It has been 65 years since Adnan Menderes was hanged by a military junta, but the memory of the prime minister is still vivid. He is remembered as a beloved figure and one of the first victims of anti-democratic coups in the history of the Republic of Türkiye.

On Thursday, dignitaries, including Interior Ministry officials, attended a remembrance ceremony for Menderes in Istanbul, while President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a statement denouncing the unfair sentencing of Menderes, Foreign Minister Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and Finance Minister Hasan Polatkan. Menderes was executed on Sept. 17, 1961, while Zorlu and Polatkan were hanged one day earlier.

Menderes, whose Democrat Party swept to power with 52.7% of the vote in 1950, governed for a decade and is remembered for liberalizing the economy, expanding religious freedoms by ending the ban on the Arabic call to prayer and steering Türkiye into NATO membership in 1952. His populist slogan, "Enough. The nation has the word,” earned him lasting popularity as "the people’s man.”

On May 27, 1960, a group of officers calling themselves the National Unity Committee seized power, dissolved Parliament and detained leading officials, including President Celal Bayar and Menderes. Their trials were held on Yassıada Island, where Menderes and other officials faced charges ranging from constitutional violations to mishandling unrest.

On Sept. 15, 1961, a special court sentenced 15 men to death. The junta approved the executions of Menderes, Zorlu and Polatkan. Menderes was hanged on Imralı Island near Istanbul. Bayar’s sentence was commuted due to his age.

The executions shocked the nation, and in 1990, Türkiye’s Parliament formally restored the trio’s honor. Their remains were moved to a state memorial in Istanbul. Yassıada, where the trials were held, was later renamed Democracy and Freedom Island.

Speaking at the commemoration ceremony by the graves of the three men, Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi announced that the body of his predecessor, Ismail Namık Gedik, would also be relocated to the memorial site. Gedik was arrested along with three men but died while in detention. He was buried in Ankara after a probe into his death was closed by the military junta, which ruled that he had died after jumping from the window of the military school where he was being held. Gedik’s family objected to the ruling. Çiftçi said the putschists claimed Gedik had committed suicide, but they rejected "that narrative conceived in the dark days of the coup.” "He is a martyr of the May 27 oppression,” Çiftçi stated.

The minister said at the ceremony that Menderes and the three ministers were representatives of the "nation’s will to have a say in its own future” and that this will "was hijacked” in 1960. He denounced the trial process on Yassıada. "(The putschists) thought the nation’s will would be erased when they removed Menderes, Zorlu, Polatkan and Gedik, but you cannot erase the nation’s love for them; you cannot erase the nation’s memory,” he said.

"Throughout the period stretching from the May 27 coup to March 12, from Sept. 12 to Feb. 28, from the April 27 e-memorandum to July 15, the tutelage mentality manifested itself in different forms,” Çiftçi said, referring to coups, coup attempts and ultimatums to elected governments by powerful military figures who portrayed themselves as guardians of Türkiye and collaborated with like-minded politicians while attempting to oust governments in 1960, 1971, 1980, 1997 and 2007.

On July 15, 2016, infiltrators from the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) within the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) again tried to seize power, only to meet strong public resistance, for the first time in the history of the Republic of Türkiye.

"On the night of July 15, our noble nation, taking to the streets and squares at the call of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, stood up to the tanks and said ‘enough’ to this chain of tutelage in a historic uprising. This noble nation will never forget either the men of the people who emerged from its own ranks and paid a price for the sake of the nation, or the tutelage mentality and the cruel coup plotters who fought against our people’s values, sacred beliefs, will and history,” Çiftçi said.