WHO'S WHO IN TURKEY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 235, 24 December 1943, Page 10

WHO'S WHO IN

TURKEY

Written for "The Listener"

by

A.M.

R.

Se ILL Turkey actively join the Allied cause?" This question, which millions have been asking during the last few weeks, has been answered already, as definitely as any question relating to the future ever can be. It was, in fact, answered in writing before ever the war began, in the Will of Kemal Ataturk. In November, 1938, in his new made capital, the Founder of Modern Turkey ("Ataturk"-"Turk Number One") lay dying largely of riotous living — 40 years of the sort of living that would have ended the career of any President elsewhere half-a-dozen times over. Yet his countrymen sobbed in the street as the news, came through. And women fainted with grief as his bier passed by. Deprived of his headlong and often hated leadership the eighteen million Turks felt helpless children in a hostile, complicated world. Therefore they chose for their successors the men who had been his faithful comrades right through the revolution. And these men in turn took Kemal’s plans and principles for their implicit policy. President Inonu, Premier Saracoglu, Foreign Minister Menemencioglu and Commander-in-Chief Chakmak are Turkey’s leaders to-day. But the dead hand of Ataturk guides them. What Ataturk Did This is why. In 1920 the Ottoman Empire was down and out. For many years foreign bailiffs had collected (and pocketed) her chief taxes. Now her former subject nationalities — Balkan Slavs, Arabs, Armenians, Greeks-were carving up the land itself, The Sultanate was dead-a mere mask and speakingtrumpet for the Allied Powers who sat along the Straits and in Constantinople. But on the other hand the liberal opposition, who had disastrously conducted the war on Germany’s side, were also utterly discredited. The people themselves were

hopeless and apathetic. Only one "wild man," exiled to a minor post in the interior (all of Free Turkey that was left) refused to let the nation die. The victor of Gallipoli, he had military ability. A former conspirator in the "Young Turk" reformist movement, he had underground connections. A terrific talker and egotist, he could persuade. And above all, from his experiences in conspiracy and war, he knew what his nation needed — a clean break from the past, speedy education and modernisation, and a thorough-going social revolution from the bottom up. By the time he died Turkey had had all three, was prosperous as never before (in the real sense of spread welfare), had regained her racial boundaries, and, coveting nothing further, was on excellent terms with all her nearby former subjects and enemies, Only the onset of a general world war cast its shadow over Ankara. Kemal, when dying, laid down the national line towards it: "So long as you honorably can, keep out of war. ff you do have to fight don’t do it on the German side. With them you lose even if you win." That is Turkish policy to-day. Contrast in Leaders Only one successor to Ataturk was conceivable-Ismet Inonu, his administrative shadow since. 1920. But what a contrast to the wild, lowering, volcanic, and utterly amoral Ghazi! Ismet, a year older (58), was small, neat, reserved, soft-voiced, a devoted family man, a Muslim to whom religion meant something at least. As a general he was said to have been a martinet. As an administrator he was accused of bureaucratic rigidity. And what is one to do with a Head of State who is deaf! Nevertheless his. services to Turkey had been, and were, second only to Ataturk’s and complmentary to them. His tenacious organising, which had won (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) the key battle of Inonu when the Greeks threatened Ankara itself and ‘the defenders had only women to pull their guns, was visible in the surname given him by the Leader. (Kemal, faced with such un-European confusions as five indistinguishable Generals Kiazim, had ordered all Turks to take surnames). His later civil devotion to duty had saved the Ghazi again and again from assassination and his reforms from destruction when the "Grey Wolf’ broke loose into those periodic drinking-talk-ing marathons of his. And his patient administration had not only built the retaining-walls of law and organisation which saved the revolution but was visible everywhere in the new mines, factories, roads, tractor co-operatives, wheat, wool, cotton, and sugar exports which have rescued Turkey from the poverty of a purely primitive agricultural country. Ismet had not wasted his energies like Kemal. To-day he continues very much alive — the Stalin of the Turkish Revolution. Wrestling With Loans Kemal and Ismet were both Army officers-the only class in Imperial Turkey that was allowed even a smattering of Western education-and so were ignorant of both business and economics. Fortunately, however, they had in the successful lawyer Sukru Saracoglu-a lieutenant who understood finance. For 20 years now, Saracoglu-who looks a typical respectable middle-aged bespectacled businessman despite his Hitlerian moustache-has wrestled with loans. In the twenties the task was to free Turkey from the net of debt in which the Ottoman Empire had strangled itself. In the ‘thirties it was to make possible the Five-Year and Three-Year Plans (for industrialisation) without borrowing abroad. And as the War arrived it was to transfer trade from Germany to Britain and France. This last move was taken as part of the national policy of non-attachment. Germany was so close geographically and in so dominating a trade position that the Turks tried to distribute their transactions more widely, and to more distant and less aggressive states, in order to be politically freer. This policy succeeded in getting trade treaties and the loans to run them from London and Paris. But it failed to find how to keep

million-pound transactions going on Turkish cigarettes. And then in 1940 the British Mediterranean fleet and French Syrian army suddenly melted away at Turkey’s back, while Germany rushed right up to her (quite indefensible) front door in Thrace. Saracoglu flew to — Moscow to encounter there "the opposite of a honeymoon" (his own description). Turkey in short was completely isolated, in the world and had to fall more and more into line with German designs. But her other alliances, and particularly the one with Britain, she doggedly refused to renounce on paper, even though events had apparently destroyed them in practice. And she would not enter the war. Now that Foreign Affairs has become less a matter of financial jugglery, it is fitting that Saracoglu’s understudy Numan Menemencioglu ("on his record one of the most accomplished diplomats of his generation") should have taken over the portfolio. He again is an opposite of his robust bull-voiced senior. Wendell Willkie (who called him "Noumen Bey" in One World-Bey is of course his title -and whose judgment I have just quoted) speaks of "his pallor and general frailty emphasising the courtly skill with which he seems to be watching Europe and the world ...I found his mind (continues Willkie) like his appearance, a little sad, a little cynical, very strong, and very subtle." Perhaps Menemencioglu’s elevation from Under-Sec-retary means that Saracoglu feels that the national danger is now sufficiently reduced for himself to devote full time to building up Turkey’s national economy. Or it may mean the very oppos-ite-that Saracoglu is building up internal strength with backing for the Army mainly in mind. If the worst does come-no, not quite the worst, for Kemal considered that fighting for Germany was the worstthen another figure, long absent from the limelight, will step back into it. Fevzi Chakmak, third of the original Ataturk-Inonu- Chakmak trio, has firmly kept out of politics, Devoutly religious and living a quiet retired family life, he has always been different from Kemal in everything except keen military ability. Despite lack of up-to-the-minute equipment Turkey’s army of a million (with a second million in reserve) is said to be thoroughly modern in outlook and methods,