Turkey loses its world class politician

Is there any other politician in the world who was overthrown by the military twice and then elected again to the country?s top posts by the people?

Turkey?s 9th president, Süleyman Demirel, was perhaps the only example in political history.

Demirel entered politics in his early thirties. Being a poor peasant boy from the ?slamköy village in the small Western Anatolian province of Isparta, he made his way up to the civil engineering department at Istanbul Technical University thanks to the public education model of the young Turkish Republic and started to work as a water engineer. One of the first projects he took part in was the irrigation project of his ?slamköy village in 1960, which is still in use by farmers there.

An Eisenhower Fellowships exchange program in 1955 in the United States had opened up his vision about what could be done for a developing economy, and he would go on to be nicknamed the ?King of the Dams? in his future political career.

He got into politics in 1961, right after the military coup that had taken place a year before. His aim in politics was not only about developing the economy, but also about developing democracy. In his early years in politics he managed to supervise the construction of many dams, power plants and heavy industry facilities, including three big Soviet investments, an iron and steel plant, an oil refinery and an aluminum refinery, as a NATO member country amid the Cold War.

But when the general issued an ultimatum to his government in 1971, he had to leave the prime minister?s office, with disturbing memories of the execution of the country?s prime minister, Adnan Menderes, together with foreign and finance ministers through showcase military court trials after the 1960 coup...