Scholars seeking to explain the popularity of the Democrat Party ("DP"), the first democratically elected party in the history of the Turkish Republic, have seen its strategy as an oligarchic bait and switch in which Islamic piety and social conservativism were used to distract voters from the bread and butter issues of social justice. This paper contests this view, arguing instead that a) many nonelite Turkish voters benefitted materially from the DP's policies, and b) the DP's pro-capitalist rhetoric did not appeal to the wealthy alone, but in fact elicited wide support from peasants and workers seeking a better life through market-based growth. Campaigning on promises of a "millionaire in every neighborhood" and promising to transform Turkey into a "little America" within twenty years time, the DP won overwhelming electoral victories and excited the hopes of millions. Examining the rhetoric of the party and its amazing popularity throughout the countryside through a variety of primary and secondary sources in Turkish and English, this paper argues that it was not only urban economic elites who were attracted to the DP's pro-market messages but peasants and workers as well. Offering hope for material gain for a people disenchanted with the state after years of authoritarian rule, the DP gained support not through the use of Islamic traditionalist symbolic politics alone, but also its promises of success, optimism, and modernity as well. Academic analyses all too often paint Turkish politics in binary class terms, with parties serving as the agents of elite social groups. Politicized Islam is seen as the handmaiden of capitalist oligarchy, with the Turkish workers and peasantry its guileless dupes. This paper argues for a more nuanced and accurate understanding of Turkish society of the 1950s by stressing the appeal of market rhetoric among nonelites as well as the importance of sectoral divisions between farmers, urban workers, artisans, and bureaucrats - conflicts of interest not easily reducible to dichotomies of class. Contesting the view that the DP was the vehicle of capitalist elites alone, I aim to demonstrate that the DP in fact shunted large amounts of the nation's wealth to the countryside in ways that were both redistributive and economically unsustainable, leading to inflation and debt crises. Thus, this paper concludes that populism rather than conservatism must be used to understand the DP and its popularity throughout the 1950s.