TURKEY: First Mate, Second Mate

Ever since Dictator Mustafa Kemal Ataturk overturned and reformed the Islamic rigidities of the Ottoman Empire in 1924, Turkish women by the thousands have come out from behind the veil, taken up short skirts and modern ideas. Polygamy was outlawed. But in Istanbul last week there sounded a still, small voice from the past. Lawyer Osman Nuri Lermioglu, a Democratic Deputy from Trabzon on the Black Sea, presented Parliament with a draft bill that would allow a Turk legally to have two wives, but only if the first wife were ill or sterile. To prove that he was no Terrible Turk with a passion for bringing back the good old days of male supremacy. Deputy Lermioglu hastily explained that he had personally cleared the bill with his own wife of 32 years. Said Mrs. Lermioglu calmly: “I am sure of my husband.”