This presentation analyzes the writings of Süreyya Ağaoğlu in order to understand the ways in which a liberal ideology emerged in Turkey in the early years of the Cold War. Ağaoğlu was one Turkey’s first female lawyers. In pursuing a career and demanding acceptance male-dominated spaces of political power in the early Republic of Turkey place, she challenged the gendered expectations of many founders of the republic. At the same time, she had the support of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the connections of her father, the well-connected intellectual Ahmet. In other words, she was both an insider and an outsider in the early republic, and this dual status would shape her political thinking. Like her father, she championed a “liberal” politics that sought to limit the role of the state; yet the effects of such a constrained state could be “conservative”: a society that remained unchanged in many practical respects, dominated by the same elites, running the affairs of state and business to enrich themselves. These tensions in her world view can be seen in her writing—particularly in What I Saw in London (Londra’da Gördüklerim), her account of her travels in England in 1946. In this account, Ağaoğlu witnesses—often with skepticism—the formation of the postwar social welfare state. Her observations are even more interesting to consider in light of the fact that, at the same time back in Turkey, her brother Samet and his political allies were developing a political party, the Democrat Party, which would use liberal rhetoric to bring together an electorally-successful center-right political coalition.