In 1930, Adnan Menderes organized a branch of the short-lived Liberal Republican Party (Turkish: Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası) in Aydın.

In June 1945, Menderes, together with Celâl Bayar, Fuat Köprülü and Refik Koraltan demanded more political and democratic freedom in their Motion with four signatures.

[10] He supported an eventual military alliance with the Western Bloc and during his tenure, Turkey participated in the Korean War, and was admitted to the NATO in 1952.

[11] With the economic support of the United States via the Marshall Plan, agriculture was mechanized; and transport, energy, education, health care, insurance and banking progressed.

[citation needed] Other historical accounts highlight the economic crisis in the mid-1950s, during Menderes's term, which saw Turkey's economy contract with an 11% GDP per capita decrease in 1954,[12] as one of the reasons for the government's orchestration of the Istanbul pogrom against the Greek ethnic minority.

[14] In retaliation, in Istanbul thousands of shops, houses, churches and even graves belonging to members of the ethnic Greek minority were destroyed within a few hours, over a dozen people were killed and many more injured.

[15] The ongoing struggle between Turkey and Greece over control of Cyprus, and Cypriot intercommunal violence, formed part of the backdrop to the pogrom.

Although a minority, the Greek population played a prominent role in the city's business life, making it a convenient scapegoat during the economic crisis in the mid-1950s.

[18] The 1961 Yassıada trials after the 1960 coup d'état accused Menderes and Foreign Minister Fatin Rüştü Zorlu of planning the riots, finding that the supposed assault was in fact a provocation organised by the Menderes government, which planted the bomb in Thessaloniki and also bussed infuriated villagers from Anatolia into Istanbul with the aim of "punishing" Greeks.

[19] On 17 February 1959, the Turkish Airlines aircraft Vickers Viscount Type 793, registration TC-SEV, carrying Adnan Menderes and a party of government officials on a flight from Istanbul to London Gatwick Airport crashed a few miles short of the runway, near Rusper, Sussex, in heavy fog and caught fire.

Menderes, sitting in the back part of the plane, survived the accident almost uninjured and was hospitalized at the London Clinic 90 minutes after receiving first aid from Margaret Bailey, a local resident who rushed to the crash site.

Menderes who was well liked by the people in general and also had the support of the Army Chief of Staff General Cemal Gürsel who, in a personal patriotic memorandum, had advocated that Menderes should become the president of the republic to secure the national unity, became increasingly unpopular among the intellectuals, university students and a group of radical young officers in the military, who feared that Kemalist ideology was in danger.

A military coup on 27 May 1960, organized by 37 "young officers", deposed the government, and Menderes was arrested along with Bayar and all the leading party members.

[23] They were charged with violating the constitution, and embezzling money from state funds, and ordering the Istanbul pogrom, in which dozens of Greeks were killed.

On 17 September 1990, the 29th anniversary of Menderes' execution, he was posthumously pardoned by the Turkish Parliament and his grave was moved to a mausoleum named after him in Istanbul.

In 2006, Mehmet Feyyat, the attorney general of Istanbul at the time, suggested that "İsmet İnönü and Cemal Gürsel placed phone calls to the prison's administration to halt Menderes' execution, but the Communications Office of the junta cut off the lines."