of the bureaucracy, and encouraging private initiative while maintaining the principle of statism. DP achieved relative success against CHP in 1946 election and elected 62 deputies. Bayar was also elected as a deputy from İstanbul. Between 1946 and 1950, as the leader of the opposition, he led a sometimes hardened opposition to his former party. At the first congress of the DP in January 1947, Bayar demanded that the Election Law be amended, so that the same person cannot be both president and party chairman, and that other antidemocratic laws should be abolished. Although the DP was supported by religious circles who were dissatisfied with the effective secularism policy of the one-party period, Bayar's Kemalist background was seen as an assurance of the party's commitment to secularism. But he was among the moderates in the DP regarding the opposition to the CHP. The "extremists" later left the party and founded the Nation Party (which would be closed in 1953). Presidency In the first free elections in Turkish history, the Democrats won the 1950 general election with a 53% popular mandate. Though Bayar didn't aspire to become president, parliament elected him as president of Turkey on 22 May 1950. He subsequently resigned from the DP leadership, though regularly discussed policy with his prime minister and DP leader successor, Menderes. He was the first president of the Republic without a military background. He was also the first to do away with a non-partisan appearance, participating in election rallies and walking with a cane with an engraving of the DP logo. He was re-elected in 1954 and 1957, serving for 10 years as president. During Bayar's presidency relations with the Western bloc improved and after the Turkish Straits Crisis, Turkey joined the Korean War in 1951 and then NATO in February 1952. Bayar became the first president of Turkey to make an official visit to the United States in 1954. In a speech at a DP rally in İstanbul before the 1957 election, he announced that "Turkey will become a "Little America" in 30 years. During ten-years of Democrat rule, Turkish society went through deep transformations. An inflationary economic policy encouraging private enterprise was followed, though the role of the state was not reduced. Political participation increased, leading to a large cadre of Anatolians entering politics and business. Although secularism was not abandoned, the explicitly secularist policy of the one-party regime was abandoned.