Ali Fuat Cebesoy

Ali Fuat Cebesoy (born September 1882, İstanbul – death January 10 1968, İstanbul) was a Turkish officer, politician and statesman. His father is İsmail Fazıl Paşa and mother is Zekiye Hanım. He attended the War School (1902) and graduated from the Turkish War College (1905) as the first in his class, while Atatürk was the second best in grades.

Military background

He went to Beirut and Thessalonica as an intern, and then became a lieutenant (1907). After serving as the military attaché in Rome, Italy he participated in the Balkan Wars. As a reward to his superior success during the defense of Ionnia, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

During the World War I, he served as a commander of division, army corps and army. Because of his successes, he was promoted to the rank of colonel in 1915 and major general in 1917, and became the commander of the XXth Army Corps. At the last phase of the war, he fought on the fronts of the Caucasus and Palestine. After the Montrose Ceasefire was signed, he transferred the headquarters of his army corps from Syria to Ereğli, then to Konya and to Ankara.

Turkish Revolutionary War

Ali Fuat Pasha organized the resistance in Western Turkey against the Greek invasion and thus actually started the National Independence War. He contributed to the resistance forces against the Greek army that had begun to occupy Western Anatolia. He signed Amasya Protocol and at the end of the Sivas Congress in 1920, he was appointed as the general commander of the National Forces by the Board of Representatives. The presence of him and his army in Ankara is the reason behind Atatürk's choice of this city as the center of Turkish War of Independence.

The same year, he was elected as a deputy at the First Parliament. He was appointed ambassador to Moscow, Soviet Union in 1921, as he had quarrels with Ismet Inonu, who was appointed by Atatürk as the Commander of the Western Front although Inonu had failed against Greek invasion at Kutahya-Altıntas in 1921. By personally negotiating with Lenin and Stalin in Moscow, he signed the Treaty of Moscow (1921) along the lines of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty as the representative of the Ankara government, which provided financial and military support from the Soviet Union to the Turkish Independence War, in exchange for the return of Batum back to Soviet Union. After finishing his duty as an ambassador, he was elected as the second spokesman of the Turkish Parliament.

Political life

After the declaration of the Republic, he became a deputy. In this new era of his political career, he joined the founders of the opposition party, the Progressive Republican Party, and he was elected as the general secretary of the party in 1924. During the rebellion of Şeyh Sait, the Law on the Maintenance of Order was affected and the Progressive Republican Party was closed down. Ali Fuat Cebesoy was arrested with the accusations of participating in the attempt of assassination against Atatürk and was taken to İzmir. He was tried at the İzmir Independence Court and was acquitted in 1926.

He retired with the title of general. He stayed away from politics for four years between 1927 and 1931). In 1931, he returned to politics and elected as a deputy from Konya. He served as the deputy of Konya and Eskişehir until 1950. He also served as Minister of Public Works from 1939 to 1943, Minister of Transportation (1943–1946) and as the president of the Parliament in 1948. He was an independent candidate of the Democratic Party from Eskişehir in the first democratic elections of the Turkish history held on May 14, 1950 and he was elected with a landslide. In the following years, he was elected as a deputy from İstanbul and served in the parliament for ten more years between 1950 and 1960. After the military coup on May 27, 1960, he was initially arrested by the junta with the rest of the Democratic Party MPs but later set free. After this experience he quit politics for good.

In accordance with his will, he was buried to the backyard of a mosque near Geyve train station, where the first shots of the Turkish War of Independence were fired, when he died at the age of 86. However, his remains were moved to the Turkish State Cemetery in Ankara, after the military coup of 1980.