Former Turkish President Suleyman Demirel, who died June 16 of heart failure at 90, reflected many of his country’s sublime and wicked sides. He served seven terms as prime minister — with two of those terms interrupted by military coups — as well as a presidential stint (1993-2000). Under his prime ministry, many milestone investment projects were achieved, including the first Bosporus bridge connecting Istanbul's Asian and European sides.

Born to a family of struggling farmers in southwest Turkey in 1924, Demirel tended to the village flock to support himself and his relatives. Supporters would later call him, affectionately, “Sulu the Shepherd.” Through hard work and determination, the young Suleyman attended high school in another town, as his home province of Isparta did not have a high school. He graduated as a civil engineer from prestigious Istanbul Technical University in 1949.

Following a fellowship in the United States, Demirel experienced a meteoric rise as a bureaucrat in the 1950s. As chief public servant overseeing the construction and management of Turkey’s hydroelectric dams, he earned the moniker “king of dams.” When the 1960 coup overthrew the Democrat Party government for which he had worked, the young bureaucrat joined the center-right Justice Party. Demirel reassembled his former party’s traditional base of farmers, entrepreneurs and the small but increasingly active professional class. In the 1965 elections, Demirel’s Justice Party defeated legendary statesman Ismet Inonu’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) and won a parliamentary majority. Just a few days shy of his 41st birthday, Suleyman Demirel became the youngest prime minister in his nation’s history.

Demirel had nothing if not the resilience of Winston Churchill. Even after being toppled in a military coup in 1971 and several times through democratic processes until his ouster in another coup in 1980, he never gave up or lost faith in duty and country. After spending much of the 1980s banned from politics, he led a new political party, the True Path Party, and became prime minister again in 1991. Demirel liked to quip how he “left six times and came back seven times.”