CHANGING TURKEY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 423, 1 August 1947, Page 16

CHANGING TURKEY

The People are Restless for New Advances

} A TALK in the BBC’s Third |

Programmes by

KENNETH

MATTHEWS

BBC Balkans

Correspondent

SUPPOSE there was never a revolution more complete than that by which Mustafa Kemal modernised Turkey. The overthrow of the Sultan was not half of it; out went the scarlet fez and

the Arabic alphabet; out went many of the old religious. observances. There are many Turks still living who must

have been shocked to the limit of their shockability. And yet these same people turn on their radio to-day and hear their next-door neighbours describing them as reactionaries. If there is a moral in this, you can draw it as easily as I can. The westerner who goes into Turkey for the first time may not realise how revolutionary some things are. For instance, when I visited the Halkevi, or People’s Institute, in Ankara, I found an operatic rehearsal going on in the theatre. I should not have thought any more about it, but I happened to run into Carl Ebert, the silver-haired masterproducer whom Kemal long ago summoned from Germany to start a national opera in Turkey. Ebert said: "Kemal told me to go round the school and pick my own pupils. I still remember how some of the children butst into tears when I chose them, because the notion of opera singing as a career seemed so strange." I did not ask Ebert, but I suppose the Turkish child of to-day is as pleased and excited to be chosen for the opera school as a western schoolgirl invited to Hollywood. Western Week-ends An Englishman sees nothing extraordinary about Sundays in Turkey, ex-

cept perhaps that all the cinemas open without causing anyone any pangs of conscience. Yet the Turks are by tradition Moslems, and the Moslem holy day is Friday. Kemal swept away the Friday day of rest, along with every other item of Moslem ritual which he thought would handicap the Turks in competing with the workers of Europe; and now the Turks shut up their offices on Saturday and go home for the week-end. But-if this can count as reactionI was told there is now a revival of religion in Turkey. I met the university professor who had raised in Parliament the question of religious instruction in schools; and the Government were considering it very sympathetically. I visited a newly-built mosque in Ankara, leaving my shoes at the door in accordance with the immemorial custom. I would not like to swear that all the worshippers were there out of pure piety, because there was a great coal stove in the middle

of the floor and a blizzard raging outside. But I was assured that at all the regular hours of prayer the mosque was full. Turkey now follows mainly the western pattern of life, but vestiges of ‘the old customs crop up everywhere. I was

surprised when I saw a politician take out of his pocket notes written in the forbidden Arabic script. He told me

apologetically: "We old people use Arabic as a kind of shorthand; it still comes easier to us, and it is quicker because it misses the vowels out." Then, Kemal has insisted that the Turks shouid wear western dress. Out'in the wild eastern provinces, many people fulfil the spirit of this injunction by wearing a cloth cap or a tattered tweed jacket with all the rest of their old tribal costume. Nobody wears a fez. any more; but you don’t have to go outside the capital to see women in the old-style, bright-coloured, baggy Turkish trousers, The younger generation seem to have skipped skirts altogether; the little. girls go to school in ski-ing trousers. Growth of Two-Party Politics The principles of Kemal’s revolution could be summed up, not unfairly, as being Turkey for the Turks, and a modern industrial civilisation as soon as possible. These principles still stand, mellowing a little as they come nearer achievement. In this" distracted world, the Turks are lucky in having their revolution 25 years behind them. There is neither right wing nor left wing in Turkish politics. The foreigner. has to strain his eyes to detect any difference between the Government programme

and the policy of the Opposition. In case you wonder what politicians find to quarrel about, here are the minimum) demands of the Opposition Democratic | Party, formulated after their first anni- | versary congress in January. First, that | the President of the Turkish Republic | should cease to be a party leader. | Second, that the electoral law should | be revised, to allow Opposition parties | to check election results. Third, that cer- | tain security laws should be relaxed. If | these things. were not done, they said, the 55 Democratic deputies would walk | out of Parliament. The rise of this Democratic Party has been something of a sensation in Turkey. After the revolution, there was only one party in Turkish political life, | the People’s Party, presided over by | Mustafa Kemal, and after his death, by | his friend Ismet Inonu. Just over a year ago, under the pressure of public | opinion, the Government sanctioned the formation of opposition parties, and many new parties at once sprang up, 17 of them altogether, though most of them were very insignificant. The Demo- | cratic Party was founded by four prom- | inent deputies who broke away from | the There were just | these four deputies in the new party at the beginning of last year; now they claim to have more than two and a-half | million members inscribed in_ their books. One of the founders told me, | "The single-party system is finished here. | It will never return. The people demand | a true democracy and understand fully | the meaning of political struggle." ) The People’s Party, that is the Gov- | ernment, were confirmed in power by) the election of last July, and will remain in office for four years, unless | something happens to precipitate an- | other election. But there is no doubt | that they read the signs in the sky. Al- | though the war storms scattered hardly | a few drops over Turkey, the people are | restless for change and new arenes The Minister of Interior told me, "The People’s Party considers the expansion of democracy in Turkey as a_ sacred | national duty. Our only cause of dispute | with the Democratic Party is that they | see and paint everything in the blackest colours in order to come to power without delay and at any price." "Feeling Their Way" How much freedom of speech is there in Turkey? Most of the newspapers are_ critical of the Government; but opposi-_ tion speakers are not yet entitled to. broadcast. Three very small political parties were recently suppressed on the ground that they had lent themselves _ to foreign, that is communist, propa ganda; and some newspapers were suppressed in Istanbul for the same reason. The trade union laws which have just been drafted forbid the unions to engage in any political activity. The Turks are certainly feeling their way towards wider freedom; but they are a cautious race. and prefer to move a step at a time. Turkey covers a vast area of territory. It takes five days to cross from west to east in a train. And yet many Turks can remember a time when the. imperial frontiets stretched still fur-ther-westward into the Balkans and southward over a great part of the Arab world. I talked with Turks who had been property owners in the Greek cities of Yennina and Larissa. King Abdullah of Transjordan, who was received the other day in Ankara with royal honours, was once a Turkish civil servant. It is one of the ironies of this post-war history that Turkey should be on better (continued on next page) ,

IN TURKEY TO-DAY

(continued from previous page) terms with her former rebellious subjects than with the Soviet Union, the first State to recognise the almost friendless revolutionary Turkish Republic. , The Turks want peace. Unbombed and uninvaded, with an expanding industry and a stable Government, they stand like a rock in the troubled waters of the Near and Middle East; and they can attract allies. The emphasis of their recent pact with Transjordan was all upon peace and solidarity in the Middle East. A pact with Iraq has already been drawn up and simply awaits the ratification of the two Parliaments. There is little doubt that Turkey would welcome similar agreements with other Arab States. With the Arab League, of course, the Turks have nothing to do; they regard the League as an instrument for the Arabs alone. So impressed are the Turks with the need for peace that they make no criticism of the presence of British troops in the Arab countries and in Greece. In fact, they have been sharply criticised in Egypt and elsewhere for not lending their influence to speed British evacuation. Communism is Un-Turkish On the other hand they are lookin anxiously .at the spread of communist doctrine among their nearest neighbours. The Turks measure communism as they measure everything else: by the nationalist yardstick. Is it Turkish or not? They do not regard communism as Turkish, and there is very little of it in Turkey. When they embarked upon a big round-up of communists in fstanbul, they detained in prison 57 persons. That compares with the 10,000 ‘or so who Have been punished or arrested in Greece for the same reason. Turkey’s links with Britain have never been closer. The two countries have a treaty of alliance dating from the early days of the war; and for some time now, British Army, Navy and Air Force men have been helping to train the Turkish armed forces. The Turks also invited Englishmen to advise them on their new labour and social insurence legislation. Trade between the two countries would be more flourishing if there were more ships; but Britain still buys Turkish chrome, and Turkey buys British machinery, chemicals, textilesand even films. It is quite a social occasion when a big British film is shown in Turkey for the first time. And for the moment, English is the fashionable language. In Istanbul, I found the British Council running more than a hundred English classes. There were classes for hospital nurses, classes for insurance clerks; and the workers at qa sugar refinery had just sent in a request for an English teacher. All Turkey’s foreign relations have been thrown into sharp relief by the dispute with the Soviet Union over the Dardanelles. The Turks say firmly that in strengthening old friendships and making new ones the last thing they have in mind is the formation of any anti-Soviet bloc. They want from the Russians what they want from the other neighbour States: peace and goodwill. And they have been shocked by what they | describe as the "unfriendly" attitude of the Power which was their first sup-

porter 25 years ago. A radio war between the two ‘States has been going on for some time now. The Turks are, on the whole, .a stolid and unemotional race; but they do not believe in appeasement. They keep their whole army mobilised, about a million men, according to the unofficial estimates of the Turks themselves. The region of the Russian frontier is a closed military area; no unauthorised person, certainly no foreigner, is allowed to go there. The same applies to the Dardanelles and the region of the Bulgarian frontier. You hear many people criticise the hold which the army has on Turkish life. They say that the success of the new five-year plan will be imperilled if the young men do not soon return to productive work. They say even more strongly that the soldiers are the real rulers in Turkey to-day. But despite her problems, I thought that Turkey should be nymbered among the happy countries. Her progress since the revolution has been uninterrupted by war or internal quarrels. It is impressive to see on the charts hung up at the Ministry of Economy, how every year has added to the numbers of factories built and industries started. There is a lot of mineral wealth in the country; Turkey is warmed by her own coal, and there is still one ton out of every 10 available for export. There is no longer a food shortage; I spent a couple of enviable hours in- the great market of Istanbul: mounds of home-produced cheeses, oranges from the Black Sea, fish from the Bosphorus, carcases of meat curtaining the butchers’ stalls, and finally the tinmed-or canned--food, sacks of it, all processed in Turkish factories. But if you ask a Turk what gives him his confidence in the future of the country, he is most likely to point to the spread of education. Coming from the war-stricken Balkans, I was impressed because everybody I visited seemed to have, not only a plan and a programme, but the resources to carry them out.