Ali Fuat Cebesoy - Political Life

Political Life

After the declaration of the Republic, he became a deputy. In this new era of his political career, he joined the founders of the opposition party, the Progressive Republican Party, and he was elected as the general secretary of the party in 1924. During the rebellion of Şeyh Sait, the Law on the Maintenance of Order was affected and the Progressive Republican Party was closed down. Ali Fuat Cebesoy was arrested with the accusations of participating in the attempt of assassination against Atatürk and was taken to İzmir. He was tried at the İzmir Independence Court and was acquitted in 1926.

He retired with the title of general. He stayed away from politics for four years between 1927 and 1931). In 1931, he returned to politics and elected as a deputy from Konya. He served as the deputy of Konya and Eskişehir until 1950. He also served as Minister of Public Works from 1939 to 1943, Minister of Transportation (1943–1946) and as the president of the Parliament in 1948. He was an independent candidate of the Democratic Party from Eskişehir in the first democratic elections of the Turkish history held on May 14, 1950 and he was elected with a landslide. In the following years, he was elected as a deputy from İstanbul and served in the parliament for ten more years between 1950 and 1960. After the military coup on May 27, 1960, he was initially arrested by the junta with the rest of the Democratic Party MPs but later set free. After this experience he quit politics for good.

In accordance with his will, he was buried to the backyard of a mosque near Geyve train station, where the first shots of the Turkish War of Independence were fired, when he died at the age of 86. However, his remains were moved to the Turkish State Cemetery in Ankara, after the military coup of 1980.

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