi-party life through its policies. Unfortunately, it has not been subject to academic interest despite of its importance. To fill this gap, this study will try to deal with the role of the CHP's Mehmed Semseddin Gunaltay's cabinet in this process in line with both Günaltay's political personality and the policies followed by his cabinet. This period, in terms of Turkey, is an intersection on the one hand after the Second World War, increasing of the necessity of taking political and ideological positions caused by changing world system on the other hand due to tackling with the economic, political and social problems which are accumulated during the long term single party period. At this intersection, it is seen that Gunaltay Government has taken important steps towards democratization and multiparty life through its liberal policies that apply political, economic and governmental fields. Here, in particular, Gunaltay Cabinet, firstly the new election law and because of these steps taken by the CHP, the party would lose in 1950 elections and 27 years of power would lose. Nevertheless, at the same time thanks to these transformations, CHP was able to reach 40% of the vote in 1950 elections despite the negativities of the one-party period, the burden of economic crises during the war years and the public tiredness.