Turkey: Battling a Ghost

The shadow of a hanged man last week lay across the arid Anatolian plateau. It was that of Adnan Menderes, who was overthrown as Turkey’s Premier in 1960, tried by the state, and sentenced to death. Menderes’ peasant-based Democratic Party was banned, and the triumphant Republicans of wizened old Ismet Inönü took over. But Menderes’ popularity, it seems, has only ripened with time. Barely a fortnight before the nation’s general elections, his unofficial successor, Suleyman Demirel, 41, stands a chance of winning the lion’s share.

Not for lack of opposition, to be sure. Thousands of candidates from six national parties are haranguing voters for 450 seats in the National Assembly. The official campaign is confined to three weeks — just as well, considering Turkish tempers. Last week peasants in one remote town stoned and clubbed leaders of the pseudo-Communist Turkish Labor Party. A major dustup was narrowly averted in Ankara when Labor Party supporters tried to break up a rally of the ultra-conservative Republican Peasants’ Nation Party.

Fancied Slights. The two major parties are Inönü’s Republicans and Demirel’s Justice Party. Inönü won the 1961 election, but was toppled by Demirel on a budget vote in February (a caretaker regime has ruled since). The 82-year-old former Premier, chagrined at Demirel’s rising popularity, is trying to stage a comeback with an anti-American—and pro-Soviet—stance. As a ru|e, Turks are conservative voters, but Inönü’s tactics may win support in a land that has grown increasingly touchy in its relations with the U.S. Many Turks are still angry at Lyndon Johnson’s refusal last year to help Turkey win its way in Cyprus by force. Newspapers regularly play up every real or fancied slight to the nation’s honor by U.S. military personnel (one sailor is currently awaiting trial on a charge of insulting Turkey by blowing his nose on a small souvenir flag).

Inönü hurls the epithet “American stooge” at Construction Magnate Demirel, who was Menderes’ director of waterworks, later becoming consultant for Morrison-Knudsen. Demirel counters that Inönü in four years did virtually nothing to raise Turkey’s standard of living. “We must get Turkey moving again!” he proclaims. The military, which holds the real balance of power, still bans any direct reference to the slain strongman or the use of his Democratic Party’s name, but Demirel’s Justice Party uses as its symbol an iron-grey horse—and the word for that, in dialect, is demirkirat. The demirkirat has become so popular that in one Black Sea village a Justice Party supporter last week knifed a Republican who, he felt, was singing a folk song about a grey horse without the proper respect.

Illegal Road? “The second grey horse is taking from the first and will no doubt follow the same path to destruction,” charges Inönü. Demirel makes the most of these attacks. Invading Inönü’s home constituency of Malatya with a horde of cheering supporters last week, he ran into a crowd of hostile Republicans, and the two groups eyed one another dangerously. “Leave them alone,” Demirel cried to his friends. “If they want to kill me, let them. I shall die for the nation.” His antics prompted ailing President Cemal Gursel, 70, head of the junta that overthrew Menderes, to hint that if Demirel tries strong-arm tactics now or after the election, the military will force him to desist. “We are not a mature nation,” said Gursel. “We take many roads, legal and illegal and sometimes dangerous, to exploit the people. I promise that no one ever again will have enough power to make the country turn back to the dark past.”