TURKEY: The Shaggy-Dog Case

For months the Turkish army regime has labored like so many busy Hollywood stagehands. They were preparing a vast public trial of the civilians they ousted from power, President Celal Bayar and Premier Adnan Menderes. Last week, on the fortress island of Yassiada in the Sea of Marmara, in a converted basketball court where Turkish recruits once sweated and exercised, the show began.

Doggy Details. First in the dock was ex-President Bayar, 77, still haggard from his suicide attempt last month. Bayar, onetime comrade-in-arms of the late great Kemal Ataturk, was charged with treason for ruling dictatorially in violation of the Turkish constitution. But the army regime was first anxious to destroy whatever prestige Bayar still has, and it began with an accusation astonishingly petty. On a state visit to Afghanistan, Bayar had received an Afghan hound as a present from the King. He brought it back to Turkey and put it into the Ankara zoo. Subsequently, says the prosecution, he arranged with Agriculture Minister Nedim Okmen, who had charge of the zoo. for the government to buy the dog for $2,200, and gave the money to minor politicos to build a village fountain. The prosecution alleges that 1) the dog already belonged to the state because Bayar got it on an official visit, and 2) its actual worth was a mere $100.*

Scheduled to follow Bayar was former Premier Adnan Menderes, a hollow-eyed, sunken-cheeked wreck of his once plump and sleek self. In a barely audible voice, he earlier told the court he had been kept in solitary confinement for more than four months, had been allowed only 27 minutes with a defense lawyer two days before the trial. Complained Menderes: “My nerves are shattered.” The main charge against him was “activities contrary to the constitution.” But the first specific was that he had fathered a child by a Turkish opera singer, and then had given orders to kill the baby in the hospital delivery room.

Midnight Rider. In choosing these tactics, the army reformers frankly confessed they still fear Menderes’ great popular following. “After all,” said a worried junta spokesman, “more than 4,000,000 Turks voted for these people.” In remoter Anatolian villages, the junta claims, the peasants still believe that Menderes at midnight mounts a white horse and rides over the country consoling his followers. One night he changed to a black steed, and the next day a notorious Menderes enemy was struck dead. Explained one Istanbul editor: “If we told our illiterate masses that Bayar and Menderes trampled on the constitution, they would think it was some kind of a rug.” The junta figures that any Turk will understand Afghan hounds and pregnant mistresses. The question is whether the rest of the world will understand Turkish justice.

*Shaggy-haired Afghan hounds were originally bred as royal hunting dogs. U.S. Afghan fanciers say that $2,200 is not excessive for a fine specimen.