Freedom or else
Sir: Your contributor Keith Kyle in his article on Turkey, 'Freedom or else' (10 March)twrites as one might expect from transient' visitors to any country. He doesn't tell us whetherhe talks Turkish nor how long he was in Turkey nor whether he read the whole of Alkilic's essay in the vernacular or whether he has merely selected an innocuous extract.
Kyle describes the Turkish right wing' as
pro-Islamic state. /lbw wrong he is!' The 'right wing' is pro-Atattlrls and all- he stood- for which is definitely not an Iklamic state. Here the ban on political parties identifying themselves with the restraining hand of Islam. If Mr Kyle knew Turkey he would- realise thut generations of inItabitants- long before the Turks arrived—had stripped the Anatolian forests- and produced the aridity of the mountains which now marks its face except along the Ptinlic Alps and, to a lesser extent, the Taurus. Has it ever struck him to wonder how in those great treeless- tracts the peasantry cook their food' and' hear their houses during the bitter winters? Not with wood, because there isn't any left. Why, then, should politicians bc allowed to encourage the peasants to strip the few remaining exiguous forests?
Atattirk abolished the fez some forty years ago
and in four and a half years of fairly recent residence in Turkey, when I travelled the length and breadth of the land, I never saw a fez except rarely in Istanbul on the uneasy head of an Egyptian or Arab. What is more, nobudy sighed for a fez. No government in Turkey has the slightest hope of survival if it ignores any of Atatark's pronouncements. And all those were remarkably sound.
C. R. A Swynnerton Military Attache to Ankara 1950-54 Finca Las Chumberas, Alhaurin de la Torre, Malaga, Spain
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