TURKEY: The Saint & the Soldier

• Share

Flying into Ankara last week to celebrate Greece's post-Cyprus reconciliation with Turkey, Greek Premier Constantine Karamanlis was greeted by a scene of happy unity—crowds of cheering adults and waving children docilely respecting a human fence of smart, white-gloved soldiers. Had he arrived two hours earlier,

Karamanlis would have seen something different: the police and armed forces of the Turkish Republic forcibly attempting to prevent ordinary citizens of Ankara from welcoming ex-President Ismet Inonu. 74, leader of Turkey's Republican People's Party and leading opponent of Premier Adnan Menderes' ruling Democrats.

Despite harassment by the Menderes government, Inonu, military hero of Turkey's post-World War I struggle against Greek occupation, was determined to make a political tour of the country. He had been struck and buffeted by Menderes mobs on a trip through Turkey's Aegean provinces (TIME, May n). He had returned to Istanbul to find a crowd of Menderes partisans waiting at the ruined 5th century city walls built by Theodosius II. The mob charged Inonu's car, smashed in one of its windows with heavy rocks. Led by Republican members of the nation's Grand National Assembly, Inonu supporters counterattacked, and soon the place was a mass of brawling citizens, club-swinging cops and bayonet-wielding soldiers.

After ten minutes of fighting, the senior army officer present finally ordered his men to clear a path for Inonu's car. (As the aging hero rolled past, many an army officer respectfully sprang to attention.) At Sultan Ahmet Square, site of the hippodrome where Byzantine mobs once fought out their political differences, a crowd of 7,000 broke through police lines to cheer Inonu with cries of "Hurriyet!" (Freedom). Police tried tear gas, only to have their grenades thrown back at them by foresighted demonstrators who came equipped with gloves. Undeterred by all the fighting, Inonu moved on to Ankara.

Mosque & State. One reason for the current bitterness of Turkish politics is that Republicans fear that Menderes, to stay in power, is undoing the separation of mosque and state decreed by the late great Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic. To win favor in the devoutly Moslem countryside, Menderes has provided government funds for a vast mosque-building program, reintroduced religious instruction in the nation's primary schools, and encouraged the reading of the Koran over the state radio. To emancipated Turks, religious rule recalls the stifling, narrow days of the old Ottoman caliphate.

Two months ago Menderes had a brush with death when a Turkish Viscount turboprop carrying him to London crashed with the loss of 15 lives (TIME. March 2). Many devout Turks attributed his escape to divine intervention, and since then the Premier's popularity has taken on a quasi-religious quality. Upon his return to Turkey, camels and sheep were sacrificially slaughtered in his presence; on at least one occasion admirers hailed him as "Evliya [Saint] Menderes.''