Army Rule in Turkey By M. PHILIPS PRICE rr URKEY
may appear to have gone the way of 1 most of the other countries of the Middle East which, in recent years, have accepted the rule of their army officers: yet there is a dif- ference. The army leaders insist that they are holding power to clear up the mess left by the late regime, and to prepare the way for elections. The same was said, of course, by Nasser in Egypt and by the officers in Pakistan; and there has been a growing doubt if it is really meant in Turkey either. So when I went to Turkey for three weeks, it was mainly to try to discover how far parliamentary democracy has really failed.
Certainly the editors of the principal news- papers are still immensely relieved at the Revolution last May. When I saw them last in 1956 they were depressed: they could write very little except what pleased the Government; some were in gaol merely for speaking their minds. The foreign commercial representatives in Istan- bul were also relieved, but they were anxious. Such is the aftermath of the Menderes regime that the Military Directory will have the greatest difficulty in meeting its financial obligations. The late regime blackmailed its NATO allies by hint- ing that Turkey must be supported at all costs because of her resolute resistance to Russian Communism. From what I heard in Istanbul and saw later in the provinces, there is little doubt that large sums of this aid have been wasted. Factories, silos and sugar refineries were built, in places where they could not be effectively used, in order to gain political support. It is true that over Anatolia now there is a network of roads which were not there four years ago, and from a steamer on the Black Sea I could see harbours on the north shores of Turkey which have been built in the last ten years. But more should have been got with the same money; the burden of foreign debt need not have been so enormous.
In Ankara I was present at a press conference given by General Giirsel, and found him a level- headed soldier who could handle questions with candour not unmixed with humour. There was much talk about the two schools of thought on the Directory: one led by the older officers and General GiIrsel himself, who are for limiting the period of military dictatorship and preparing for an election; the other led by the younger officers and especially by Colonel Ttirkesh, who believed that the Directory should stay in power for a long time and set up a system of controls and direc- tions. Some of my informants thought these younger officers were semi-Fascist, but all agreed that they were of the Left., I was to have seen one of these officers; at the appointed time I arrived, but after a long wait I was told with regret that he could not see me after all. Three days later I heard that he had resigned from his office; last week, I found his name among those dismissed from the Directory. The older officers, clearly, have now asserted their authority; and it seems as if Turkey will continue in her effort to set up again a parliamentary democracy.
The Government of Mr. Menderes came into power in 1950 as a reaction against what was thought to be the excessive economic control and 'Etatism' of the Populist reginle started by Ataturk; but the feeling of 'setting the people free,' however, soon degenerated into a system which encouraged speculation, corruption and misuse of public money. Public opinion in Tur- key was not strong enough to prevent this kind of abuse and when those who criticised the regime were arrested and imprisoned, then the ugly face of Abdul Hamid began to appear once more. In former times, when a Sultan became incompetent or mad, the janissaries of the army, supported by the religious leaders of the Ulema and the Sheikh ul Islam, would overthrow him and appoint another. The same thing happened last May, in twentieth-century surroundings : Instead of the janissaries, the modern army acted; supported by intellectuals who do not wear large turbans, squat on the floor and consult the Koran, but wear European clothes, sit on chairs and remember what they learned at the London School of Economics.
In the provinces I visited the vilayets of Erzinjan, Gumush-Khaneh and Trebizond. In some respects, there had been little change from the time when I visited them forty-eight years ago and rode through much of the country on horseback. But in those days the peasants dressed picturesquely, and there were many national com- munities like Greeks, Armenians and Kurds, and religious sects living apart like Kizil Bashis, Shiah, Tartars and Kara Papachs. Today all that is gone; there is much greater uniformity. But there is not much material progress; and the standard of living remains low. The system of agriculture is much the same as when I first knew it. The peasants burn the dung of their livestock for fuel instead of putting it on the land. Although I saw some valuable research being done in and around Ankara in introducing drought-re- sistant grasses for raising fodder production, and so more meat and diary produce, the effect as yet in the villages is negligible. There is little increase in food production; sheep and goats are allowed to roam over large parts of Anatolia causing soil erosion. Meanwhile the population rises; unless this problem is tackled in the next ten years famine will result. Yet none of the politicians in Istanbul and Ankara seem to realise this.
The people of the Eastern provincial towns and villages now dress like Europeans, but their out- look does not seem to have altered. On a local bus I found that, though everyone was very polite, I was looked upon like a man from Mars. Nobody thinks of servicing machinery; the bus broke down three times in one day and we were stranded for hours on a pass without food or water with the darkness coming on. In Trebi- zond the religious leaders have become increas- ingly reactionary; they try to obstruct the trans- lation of the Koran into Turkish and the un- covering of Byzantine mosaics in the mosques. Near the Russian frontier the Dere Beys, or local chiefs, who once ran private armies, still give the political tone to the countryside. The revolu- tions that have taken place at the top in Turkey today have as yet made very little impression on the rural communities.
Previous page
