ADIYAMAN IN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY PERIOD A DISCUSSION ON THE FOUNDATION OF THE PROVINCIAL

Abstract

One of the controversial issues of the Democratic Party's 10-year power is the division of Malatya into two after the 1954 elections and the establishment of the Adiyaman province. Adiyaman was converted into a province by Democrats almost a century after the region was connected to Malatya during the administrative division arrangements made in the Tanzimat period, which was considered as the era of transformation of the Ottoman Empire. After the 1954 elections, the division of Malatya, the hometown of the People's Republican Party leader, İsmet İnönü, and in the same period, the conversion of the province of Kırşehir, the hometown of the leader of the Republican Peasant Party, Osman Bolukbasi, caused wide debate. The debates on the action that Democratic Party government punished the regions which voted for the opposition parties in the elections started in those days and today it is generally regarded as an accepted idea in the anti- Democratic Party circles. However, neither Ismet Inonu nor members of the Republican People's Party objected to Adiyaman leaving Malatya and becoming a province. In the draft negotiations held in the parliament, Republican People's Party lawmakers supported the bill, and their objections were not on regulations of the new province, Adiyaman; rather, their objections centred on the districts to be connected to this new province. Ismet Inonu did not object to the establishment of Adiyaman by the division of his hometown Malatya into two; however, he concentrated his criticism more on transforming Kirsehir into a district. Therefore, there is no concrete data to consider the separation of Malatya, which was not considered a problem for the members of the Republican People's Party of that time, as the Democratic Party government’s punishment of a province where citizens voted for the opposition party.