Bülent Ecevit
16th Prime Minister of Turkey
In office 11 January 1999 – 18 November 2002
President	Süleyman Demirel Ahmet Necdet Sezer
Deputy	Devlet Bahçeli Hüsamettin Özkan Şükrü Sina Gürel Mesut Yılmaz Hikmet Uluğbay
Preceded by	Mesut Yılmaz
Succeeded by	Abdullah Gül
In office 5 January 1978 – 12 November 1979
President	Fahri Korutürk
Deputy	Orhan Eyüboğlu Turhan Feyzioğlu Hikmet Çetin Faruk Sükan
Preceded by	Süleyman Demirel
Succeeded by	Süleyman Demirel
In office 21 June 1977 – 21 July 1977
President	Fahri Korutürk
Deputy	Orhan Eyüboğlu
Preceded by	Süleyman Demirel
Succeeded by	Süleyman Demirel
In office 26 January 1974 – 17 November 1974
President	Fahri Korutürk
Deputy	Necmettin Erbakan
Preceded by	Naim Talu
Succeeded by	Sadi Irmak
Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey
In office 30 June 1997 – 11 January 1999
Prime Minister	Mesut Yılmaz
Served with	İsmet Sezgin
Preceded by	Tansu Çiller
Succeeded by	Hikmet Uluğbay
Leader of the Democratic Left Party
In office 15 January 1989 – 25 July 2004
Preceded by	Necdet Karababa (acting)
Succeeded by	Zeki Sezer
In office 13 September 1987 – 7 March 1988
Preceded by	Rahşan Ecevit
Succeeded by	Necdet Karababa
3rd Leader of the Republican People's Party
In office 14 May 1972 – 30 October 1980
Preceded by	İsmet İnönü
Succeeded by	Deniz Baykal (1992)
16th Minister of Labour
In office 20 November 1961 – 20 February 1965
Preceded by	Cahit Talas
Succeeded by	İhsan Sabri Çağlayangil
Member of the Grand National Assembly
In office 20 October 1991 – 18 November 2002
Constituency	Zonguldak (1991) Istanbul (1995, 1999)
In office 27 October 1957 – 12 September 1980
Constituency	Ankara (1957, 1961) Zonguldak (1965, 1969, 1973, 1977)
Personal details
Born	(1925-05-28)28 May 1925 Istanbul, Turkey
Died	5 November 2006(2006-11-05) (aged 81) Ankara, Turkey
Resting place	Turkish State Cemetery, Ankara
Political party	Republican People's Party (1957–1980) Democratic Left Party (1989–2006)
Spouse(s)	Rahşan Ecevit ​ (m. 1946)​
Relations	Nazlı Ecevit (mother)
Alma mater	Robert College School of Oriental and African Studies
Signature
Nickname(s)	Karaoğlan, Halkçı Ecevit, Kıbrıs Fatihi

Mustafa Bülent Ecevit (Turkish: [mustaˈfa byˈlænt edʒeˈvit]; 28 May 1925 – 5 November 2006) was a Turkish politician, statesman, poet, writer, scholar, and journalist, who served as the Prime Minister of Turkey four times between 1974 and 2002. He served as prime minister in 1974, 1977, 1978–79, and 1999–2002. Ecevit was chairman of the Republican People's Party (CHP) between 1972 and 1980, and in 1987 he became chairman of the Democratic Left Party (DSP). He is credited with introducing social democratic politics to Turkey by synthesizing Kemalism with social democracy, thus making social democracy a core tenet in modern Kemalist ideology.

Ecevit began his political career when he was elected an MP from CHP in the 1957 election, and came to prominence as Minister of Labour in İsmet İnönü's cabinets, representing the rising left-wing faction of the party. Ecevit eventually became leader of the CHP in 1972; his leadership rejuvenated the party by reaching out to working class voters and cementing the party as "Left of Center". Ecevit became Prime Minister in 1974, during which he retracted the ban on cultivation of opium and invaded Cyprus. He formed two more governments in 1977 and 1978-79 which were marked by increasing polarization, deadlock, and political violence that ended with the 1980 coup.

After the 1980 coup, Ecevit, along with the notables of all other parties, was banned from politics for 10 years. During the ban, the Democratic Left Party (DSP) was established under the chairmanship of his wife, Rahşan Ecevit. When the political ban was lifted with a referendum held in 1987, he became the head of the DSP. While heading a caretaker government for the 1999 general election, PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured in Kenya, catapulting DSP into first place in the election. The DSP-MHP-ANAP coalition (1999–2002) introduced important political and economic reforms, as well as beginning Turkey's accession into the European Union. MHP's withdrawal from the coalition led to the government's collapse, and in the subsequent 2002 snap election, DSP was ejected from parliament for being unable to clear the electoral threshold. Ecevit resigned the chairmanship of the party in 2004. He died on Sunday, November 5, 2006, as a result of circulatory and respiratory failure.

Early life[edit]

Family[edit]

Mustafa Bülent was born 28 May 1925 in Istanbul to a middle-class family. He was named after his Kurdish^[1][2][3] grandfather Kürdizade Mustafa Şükrü Efendi.^[4][5][6] Mustafa Şükrü's son and Bülent's father Fahri Ecevit was a professor of forensic medicine in Ankara University's Law School. Fahri later entered politics and served as a Republican People's Party member of parliament for Kastamonu between 1943-1950. His mother of Bosniak ancestry, Fatma Nazlı, was among the first women in Turkey to paint professionally.^[7]

Bülent Ecevit's maternal great-grandfather was the Meccan Sheikh-ul-Islam Haci Emin Pasha, who served to protect the holy sights of Hejaz in the Ottoman Empire. The inheritance of his estate, which consisted of approximately 110 decares of land and 99 acres of the Masjid an-Nabawi was left to him once Ecevit's mother passed away. An unofficial valuation made by a Medina Court was put at $11 billion while Alphan Altınsoy, one of the lawyers of the case, stated that the total value of the lands reached $2 billion. In the end Ecevit donated the proceeds of the estate to the Directorate of Religious Affairs for the benefit of Turkish Hajjis, after his retirement from politics.^[8][9]

Education[edit]

In 1944, Ecevit graduated from Robert College in Istanbul. He started working as a translator at the General Directorate for Press and Publication (Turkish: Basın Yayın Genel Müdürlüğü). In 1946, shortly after marrying his classmate Zekiye Rahşan Aral, he moved to London, United Kingdom, to work in the Turkish embassy there. During his stay in London, he studied Bengali, Sanskrit and Art History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, but did not graduate.^[10] On a State Department fellowship, he returned to the US with a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship Scholarship in 1957 studying social psychology and Middle East history at Harvard University for eight months. He attended lectures on anti-communism with Olof Palme and Bertrand Russel.^{[citation needed]}

Journalism[edit]

Rahşan Ecevit, Bülent's wife

Bülent Ecevit was not only a politician but also a poet, journalist and a writer. In the 1950s, he worked as an editor for Ulus, and then Yeni Ulus, Halkçi, and Forum when it was shut down by the Democrat Party. Ecevit later went to the United States in 1955 as a guest journalist and worked at Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel newspapers in North Carolina.^[11][12] Even as a politician he continued writing for various newspapers, including the daily Milliyet in 1965, the monthly Özgür İnsan magazine in 1972, the weekly Arayış in 1981,^[13] and the monthly Güvercin magazine in 1988. Ecevit also translated works by Rabindranath Tagore, T. S. Eliot, and Omer Tarin into Turkish.^[14] Ecevit was successful in these literary endeavors despite never having graduated from a university, a fact that also prevented him from ever running for the Presidency of the Turkish Republic.^{[citation needed]}

Early political career[edit]

Writing about politics in Ulus made Bülent Ecevit interested in pursuing a career out of it, and so he registered with the Republican People's Party (CHP) Çankaya Branch in 1954,^[15] eventually taking part in its Youth Branch Executive Board. At the age of 32, he was elected into the Grand National Assembly (Turkey's parliament) for the first time in the 1957 elections representing Ankara as a member of the CHP. he was part of the party's delegation to the Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution after the 1960 military coup d'etat. Once the military went back to their barracks, Ecevit was elected as a Zonguldak deputy in the 1961 general elections. He served as the Minister of Labor in 3 coalition governments headed by CHP chairman İsmet İnönü, serving between 1961-65. The Law on Collective Bargaining, Strikes and Lockouts (24 July 1963) was signed into law, giving workers the right to strike and collective bargaining, as well as expanding social security privileges.

By 1965, Ecevit was leader of a young and energetic left-wing faction in the CHP, and pressured İnönü to adopt a new party program known as Left of Center for the general elections that year. The party lost the election to Süleyman Demirel's right-wing Justice Party.^[16] In opposition, the party was racked with internal power struggles, as Ecevit and Turhan Feyzioğlu fought over the party's political orientation. İnönü favored Ecevit, and in the 18th ordinary CHP congress held in 1966 he was elected secretary general of the CHP. An extraordinary congress held the next year saw 47 deputies and senators led by Feyzioğlu left CHP to found the Reliance Party. In 1969, secretary general Ecevit announced a village development program and adopted the slogan "The one who works the land, the one who uses the water [tr]."^[17]

Another interparty crisis occurred in the military memorandum of 1971 as Ecevit resigned from his position in protest against İnönü's decision to support the military government. He objected the memorandum, saying that it was directed against the Left of Center movement within the CHP. İnönü had an intense struggle with Ecevit saying, "It's me or Bülent!"^[18] promising that he would resign if his party did not have confidence in him. On 8 May 1972 İsmet İnönü lost a vote of confidence in an extraordinary congress, and was replaced by Ecevit. İnönü thus was the first general chairman in Turkish political history to lose his position as a result of a leadership vote. After the congress, Kemal Satır and his supporters left the party and founded the Republican Party, then which merged with the Reliance Party.

CHP Chairman[edit]

Bulent Ecevit with the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, at the White House, 31 May 1978.

In the 1973 presidential election, both Ecevit and Demirel agreed to vote against Faruk Gürler and the two compromised to support Fahri Korutürk as the president on 6 April 1973. However, CHP General Secretary Kamil Kırıkoğlu and his supporters, who voted for Gürler, resigned from the party.

First premiership (1974)[edit]

CHP won 185 deputies with 33.3 percent of the votes in the general elections of 14 October 1973, winning a plurality of the votes and seats in parliament. Ecevit was invited to form a government, and despite the party's secular credentials, he formed a coalition with the Islamist National Salvation Party (MSP) headed by Necmettin Erbakan.^[14] A general amnesty that saw 40,000 rightists and leftists leave jail was implemented,^[19] as well as lifting the ban on opium cultivation that was previously imposed by the military governments under heavy American pressure.

In July 1974, inter-communal violence in Cyprus once again flared up when pro-EOKA forces staged a coup against president Makarios. Ecevit, who went to London to met with British government officials, as the UK is also a guarantor state of Cyprus, but a common policy to the situation in Cyprus was not found. Ecevit decided to militarily intervene and invaded Cyprus, for which he is nicknamed the 'Conqueror of Cyprus' (Turkish: Kıbrıs Fatihi).^[20] This resulted in an arms embargo by the United States on Turkey.^[21]

Polarization[edit]

Bülent Ecevit and Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu

Ecevit, after much conflict with his coalition partner and hoping to gain more support for his government through a snap election, resigned as prime minister after just 10 months of governing. He was outflanked when the right-wing parties united form the First Nationalist Front of under Demirel's premiership. CHP defeated the Justice Party in the 1977 general elections by gathering 41.38% of the votes, the highest share of votes CHP and any left-wing party has ever gained in Turkish history. Despite winning the election, Ecevit did not have a majority and was unable to form a coalition, so he formed a minority government which lasted just one month. Demirel subsequently took over as Prime Minister and formed another right-wing government known as the Second Nationalist Front.

Ecevit's CHP was able to bring down Demirel's government by January 5 1978, after telling the press that "I am looking for 11 deputies who do not have gambling debts." He became Prime Minister for a third time by forming a government supported by the Democratic Party, Republican Reliance Party, and 11 independent MPs. His third premiership was marked by a peak in political violence which manifested in Kahramanmaraş and Malatya against Alevis and his supporters and their subsequent reprisals against right wing activists. Following the violence his government issued martial law on the final days of December 1978 in thirteen provinces mainly in southeastern Turkey, but also in Istanbul and Ankara.^[22] With allegations of corruption between Ecevit and the independent MPs, TÜSİAD requesting Ecevit's resignation by printing advertisements on newspapers, and defeat in the 1979 by-elections, Ecevit resigned as prime minister on 14 October 1979.^{[citation needed]} Without a majority, Demirel governed until another military intervention on September 12, 1980.

Ban from politics[edit]

With the 1980 coup led by the Chief of General Staff Kenan Evren, the Armed Forces seized the administration of the country. Bülent Ecevit, who was incarcerated for about a month in Hamzaköy, Gelibolu with his wife Rahşan, was later released. He was banned from politics for 10 years, along with the notables of all other parties, with the provisional article 4 of the 1982 Constitution adopted in the 7 November 1982 referendum. Saying "when he is trapped at a house and kept silent those who want to mess with a party can do whatever they want,"^[23][24] he resigned from the Chairmanship of the CHP on October 30, 1980.^[25] The Republican People's Party and all other existing political parties were banned by the military. Due to his opposition to the military rule, he was first banned from going abroad in April 1981. He was again imprisoned from December 1981 to February 1982 for an article he published in the Arayış magazine, which he started to publish in 1981. Arayış magazine was closed down by the military junta in 1982. Later, he was imprisoned again between April and June 1982 for making political statements to the foreign press.

This ban on politics did not stop Ecevit from continuing to participate in politics. Ecevit refused to associate himself with the successor parties created by old CHP supporters, like the Populist Party and Social Democracy Party. Instead his wife Rahşan Ecevit worked to establish a new political party: the Democratic Left Party (DSP). Bülent was often invited to speak in DSP rallies as a guest speaker. Many lawsuits filed against him on the grounds that he violated his ban on politics with his speeches. When the Populist Party and Social Democracy Party united under the name of the Social Democrat Populist Party (SHP) in November 1985 the Ecevits were criticized for refusing to also merge DSP with SHP, which served to divide the social-democratic/Kemalist votes.^[26]

DSP chairman[edit]

With his ban from politics being finally lifted in a referendum in 1987, he took over the chairmanship of DSP, inheriting the position from Rahşan. His party failed to enter the Grand National Assembly at the general elections held two months later, so Ecevit briefly resigned before returning as DSP leader in 1989. Emphasizing the need to preserve national unity and secularism in the general elections held in 1991, Ecevit criticized SHP, saying "Do not divide the social democratic votes." He also criticized SHP for forming an electoral alliance with the new pro-Kurdish People's Labor Party, and claimed that the SHP "cooperated with the separatists." Despite winning 11% of the vote, Ecevit and only six other DSP deputies entered parliament for the election. With the ban on the name "Republican People's Party" and acronym "CHP" now lifted, an initiative to refound the CHP came to the agenda. Ecevit was invited to the congress that refounded CHP on September 9, 1992, but he did not attend. SHP merged under the reconstituted CHP in 1995, but Ecevit again objected to uniting the Kemalist parties. To this day, DSP remains a separate political party from CHP.

DSP's fortunes changed after the 1995 elections, when the party won 76 seats out of 550. After two short-lived governments formed by Mesut Yılmaz and Erbakan, Ecevit became deputy prime minister in the last government of Mesut Yılmaz. In 1999, after nearly 20 years he returned to the premiership for the last time to form a minority government in the run-up to the 1999 general elections (56th government of Turkey). In those elections – helped by the fact that Abdullah Öcalan, head of the PKK was apprehended in Kenya and flown to Turkey during this period – Ecevit's party gained the largest number of seats, leading to Ecevit's final term as Prime Minister in a coalition with the Motherland Party (Turkish: Anavatan Partisi, ANAP) of Mesut Yılmaz and the Nationalist Movement Party (Turkish: Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) of Devlet Bahçeli.^{[citation needed]} Due to the fact that Ecevit never attained a degree from a higher educational institution, he was not able to run for president in the 2000 election, instead opting to support the independent politician Ahmet Necdat Sezer. This was despite the fact that his coalition partners offered to amend the constitution to allow for his running.

Forth premiership[edit]

Ecevit's last premiership was his longest at almost four years, and ultimately his most consequential.

Domestic affairs[edit]

Ecevit's government passed many important laws, including banking reform, unemployment insurance, a law to ensure the autonomy of the Central Bank, qualified industrial zones, tender law, employment incentive law, to name a few. The government changed 34 articles of the Constitution to widen fundamental rights and freedoms and undertook a number of reforms aimed at stabilizing the Turkish economy. These were in preparation for accession negotiations with the European Union. At the Helsinki Summit on 12 December 1999, Turkey was recognized as a full candidate country for the European Union. Three major EU harmonisation packages were passed during this government, including the most comprehensive package of 3 August 2002, which included the abolishment of capital punishment.^[27]

A massive economic crisis which originated from long overdue problems from previous governments, but ultimately triggered by an incident where president Sezer threw a copy of the Turkish constitution at Ecevit in a National Security Council meeting caused a drop in the currency in February 2001. But 2 months later, the government passed a series of very comprehensive economic reforms which included changes to the tender law, economic social council law, unemployment insurance, the restructuring of state banks, accreditation law, law on capital markets, and a law on industrial zones which enabled the high growth of 2002–2007 after DSP's fall from government.

During this period, the "Law of Conditional Release and Postponement," also known as the Rahşan Amnesty, (December 22, 2000) was passed in reaction to the large amount of hunger strikes occurring in prison, which gave conditional amnesty to crimes other than those committed against the state. Advocated by Rahşan, she commented on the outcome of her law in retrospect, saying "I asked for forgiveness for the poor, the murderers benefited." With this amnesty, the number of prisoners decreased from seventy thousand to forty thousand, but in three years it increased again to sixty-four thousand.

Foreign affairs[edit]

Bülent Ecevit and US vice president Dick Cheney

The government opposed the invasion of Iraq by the US.

Health concerns and retirement[edit]

Rumors about Bülent Ecevit's ill health were confirmed when he was taken to Başkent University Ankara Hospital on May 4, 2002. He was taken out of the hospital by Rahşan^[28] and brought to their home when his condition worsened.^[28] Ecevit, who rested at home for a while, was taken to the hospital again on 17 May and stayed there for 11 days. Rahşan Ecevit shared her doubts about the treatments in this period with the public. Her allegations were denied, but the issue was also brought to the agenda during the Ergenekon Case in the following years.

Discussions came to the fore whether Ecevit could continue his duty during his illness. 9 deputies from the DSP issued a statement on June 25, demanding "to lead a life without Ecevit under the leadership of Ecevit". Another group of DSP deputies, who made a press statement on behalf of Ecevit on July 5, 2002, openly criticized Deputy Prime Minister Hüsamettin Özkan, one of the closest names to Ecevit. On 7 July 2002, MHP Chairman Devlet Bahceli withdrew support from the coalition, and called for early elections on 3 November. The next day, Özkan resigned, which was followed by the resignation of a total of 63 deputies, 6 of whom were ministers. With the resignations, the coalition government lost its numerical support in the parliament. A summit held on 16 July 2002 between the leaders of the coalition government decided to hold early elections on 3 November. In the vote held in Grand National Assembly on 31 July 2002, 449 out of 514 deputies voted to hold an early election.^[29]

Allegations of corruption, the economic crisis, as well as Ecevit's poor health resulted in DSP facing an electoral wipeout in the 2002 general election, attaining only 1.2% of the vote and losing all of its MPs. In a press conference held on 22 May 2004 Ecevit announced Zeki Sezer as his successor to DSP, and resigned as chairman. He officially left active politics on 24 July 2004.^[14]

Assassination attempts[edit]

Bülent Ecevit was subject to six assassination attempts, five in Turkey,^[15] one in the United States. The most important of these took place on July 23, 1976 in New York City and on May 29, 1977 at Çiğli Airport. The attempts in the US came after the Cyprus Operation in 1976 and was prevented by an FBI agent who was Ecevit's bodyguard. Mehmet İsvan, brother of then-Mayor of Istanbul Ahmet İsvan [tr], was injured in the attempt at Çiğli Airport. Various testimonies allege that the weapon used in Çiğli Airport originated from the Special Warfare Department.^[30]

Ecevit recalled that he learned for the first time of the existence of Operation Gladio, a secret "stay-behind" NATO army, in 1974. He has also said he suspected "Counter-Guerrilla", the Turkish branch of Gladio, of responsibility for 1 May 1977 Taksim Square massacre in Istanbul, during which snipers fired on a protest rally of 500,000 citizens, killing 38 and injuring hundreds.

Illness and death[edit]

Ecevit's tomb at the State Cemetery in Ankara, Turkey.

After attending the funeral of Yücel Özbilgin, who was killed in the Turkish Council of State shooting on 19 May 2006, despite his advancing age, deteriorating health, and the opposition of his doctors, Ecevit suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and stayed in the intensive care unit of the Gülhane Military Medical Academy for a long time.^[31] Ecevit died of circulatory and respiratory failure at 22:40 (20:40 [UTC]) on Sunday, November 5, 2006, 172 days after he entered a vegetative state.

Immediately after his death the Grand National Assembly passed a law to allow for prime ministers and speakers of parliament to also be buried in the Turkish State Cemetery (Turkish: Devlet Mezarlığı) in Ankara, which allowed Bülent to be buried there.^[32] Upon Rahşan's passing in January 2020, the parliament voted to also for her to be interned in the State Cemetery too.^[33]

A state funeral held on 11 November 2006 at the State Cemetery after a funeral prayer in Kocatepe Mosque,^[34][35] attended by approximately a million people from all 81 provinces^[36] and from many countries, especially from Northern Cyprus. Five former presidents also attended the funeral.

Personality[edit]

Ecevit's trademark was his blue shirt and mariner's cap. He smoked Bitlis cigarettes and parliament cigarettes and wrote with an Erika typewriter, a gift from his brother-in-law, İsmail Hakkı Okday. He donated his 70-year-old typewriter to the METU Science and Technology Museum. He was known for his modest personality.^[37]

The origin of Ecevit's popular nickname "Karaoğlan" came in a visit to Kars shortly after his election as CHP chairman when found himself guest in the house of his friend Rasim Yarkadaş in Susuz district. Rasim's mother Şahzade Şahin welcomed her guest at the door of their house, hugging Ecevit and exclaiming in a distinct Kars dialect, "Save us from these troubles, Garaoğlan!"^[38]

Süleyman Demirel used the term "Allende-Büllende" to compare his rival, Ecevit, to the Chilean socialist statesman Salvador Allende, who was overthrown by a coup.^[39]

Ecevit was also known as Kıbrıs Fatihi "Conqueror of Cyprus" after the Cyprus Operation during his premiership, and also as Kenya Fatihi "Conqueror of Kenya" after the operation to capture Abdullah Öcalan.

Legacy[edit]

Monument in İzmir to Bülent and Rahşan Ecevit and the Cyprus operation

Kartal Bülent Ecevit Cultural Center was put into service in 2005. In 2012 the name of Zonguldak Karaelmas University was changed to “Bülent Ecevit University." A wax sculpture of him began to be exhibited at the Tayfun Talipoğlu Typewriter Museum, which was opened in Odunpazarı, Eskişehir in May 2016. In 2021, a park in İzmir's Güzelbahçe district was named after him and his statue was erected.

Works[edit]

Poetry[edit]

• Şiirler (Poems) (1976)
• Işığı Taştan Oydum, Tekin Yayınevi (I Carved Light Out of Stone) (1978)
• El Ele Büyüttük Sevgiyi (We Raised Love Hand in Hand) (1997)
• Bir Şeyler Olacak Yarın (All Poems), Doğan Kitapçılık (2005)

Political[edit]

• Ortanın Solu (Left of the Center) (1966)
• Bu Düzen Değişmelidir (This Order Should Change) (1968)
• Atatürk ve Devrimcilik (Atatürk and Revolutionism) (1970)
• Kurultaylar ve Sonrası (Party Congresses and After) (1972)
• Demokratik Sol ve Hükümet Bunalımı (Democratic Left and Government Crisis) (1974)
• Demokratik Solda Temel Kavramlar ve Sorunlar (Basic Definitions and Problems in Democratic Left) (1975)
• Dış Politika (Foreign Policy) (1975)
• Dünya-Türkiye-Milliyetçilik (World-Turkey-Nationalism) (1975)
• Toplum-Siyaset-Yönetim (Society-Politics-Government) (1975)
• İşçi-Köylü El Ele (Workers and Peasants Hand in Hand) (1976)
• Türkiye / 1965–1975 (Turkey / 1965–1975) (1976)
• Umut Yılı: 1977 (Year of Hope: 1977) (1977)

See also[edit]

• Left of Center (Turkey)
• Karaoğlan
• Taksim Square massacre

Bibliography[edit]

Books[edit]

• Faruk Bildirici, Kuzum Bülent (My Lamb Bülent) (2000)
• Fikret Bila, Phoenix- Ecevit'in Yeniden Doğuşu (Phoenix- Ecevit's Rebirth) (2001)
• Aras Erdoğan, Umut Adam Ecevit (Man of Hope Ecevit) (2006)
• Aytekin Gezici, Bülent Ecevit, Bir Karaoğlan Masalı (Bülent Ecevit, a Karaoğlan Tale) (2006)
• Cüneyt Arcayürek, Bir Özgürlük Tutkunu Bülent Ecevit (An enthusiest of Freedom Bülent Ecevit) (2006)
• Can Dündar and Rıdvan Akar, Ecevit ve Gizli Arşivi (Ecevit and Secret Archives) (2008)
• Emrah Konuralp, Ecevit ve Milliyetçilik (Ecevit and Nationalism) (2013)
• Fatih Yaşlı, "Halkçı Ecevit" Ecevit, Ortanın Solu, CHP (1960-1980) ("Halkçı Ecevit" Ecevit, Left of Center, CHP (1960-1980)) (2020)

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Siyasetin Şairi, Karaoğlan, Hürriyet, November 2002 (in Turkish)
• A Selection of Ecevit's Poetry (in Turkish)