TRANSITION IN TURKEY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 460, 16 April 1948, Page 12

TRANSITION IN TURKEY

Ataturh’s Dictatorship goes into Reverse JFFEW countries in Europe or the Middle East have been so successful as Turkey in escaping world _ attention during the restless years since VE Day. Yet the future course of Turkish policy is a matter of some consequence to both Eastern and Western Powers-the Turks have a common frontier with the Soviet, but are not behind the iron curtain, they hold an area of great strategic importance at the eastern gate of the Mediterranean, and-as JON KIMCHE ‘explains in the BBC Third Programme talk reprinted below-Turkey is one place in which dictatorship is to-day being broken down from within.

HE very mention of the Turk must bring old memo-ries-not very loving onesto you, as it did to me; the school-day echo of Gladstone’s invective, and then the stories of the sick man of Europe before the first world war, and after it, the reports of the ruthless revolution of Kemal Ataturk, of the expulsion of the Greeks from Asia Minor, and, lastly, the maspacre of the Armenians. These are things which have stuck. They have me associated with the Turk; the phock, therefore, is naturally. great when when you go to his country and feet him there. You find that things ete very different indeed. It is probably a symptom of the confusion of our life to-day that the descendants of the same people, who 50 or 60 years ago led the crusade against the unspeakable k, as Gladstone branded him, have mow chosen the same Turk as the foremost defender of western civilisation, as Europe’s chosen guardian of the bridge where Europe meets Asia, and where Russia meets the Middle East. But it is possibly a sobering thought t the revised picture of Turkey as a ind of goldilocked democracy is as false and distorted as was the earlier picture of the savage, brutal, bloodthirsty tyranny. And yet it is importnt that we should have a fairly accute picture of the new Turkey, because ey is the corner-stone of the politieal stability of the Middle East; if

Turkey were to break, then the whole Middle East, from Teheran to Cairo, would go into the melting-pot, and no man can say what would émerge in that case. I think you will agree with me that Turkey deserves a closer consideration and investigation, because a great many things about Turkey are rather uncertain and unsettled. Revolution Brought Stability As in Ireland and Russia, the revolution in Turkey gave that country one of the most stable governments in Europe. For 25 years now the same party-the Republican People’s Partyhas been in power. Until 18 months ago it tolerated no opposition, except for one brief and unfortunate experiment. The President of Turkey was also the party president; the Prime Minister and all his Government were party members; the generals and officers in the «Army, the Civil Servants, the police, and everyone remotely connected with the Government, had to be members ‘of the party. Turkey was, therefore, in the sense in which we use the term to-day, a totalitarian State. For 23 years a formidable inquisitive and authoritarian police force watched firmly over the security of the one-party State. And then, the remarkable thing happened. Totalitarian ‘regimes, as a rule, become more severe and oppressive as time and growing opposition make themselves felt: the Turks, however, took a uniquely different course. They found themselves at the end of the war in a difficult situation. For

six years of war the Turks had kept an army of 1,000,000 men to secure their neutrality. At the’end of the war, when everybody was demobilising, the sudden onset of differences between Turkey and Russia caused the Turks to go on keeping 750,000 men under arms. Young men had to do four years’ conscript service during the war, and they are to-day still doing a three-year stretch of conscription for which they get virtually no pay. "More than half of the government’s expenditure went into the army and the police. Urgent reforms were delayed year after year, and continue to be delayed. At the same time taxes mounted for the rich and poor alike. As a result, the Turks found that while they still had thé machinery of the Ataturk revolution in full operation -the police, the State control over economics and politics-they did not have the financial means to carry out and continue the revolutionary programme of Kemal Pasha. The government became more conservative and more bureaucratic; discontent about it increased, and it was at that moment that the President, Ismet Inonu, on whom the mantle of Ataturk had fallen, decided on the step that marked the contrast between Turkey and other totalitarian States. Liquidating the Dictatorship President Inonu_ set about to liquidate the dictatorship; to create a democratic outlet for the expression of growing public discontent. In 1946 an

opposition party-the Democratic Party -was formed by men whdse patriotism was beyond question, men who had figured prominently in Turkey’s war of independence, and had been Ataturk’s closest friends in the early years of the revolution. Even so, the liquidation of the dictatorship was, understandably, rigidly controlled; it was not meant to go beyond certain limits; it was to create an sopposition, not to create an alternative to the People’s Party government. But within these limits, the opposition was genuine, and not a stooge party created by the government. Its driving fofce were the merchants of Izmir, better remembered as Smyrna, the Manchester of Turkey. They found the bureaucracy and control of the government hampering their businesses and, rather like the easly Whigs, they successfully linked the cry for greater political and personal liberty with their demand for more Jaissez-faire in industry. The first free elections were fought in the summer of 1946, and the Democrats won 60 out of 470 seats. In fact, their support was much greater than these figures suggest. They captured all the large cities, but the peculiarities of the electoral law came down heavily on the side of the government in the country districts, and redressed the balance accordingly. It looked, indeed, as if the government had achieved its object of creating a genuine opposition without teeth; without the power to force the government out of office. The People’s Party was still supreme and controlled all patronage and the police. The first tentative step towards democratic government had, however, been taken. What the People’s Party still had to learn was that public opinion once roused, cannot be frozen or kept in cold storage. The remarkable thing is that now, under the impact of freer public discussion and opposition criticism, the People’s Party, and with it the whole monolithic political structure created by Ataturk, has begun to crumble at the edges. Once again, we can see, almost as a laboratory experiment, that totalitarian practices cannot survive in democratic climates. For over a year after the election, Turkey has been governed by the strong man of the People’s Party, Mr. Recep Peker. Peker was the leader of what might be called the right wing of the People’s Party, with a tendency towards authoritarianism. Devalution of the Turkish currency had not brought the expected benefits. The continued tension on the frontiers of Thrace and in the Caucasus was met by maintaining the numbers of the inflated Turkish army, which stood on guard. Discontent mounted, the democratic opposition grew in size, and became more and more vociferous. Peker decided to take strong measures before it was too late. He called a conference of People’s Party deputies and told them he would propose to the President that the opposition should be shut down as an unpatriotic body. Opposition from Right and Left Then came the incident that. has so often marked the downfall of strong and seemingly unassailable governments. When the vote was put, instead of the usual unanimous endorsement of the government’s wishes, 35 People’s Party deputies voted against their own Prime Minister. That was not all. The opposition of the "35," as they were called,

was led by Professor Nihat Ermin. Ermin’s opposition was held to be significant, for he was known as President Inonu’s confidant. The Prime Minister, Mr. Peker,~fully understood what this meant. He resigned. It was an event not unlike the fall of the Chamberlain government in 1940. It was underlined by the formation of a new government representing not so much the dominant right wing of the party but the moderate centre which had the backing of the President. The new government raised the state of siege in Istanbul, which is the core of the opposition movement and of the opposition Press. But the crumbling of the government party continued. Although the President was again elected as leader of the People’s Party, he has now informed both parties that he considers himself to be politically neutral between them. The Democratic Party, after hesitation, said in that case they would support the President in case of an election. But this is not only a movement of the left, it is equally marked on the right. Typical of this is one of the leading figures in the People’s Party, Hamdullah Sophi. He has been one of the pillars of the People’s Party, but he has now resigned, as he explained to me, in order to lead a movement for the re-introduction of religious education and practice in Turkey. The removal of religious influence was one of the main planks of Ataturk’s policy, and one which met with the greatest opposition. It was carried out ruthlessly in the towns, but less effectively in the villages. Hamdullah Sophi, citing the rising curve of recent crime statistics in Istanbul, said that Ataturk had destroyed the old tradition and faith, and had replaced it only with a rather negative Turkish nationalism, The Turks had now no real faith and ethical belief to set against what he considered the danger of Communism. But this conservative reaction to the Ataturk revolution is hardly the dominant element of the transformation taking place inside Turkey. The driving force of the change is the inje¢tion into Turkish economy of the dollars and the men which represent the Truman doctrine in action. At first this has taken some queer forms. The first instalment of dollar aid arrived in the form of thousands of the latest models of American cars, which were turned largely into taxis for Istanbul-six thousand of them. But this has merely emphasised the social ‘contrast from which Turkey suffers. On the one hand, there are these modern cars and taxis, the government-constructed factories, with their almost idyllic workers’ dwellings around Ankara, and on the other hand there remains the village poverty-four out of every five peasants are still illiterate-and the poor communications. American Aid The first item, therefore, on the American aid programme, both for strategic and economic reasons, is to develop the roads of Turkey, and to produce road and rail transport that opens up the country. The effect of this when it comes is not hard to foresee. The isolation and the backwardness of the villagers will come into contact with the ture and more advanced thought the town and with the economic methods introduced by the

Americans. In every way, therefore, the new Turkey that has grown into middleage during the last 25 years seems to be set for another drastic change. Politically, the Turk has shown himself astonishingly adaptable, although at the moment an anti-Leftist phobia is sweeping the country, almost in replica of the happenings in the United States. . The Turks are obsessed with the danger of Communist aggression. They argue with some justice that it is easy for those far from the scene to counsel moderation, but for the past two years all Russian Middle East pressure has been exercised on one or the other of Turkey’s frontiers. First in Persia, then came the Soviet demands on the Turkish provinces of Kars and Ardahan, and the non-renewal of the treaty of friendship with Turkey; and now there is the war in Greece, with the known demands of the Markos "government" on eastern Thrace. "Why," ask the Turks, "should we consider all these events merely casual, unimportant Russian exercises? Can’t you see," say the Turks to their visitors, "methods may change, but the objective-Turkey-remains constant." Yet in spite of this nervous pressure from the outside it seems as if the Turks will become more democratit, not less, and that they may bring off a remarkable transition of turning a quasi-totalitarian State into a genuine democracy. There are, however, evident dangers. American help may go to some heads; they may confuse Turkey, the genuine European outpost, with Turkey, the nationalist’s spring-board into Russia. There is already an uncomfortable amount of talk among some people who matter that the creation of the Markos rebel "government" marks the beginning of a third world war, and that soon there will be American-built air bases in eastern Turkey from which Baku can be bombed, and that Turkey must draw the necessary consequences. I must say I felt uncomfortable. I remembered vividly the touching faith of the Czechs in outside help just before Munich, and I could not help feeling that the Turks, too, tended to rely overmuch on distant help coming when they might need it. And Texas, after all, is a long way from Turkey, while Istanbul is less than an hour’s flight from Soviet-controlled territory.