TURKEY: The Generals Take Over Again

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The political turmoil undercut a series of promising economic reforms instituted by Demirel last February. Hoping to bring Turkey back from the brink of bankruptcy, Demirel devalued the lira, lifted restrictions on foreign investment, and cut subsidies to inefficient state-owned firms. These steps boosted Turkey's international credit and opened up the aid pipeline from the U.S., Western Europe, Japan and Saudi Arabia. The painful food and fuel shortages of last winter eased. Still, Turkey remains heavily in debt (upwards of $18 billion), unemployment is over 20% and rising, and the inflation rate approaches 120%.

In the meantime, terrorist violence, which has claimed more than 2,000 lives this year and more than 4,000 since 1975, has pushed the country toward anarchy. Until recently, extremists of the left and the right were content to bump off each other. In the past few months, however, they have murdered a member of parliament, a former Prime Minister and a union leader. Communist underground groups have become defiant: last week, before the coup, they festooned Ankara's shopping area with posters booby-trapped with small explosive charges. Soviet propagandists stepped up their broadsides against the Demirel regime. A military source told TIME's Mehmet Ali Kislali in Ankara: "It all seemed like a rehearsal for a Communist revolt."

Because of the convulsions in neighboring Iran and in Afghanistan, the West has all along been jittery about any sign of instability in Turkey. The country is the southeastern bulwark of NATO's defense and a moderate influence in the Islamic world. Its 300-mile border with the Soviet Union makes it a critically important listening post, vital for verification of SALT. While disappointed that democratic procedures had been suspended, the allies viewed the military's intervention as a necessary—and temporary—evil. Said U.S. State Department Spokesman John Trattner: "We take the Turkish generals at their word that they will do what they said they would do."

Many Turks seemed to welcome the military takeover as a respite from the fearful bloodshed. Some terrorists no doubt envision an entirely different outcome. Experts have long suggested that leftist revolutionaries wanted a military regime, in hopes that it would prove so oppressive as to produce a full-scale popular uprising. The generals now have the unenviable task of clamping down on the terrorists, without running roughshod over human rights.