The election of 1950 removed Turkey’s ruling Republican People’s Party (CHP) from power, ending twenty-seven years of single-party rule. This paper aims to understand how members of the CHP—the former ruling elite—made sense of their defeat and adapted themselves to a new set of political conditions; it aims, in short, to capture how “transitions to democracy” take root in a political culture—or do not. Using memoirs, newspapers, and parliamentary debate records, this paper considers events between 1950 and 1954—the “golden years” of the Democrat Party and an electoral nadir for the CHP. In particular, the paper focuses on the 1951 closing of the People’s Houses. These cultural centers tied to the CHP had been instrumental in promoting its ideological agenda during the 1930s and 1940s. The events leading up to their closure, the debates over the authorizing legislation, and the manner in which young CHP members reacted illustrate a number of themes that are useful in understanding this period. The fact that the People’s Houses remained a salient issue in 1951 reflects the CHP’s failure to fully establish democratic institutions and norms prior by the time of the 1950 election. On the other hand, the failure to resolve the issue in an equittable manner that stopped short of closing the People’s Houses stemmed from the ruling Democrat Party’s desire to hobble the CHP. Yet, following the closures, CHP members began to organize in new ways—through local associations, youth leagues, and cultural institutions that brought the party (rather than the state) into closer contact with its constituents. Rather than suggest that this period marks a fundamental turning point where Turkish politics became (or failed to become) democratic, this paper hopes to emphasize that “democratization” is an ongoing, contingent process; a series of endless challenges—sometimes legacies of the past, sometimes utterly new. As scholars of modern Turkey have increasingly argued, the early 1950s were a time when citizens of Turkey began to define a new sense of themselves as “Turks.” Likewise, I want to consider how the former ruling elite—individuals who had long seen themselves as leading the way for the society—came to terms with a nation that was no longer simply following their lead.