Today in History – 21 July

A shady first free election

As the first multi-party election in the history of the Republic, the general parliamentary election of July 21, 1946 was conducted in a single phase in compliance with the new Election Law enacted on June 5th of the same year. The election resulted in CHP, DP, and Independents winning 396, 65, and 7 seats in the Parliament, respectively.

1946 elections were held without judicial control and were based on the open vote, secret count principle, which led to manipulation and misuse of authority in the elections. Coupled with the meddlesomeness of certain individuals within the CHP organization and elections commissions, the reliability of the elections was jeopardized. After the elections, leading names of the Democrat Party harshly criticized the wrongdoing in the elections.

Due to these reasons, the election of 1946 came to be known as the “shady election” and greatly troubled İnönü, who embarked upon free elections with good intentions.