The multi-party period of the Republic of Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye'de çok partili dönem) started in 1945. with the establishment of the opposition Liberal Republican Party (Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası) by Ali Fethi Okyar in 1930 after President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk asked Okyar to establish the party as part of an attempted transition to multi-party democracy in Turkey.
Very popular at first, the government, led by Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, relaxed the restrictions on public Islam and presided over a booming economy thanks to the Marshall Plan.
In the later half of the decade, however, the government introduced censorship laws limiting dissent, while it became plagued by high inflation and a massive debt.
The army balked at the government's instrumentalization of it, and on May 27, 1960, General Cemal Gürsel led a military coup d'état removing President Celal Bayar and Prime Minister Menderes.
In 1969, the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) was founded by Alparslan Türkeş, a member of the Counter-Guerrilla, the Turkish branch of NATO's stay-behind army.
The fractured political scene and poor economy led to mounting violence between ultranationalists and communists in the streets of Turkey's cities.
The NATO stay-behind army Counter-Guerrilla, related to the National Intelligence Organization (Turkish: Millî İstihbarat Teşkilâtı, MIT) engaged itself in domestic terror and killed hundreds.
[2] Out of the rubble of the previous political system came a single-party governance under Turgut Özal's Motherland Party (ANAP), which combined a globally oriented economic program with conservative social values.
In 1997, the military, citing his government's support for religious policies deemed dangerous to Turkey's secular nature, sent a memorandum to Erbakan requesting that he resign, which he did.
A new government was formed by ANAP and Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DSP) supported from the outside by the center-left CHP, led by Deniz Baykal.
A series of economic shocks led to new elections in 2002, bringing into power the religiously conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) of former mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Although the 2013 protests in Turkey started as a response against the removal of Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul, they have sparked riots across the country in cities such as Izmir and Ankara as well.
[7] Three and a half million people are estimated to have taken an active part in almost 5,000 demonstrations across Turkey connected with the original Gezi Park protest.
[23][24] In the aftermath of the failed coup, major purges have occurred, including that of military officials, police officers, judges, governors and civil servants, as well as factions within the media.