Fethi Okyar
Ali Fethi Okyar was a Turkish diplomat and politician, who also served as a military officer and diplomat during the last decade of the Ottoman Empire. He was also the second Prime Minister of Turkey and the second Speaker of the Turkish Parliament after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.Biography
He was born in the Ottoman town of Prilep in Manastir Vilayet to a Circassian family. In 1913, he joined the Committee of Union and Progress and was elected as the secretary general. In 1924 he was appointed Prime Minister as the successor of İsmet Inönü. But only a few months later in March 1925 he was replaced again by Inönü as a more decisive policy was needed to suppress the Sheikh Said rebellion. Following he was appointed the Turkish ambassador to France in Paris. In 1930, while serving as Ambassador in Paris, he was asked by Atatürk, during a meeting in Yalova, to establish the Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası, an early party of opposition, in order to establish the tradition of multi-party democracy in Turkey. However, when the government noticed the support of this opposition party among Islamists, it was declared illegal and closed down, a situation similar to that of the Progressive Republican Party, which had lasted for a few months in 1924. He later served as Justice Minister from 1939 to 1941.
