TURKEY: Ecevit: The Poet Premier

• Share

"He wouldn't even kill an ant," was the way Turks described Biilent Ecevit, 49, their Premier. His biographer called him a "romantic, artistic, even mystical man." The son of a respected painter, Ecevit (pronounced Edge-a-vit) is a translator of the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound into Turkish and a poet in his own right. In fact, one of his poems is about the ambivalent attraction between Greeks and Turks: "No matter that we are not of the same racial blood;/ The wild spirit flowing in our veins is the same./ We have cursed each other;/ And have been bloodily knived;/ But there is still a love within us."

Short (5 ft. 6 in.) and skinny, he has the appearance of a prim provincial schoolmaster and lacks the flashy personal style common in Turkey's byzantine politics. But since he ordered the invasion of Cyprus by Turkish troops, Ecevit's image has changed. He has become a national hero. He has also won the grudging respect of the Turkish armed forces that he had alienated in 1971 when he was the only politician to protest publicly the grabbing of political power and imposition of martial law by the generals.

Before the recent Cyprus crisis, he had spent most of his political career on domestic affairs, crusading for liberal causes. As Minister of Labor in 1961, he sponsored Turkey's first right-to-strike legislation. He is an advocate of land reform, the improvement of health care and social services in rural areas and increased state participation in basic industries. Two years ago, he successfully challenged Turkey's venerable political leader Ismet Inonii (who served as President or Premier throughout most of a quarter-century) for the chairmanship of the mildly leftist Republican People's Party.

When the generals permitted parliamentary elections in October 1973, Ecevit's party increased its number of seats by nearly 100%. He became Premier last January after patching together an unlikely coalition of his own party and its conservative opponents, the Moslem-dominated National Salvation Party. Although his coalition has a comfortable 16-vote majority in the 450-member National Assembly, Ecevit will probably be tempted to call new elections as soon as the Cyprus situation settles down. He will want to cash in on the popularity he gained from his defiance of the U.S. in allowing Turkish farmers to grow opium poppies after a three-year ban (TIME, July 15) and his decisive actions during the Cyprus crisis. Re-election would give him up to four more years in office.

Last week Ecevit met with TIME'S John Shaw and Mehmet Ali Kislali in his spacious office in Ankara. Over tea and with a relief map of Cyprus on the wall near him, Ecevit gave his views of the situation:

ON THE CYPRUS WAR