Turgut Özal

Halil Turgut Özal was a Turkish politician, bureaucrat, engineer and statesman, the eighth president of Turkey from 9 November 1989 until his death in office on 17 April 1993, and prime minister from 1983 to 1989 as founder and leader of the Motherland Party; he had earlier been deputy prime minister in Bülend Ulusu's military government between 1980 and 1982. ^{1 2}

Özal's name is tied to the "24 January decisions" and then to his leadership of Turkey's turn to an open market economy: capital controls abolished, the foreign-exchange regime liberalised, and an aggressive export drive under the watchword "Export-or-Die" that won Turkish contractors some $20 billion of contracts in the Gulf and Libya in the 1980s. ¹ He held a firm vision of Turkey as a bridge between Asia and Europe, and strongly believed that Islam is compatible with democracy and accountability, and that a Muslim country can also be modern, scientific and progressive. ¹

Özal was born on 13 October 1927 in Malatya, the eldest of three sons; his father Mehmet Sıddık Özal was a bank clerk who had trained as an imam before becoming a branch manager at the state Agricultural Bank, and his mother Hafize, from Çemişgezek in Tunceli and of half or full Kurdish descent, was an elementary school teacher associated with the İskenderpaşa community, affiliated with the Naqshbandi Sufi order — a group Özal himself later joined; the article describes his parents as "devout Muslims". ¹

He completed elementary school in Silifke, middle school in Mardin and high school in Kayseri, and studied electrical engineering at Istanbul Technical University, graduating in 1950. ¹

Between 1950 and 1952 Özal worked at the State Electrical Power Planning Administration, continued his studies in the United States on electrical energy and engineering management in 1952–1953, then worked in state planning organisations, lectured at Middle East Technical University, was employed by the World Bank between 1971 and 1973, and chaired private Turkish companies until 1979. ¹

In 1977 he stood unsuccessfully for parliament as a National Salvation Party candidate from İzmir; in 1979 he became undersecretary to Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel and played a major role in developing the economic reforms known as the 24 January decisions, which paved the way for greater neoliberalism in the Turkish economy. ¹ After the 1980 coup the junta appointed him state minister and deputy prime minister responsible for the economy in Bülend Ulusu's government, where he continued implementing the reforms until he resigned in July 1982 over disagreements on economic policy. ¹

On 20 May 1983 Özal founded the Motherland Party (ANAP) and became its leader; the party won a parliamentary majority in the 1983 general election and he became prime minister on 13 December 1983, and he was returned in 1987 albeit with a reduced vote share. ^{1 2} In his tenure the Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEİK) was established in 1986, he began taking delegations of business leaders on his foreign trips, and he became the head of the transformation of Turkey's social and economic outlook within the wider global trend of neoliberal transformation. ¹

His foreign policy focused on averting war with Greece following the Şimşek Incident and temporarily allowed Bulgarian Turks to emigrate to Turkey. ¹

On 18 June 1988 he survived an assassination attempt during a party congress: one bullet wounded his finger and another missed his head; the assassin, Kartal Demirağ, was captured and sentenced to life imprisonment but pardoned by Özal in 1992, was allegedly a Counter-Guerrilla contracted by the movement's hawkish leader, and was re-tried in 2008 and sentenced to twenty years. ¹

Özal was elected president on 9 November 1989 — the first president born in the Republic of Turkey rather than the Ottoman Empire — and Yıldırım Akbulut replaced him as prime minister. ¹ Despite the largely ceremonial role he remained occupied with government business, intervening for example in the 1990 Zonguldak miners' strikes, and disputes over presidential and prime-ministerial duties became dominant when Süleyman Demirel became prime minister after the 1991 election. ¹

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union he sought alliances with the Turkic republics of Central Asia and Azerbaijan, participated in the first summit of Turkic republics in Ankara in 1992, began the Southeastern Anatolia development project with the Atatürk Dam in Şanlıurfa, and maintained close relations with US President George H. W. Bush during the Gulf War and the end of the Cold War. ¹

Özal agreed to negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK); a first round in the early 1990s led to a PKK cease-fire declaration on 17 March 1993, though the article notes that few Turkish politicians were interested, nor was more than part of the PKK itself. ¹

This section should be read as a presentation of differing positions reported in the sources, not as the museum's verdict on them.

On the Armenian question: Özal came to believe that Turkey's continuing denial of the Armenian genocide harmed his country's international relations, and wanted a compromise with the Armenians; in 1984 he tasked his advisers with costing recognition and compromise, and in 1991 he said before journalists and diplomats, after meeting representatives of the Armenian community: "What happens if we compromise with the Armenians and end this issue? What if we officially recognize the 1915 Armenian genocide and face up to our past? Let's take the initiative and find the truth. Let's pay the political and economic price, if necessary." ¹ His projects included the "Van project", returning some lands in Van to Armenians, but he made no concrete progress because his policies sparked criticism and fury among the Turkish public, his party and the military, who considered negotiating with the Armenian diaspora itself unacceptable; after his death the compromise policies were abandoned. ¹

Özal died on 17 April 1993 of a suspicious heart attack while still in office, just before he had the chance to negotiate with the PKK; after his death the hope of reconciliation evaporated and the Castle Plan, which he had opposed, was enacted. ¹ He was buried in Istanbul next to the mausoleum of Adnan Menderes in a state ceremony attended by hundreds of thousands and dignitaries of 72 countries. ¹

His wife Semra Özal claimed he had been poisoned by lemonade and questioned the lack of an autopsy, and the blood samples taken to determine the cause of death were lost or disposed of. ¹ In September 2012 a court ruled his grave be opened; on 3 October 2012 the body was exhumed and found to contain the banned insecticide DDT at ten times the normal level, and the autopsy report of 12 December 2012 stated that the body contained poison but the cause of death was unclear; a retired general tried for his murder from September 2013 was eventually cleared of all charges. ¹ Some journalists and politicians maintain that his death was part of a covert military coup in 1993 aimed at stopping the peace plans — a reported claim the museum does not adopt. ¹

Özal was a member of the Community of İskenderpaşa, a Turkish branch of the Naqshbandi tariqah; with his wife Semra he had two sons and a daughter. This record notes no family detail beyond what understanding his public career requires. ¹

Numerous streets, parks and public buildings in Turkey are named after Özal, and his legacy remains central to reading modern Turkey: the architect of its economic opening, and the first civilian president to take on two taboo files at once, the Kurdish question and the Armenian question. ¹

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.
• Later translations and edits of this article require periodic review with clear update dates.