TURKEY: Crime & No Punishment

No episode among NATO partners matches the savage anti-Greek riots that swept Izmir and Istanbul the night of Sept. 6, 1955. Until then the mutual quarrel over Cyprus had been furiously propagandistic but not violent. That night, ostensibly aroused by reports of an explo sion in Salonika that damaged the birthplace of Turkey's late great Kemal Ataturk, the rioters swarmed through the streets wrecking and smashing anything Greek. In one night of Turkish terror, 300 people were injured, 4,000 stores looted, 78 Greek Orthodox churches gutted.

Premier Adnan Menderes expressed dismay, moved in tanks, and arrested 4,300 rioters. But many observers were convinced that someone had organized the riots, at least at the start—perhaps to divert attention from Turkey's growing economic distress. They pointed out that the rioters arrived in well-organized squads, equipped with crowbars and iron claws to pry open steel shop shutters, and that the government did not stop the riot until around midnight, when it had shown signs of becoming a general protest against the regime. Menderes suspended five newspapers for charging the government with failure to stop the pillage. Secret military courts were set up to try the arrested rioters. Last week came news that the First Chamber of Criminal Court had freed 23 persons charged with responsibility for the riots for "lack of evidence." At the same time, it was revealed that all the other prisoners had also gone scot free.