During the Young Turk era (1913-1950), men educated in Ottoman military and law schools dominated the politics of the late Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. These schools were incubators for the new political elite and the personal networks created in these institutions had long-lasting significance. Indeed, such men also came to dominate domestic politics in nearby Ottoman successor states such as Iraq and Syria. In Turkey, Süleyman Demirel’s ascent to the premiership in 1965 heralded a shift in the educational background and outlook of Turkey’s leaders. For the next several decades, political elites trained in engineering or business more often than not occupied the country’s highest offices. This paper examines this shift and its consequences for Turkish politics, arguing that Turkey’s interwar focus on autarkic development and laicism, the advent of multi-party elections after the Second World War, and significant changes in the state’s bureaucratic structure made possible a new kind of political class. This political class had very different ideas about the problems facing Turkish society and how best to exercise political power. From the perspective of global history, the rise of the mühendis in Turkish politics paralleled similar changes in other developing countries, most notably China, after the Second World War. This paper will examine the political development of other Ottoman successor states in this respect and discuss the postwar fate of the Ottoman-educated political classes ruling in neighboring countries.