President Adopts Shepherd Boy

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 834, 30 November 1929, Page 18

President Adopts Shepherd Boy

LJff LT EMALIST Turkey now Was both a great Mustapha and a little Mustapha. With a gesture VW/Kjw elo( in e n t °£ Oriental glamour Mustapha Kemal, President of the Turkish republic, has adopted as his son and given his name to a. 13-year-old shepherd boy whom he recently talked with for a few minutes on the outskirts of the village of Yalova on the Asiatic coast of the Marmora.

The Ghazi and his suite driving to the model farm that the gentlemanfarmer President is about to create in the environs of Yalova, stopped to ask the way of a shepherd boy standing amid his flock beside the road. The Ghazi was struck by the child's intelligent face and his look of illhealth. Questioning hirg. Kemal learned that he was the son of -poor peasants and that he earned 5s .a month for tending the sheep. The Ghazi gave the boy 36 liras, equivalent of the shepherd's yearly wage.

and told him to come 10 the preside^ ' tial villa the following day. There the Ghazi disclosed h‘ E identity, in good fairy-tale style,' m the thunderstruck child and for his immediate formal adoption- B; has sent young Mustapha to a .cm ■ drett’s hospital in Constantinople I recover from undernourishment an exposure, after which he will put “> boy through school. The boy is still too dazed to **• ! more than “The Ghazi is W and I love him,” and "Whenl gf° up I’m going to be a soldier.” , Young Mustapha is the first adtfpted son, but lie has n | adopted daughters, children ; brother officers who fell in . , i World War or in the war of in ; pendence. The oldest of these danf I ters, Nibile Hanim, was recently F 0 ried to a Turkish diplomat. ' others are still in school, two of <* j in the American college at Consi 1 tinpple.