TURKEY: Toward Democracy

For a year the Turks have lived, uneasy but defiant, under a Soviet threat. This week they moved a long way toward the democratic nations. They did not ask the West for help, nor did they send another tart note to Russia; they simply held an election—their first really free one.

An overwhelming proportion of the ten million Turks eligible to vote turned out under a scorching sun. President Ismet Inönä’s People’s Party remained in power; the main opposition party, the Democrats (formed only six months ago), had not been able to put-up more than 275 candidates for the National Assembly’s 465 seats.

Led by 62-year-old Jelal Bayar, a hero of the 1923 revolution whose personal prestige is almost as great as Inönä’s, the Democrats made a strong showing in urban centers. Pending official figures, Ankara dopesters expected the Democrats to get 50 to 100 seats. Bayar’s followers chortled that Inonii himself, revered as the successor of the great Kamal Atatürk, ran sixth in a field of 17 candidates in the Ankara district.

Although the new assembly probably will give Inönä another term as president, a basic change has occurred in Turkish political life. Two national figures, Bayar and 70-year-old Marshal Fevsi Cakmak, Turkey’s most respected soldier, attacked the Government bitterly during the campaign. Bayar and Cakmak demand increased liberties and social legislation, but support the Government policy of resistance to Russian territorial demands. Their showing in this week’s election is expected to encourage other leaders of Inönä’s People’s Party to break away.

Atatürk, a cold-blooded genius who founded the People’s Party, aimed at eventual democracy as part of his Westernization movement, which included a Westernized alphabet and abolition of the veil for women. This week it looked as if a dictatorship was peacefully evolving into a free country.