TURKEY: Typical Terrible Turk

Pitch-soaked torches roared high one night last week in the public courtyard of the Central Prison at Angora, A Death-lured crowd, chattering expectantly, hushed as four tripod gallows were erected. Eerie as ghosts in the flickering light, four white-clad condemned men paced silently from their cells. . . .

First to feel the prickle of a noose was Dr. Nazim Pasha, founder of the Young Turk movement which overthrew “Abdul the Damned” (Abd-ul-Hamid II) in 1909, and dictated the government of Turkey as a Pan-Islamic oligarchy throughout the World War.

Dr. Nazim Pasha’s executioner, a man of skill, drew the noose tight under one ear. Ensued “a perfect hanging.” The head, jerked to one side by the knot, snapped the neck vertebra, bringing instant death. Less fortunate was Deputy Hilmi Bey. His hangman, a clumsy lout, was forced to hang him twice.

Nail Bey, once Secretary of the Young Turk (executive) committee of Union and Progress, sauntered beneath his gallows, remarked, “This is the first time I have ever found myself in such a situation!” was snapped off into eternity as he laughed at his own jest. Last came the revered and eminent Djavid Bey, onetime Minister of Finance, his pince-nez exactly adjusted. By nature dignified, he did not jest at Death. As the noose tightened there rolled sonorously from his lips a verse from the Koran. . . .

Why were these so eminent statesmen hanged? Their death sentences declared them participants in the alleged plot to assassinate President Mustafa Kemal Pasha—as a result of which 13 suspects had already been executed (TIME, July 26). But this surprising total of 17 hangings can find no justification in a, “plot” which, if it ever existed, was never brought to the point of endangering Mustafa Kemal’s life.

The 17 were jerked into eternity, after farcical legal proceedings, because they were suspected of attempting to form a new party in opposition to President Kemal. He, knowing well the mettle of these opponents who had successfully overthrown “Abdul the Damned,” resorted to the only sure curb for Turkish intrigants—the noose.

Paradoxically Dictator-President Kemal rose to fame and power as a general in the Young Turk armies, a subordinate of the men hanged by his orders last week. Not until General Kemal Pasha proved himself the ablest Turkish World War commander was he able to rally a Turkish Nationalist following from within the Young Turk movement and to organize this clique into the present Kemal-dominated Turkish dictature.

The Young Turk Old Guard have never sympathized with President Kemal’s dictatorial Europeanization of Turkey, have fought him tooth and nail by stealth. He, ruthless, has meted out no more and no less severe punishment to his enemies than they inflicted upon theirs in the days of Young Turk supremacy. President Kemal, though “Europeanized,” has still the attributes of the “typical terrible Turk.”

The U. S. Charge d’Affaires at Constantinople protested tn the Kemalist regime last week the arbitrary and unexplained closing by the Turkish police of a Baby Clinic, charitably financed by U. S. citizens including Admiral Bristol (TIME, Sept. 14) famed and able U. S. High Commissioner to Turkey. The Admiral, at whose lightest word Turks have learned to jump, was cruising in the Black Sea last week knew not that his Baby Clinic was menaced.

Foreign Minister Briand of France summoned peremptorily to Paris last week the Turkish Ambassador, Fethy Bey, who was vacationing at Dinard. Irate, M. Briand demanded the instant re lease from prison at Constantinople of the captain of the French steamer Lotus who had been jailed in defiance of international law when the Lotus recently rammed and sank in a heavy fog the Turkish ship Bozkourd. Simultaneously it was announced that M. Emile Daeschner, onetime French Ambassador to the U. S. will be despatched shortly to succeed M. Albert Sarraut as French Ambassador to Turkey. M. Daeschner will be the first Ambassador to occupy the new French Legation at the nouveau capital of Turkey, Angora, a town still chiefly com posed of mud.