Turkey: After Seven Months

Seven months ago, when Turkey's Strongman General Cemal Gursel ordered the leaders of the deposed regime of Adnan Menderes to stand trial, expectation was that their cases would be wrapped up expeditiously, the junta's revolt against the Menderes government vindicated neatly, and Menderes & Co. put out of the way conveniently. But by last week, the i sth trial on Yassiada Island ended inconclusively, the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th trials were under way, the 1,000th witness took the stand to give testimony, and the Turks were frankly tired of the whole thing.

From the outset, the Yassiada trials went badly. Early prosecution charges that old ex-President Celal Bayar, 77,, sold a state-owned Afghan hound for personal gain did not stand up. An accusation that ex-Premier Menderes had arranged for the murder of his illegitimate child proved false; Menderes admitted readily that he had fathered the child in an illicit affair with an opera singer, but proved he had nothing to do with its death, which seemed to be of natural causes. Charges that Menderes threatened ex-President (and Republican Party leader) Ismet Inonu with assassination could not be substantiated.

What had the trials proved? Among other things, that:

¶ Adnan Menderes misused $1,148,487 in secret state funds for private purposes —personal income tax. hotel bills, etc.

¶ Democratic Party leaders actively fomented the disastrous 1955 anti-Greek riots in Istanbul, in which 4,000 Greek-owned stores were sacked and burned, three Greeks killed. But all that the prosecution could prove against Menderes personally was that he had ordered up a vigorous but nonviolent demonstration against the local Greeks as a protest against Greek demands in Cyprus. Against proud and unbending ex-President Bayar, nothing at all was proved.

¶ Menderes and other top Democrats ordered harassment of opposition Republican Party politicians. Item: a crowd of Democratic Party followers was ordered by Menderes to demonstrate against Inonu in May 1959, overzealously pelted Inonu's car with stones and beat on it with sticks. Item: on Menderes' order, the army harassed Inonu on a political stumping tour in Anatolia, held up his train for three hours, turned him away from a village he was attempting to visit. Item: Democratic Party goons in the Anatolian towns of Canakkale and Geyikli bullied, attacked and injured Republican politicians, though not provably at Menderes' orders.

¶ Top Democrats were responsible for the mob-wrecking of the anti-Menderes newspaper, Demokrat Izmir. (Menderes' direct complicity was not proved; yet the state prosecutor demanded the death penalty for him.)

¶ Istanbul Democratic leaders were responsible for financial hanky-panky while expropriating choice Istanbul real estate under a Menderes scheme to modernize the ancient city. Faithful Democratic Party supporters were handsomely compensated for their expropriated properties, while Republicans were shortchanged. Still to be proved: that Menderes was personally culpable.