TURKEY: The Dry-Cell Vote

While Nikita Khrushchev rattled his rockets outside their borders, the people of Turkey went calmly and resolutely to the polls this week to choose a new Parliament on wholly domestic issues. The reason for this sturdy indifference was simple: all Turks agree that in foreign affairs, the country stands foursquare with NATO and the West.

Ignoring the raging cold war over Syria, hard-driving Premier Adnan Menderes of the ruling Democrats campaigned to boost his 441-82 majority on a slogan of “A School, a Road, a Faucet, and a Mosque for Every Village.” Menderes obviously had a fat war chest. Having barred all opposition speeches from the air, the wily little Premier ordered 100,000 dry-cell batteries flown in from Europe and passed out free to rural villages so that he could be sure farmers would receive his election harangues loud and clear on their battery-driven sets. Pointing to the new factories and dams on which he has expended every penny that Turkey could earn or borrow abroad, Premier Menderes cried: “We will be a small America before many more years.”

The Republicans were led by their old hero, Ismet Inonu, 73, World War II President and chosen successor of the late great Kemal Ataturk himself. They charged that Menderes’ reckless extravagance had only created economic chaos, that foreigners now refuse to ship Turkey even vital medicines without cash on the barrelhead, that the only thing Turkey has plenty of is yok (nothing). They complained that Menderes had suppressed freedom of the press, packed the courts to rubber-stamp his decisions, and altered the election code to keep opposition parties from forming coalition slates. Yet the windup rallies in Istanbul were festive rather than bitter, and wonderfully reminiscent of U.S. campaign rallies except that vendors hawked raisin cakes instead of hot dogs, and the music was supplied by singsong flutes instead of brass bands.

When the votes were counted, the Republicans had made a strong showing in the inflation-hit cities. But Menderes’ Democrats racked up their dependable majorities among the small farmers who liked the government policy of buying their produce at subsidized high prices. It was enough to return Menderes safely to office.