Liberal Republican Party (Turkey)

The Free Republican Party (sometimes referred to as the Liberal Republican Party; in Turkish: Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası) was a political party founded by Fethi Okyar upon President Kemal Atatürk's request in the early years of the Turkish Republic.[2]

Free Republican Party Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası
President and Founder	Fethi Okyar
General Secretary	Nuri Conker
Founded	August 12, 1930 (1930-08-12)
Dissolved	November 17, 1930 (1930-11-17)
Headquarters	Ankara, Turkey
Ideology	Liberalism[1] Liberal democracy[1] Republicanism Nationalism Laicism
Political position	Centre-right
Colours	Blue
Politics of Turkey Political parties Elections

Party office in Samsun

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk requested that Okyar create it as an opposition party to confront the ruling Republican People's Party with the aim of establishing the tradition of multi-party democracy in Turkey. It participated to the local elections in 1930 and won 31 of 502 municipalities.[3]

The party advocated liberal views in the party program and the party regulation it adopted. Opinions such as lowering taxes, abolishing monopolies, the entry of foreign capital into the country, keeping private capital as the basis, introducing the principle of single-stage election, and ensuring freedom of thought and conscience were included in this program.[1] However, the party was quickly embraced by the conservatives who saw it as an opportunity to reverse the reforms of Atatürk, particularly regarding secularism, and was personally dissolved in November 1930 by Okyar who himself was an ardent supporter of the reforms.

The closure of the Free Republican Party left Turkey as a one-party state until the establishment of the National Development Party (Milli Kalkınma Partisi) in 1945 and the Democrat Party in 1946.