In his biggest public event since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inaugurated an ambitious but controversial project that pays homage to his political idol Adnan Menderes, the center-right prime minister who ended in the gallows after modern Turkey’s first military coup in 1960.
The May 27 inauguration of the giant memorial project on Yassiada, a once-picturesque and uninhabited island 16 kilometers (10 miles) off Istanbul, came at the 60th anniversary of the May 27 military coup that ousted the Democrat Party, which rose to power in Turkey’s first free multi-party elections in 1950 and held the reins of the country for a decade.
