Turkey Struggles With Democracy:

...Only the strongest of the rulers, impervious to the surrounding ethic, could resist such pressures...

...agricultural development did not match the population increase...

...Nevertheless, the fact remains that there has been a falling off from the high standards initially set by the Menderes Government after its first victory in 1950...

...The economic difficulties are easier to diagnose: holdings of foreign exchange, credit and aid were spent too precipitately...

...Personal decisions are expected of political leaders, irrespective of constitutional or legal niceties, and there is therefore a natural tendency toward authoritarianism...

...The living standards rose—both for the key groups of supporters (merchants, civil servants and richer peasants) and for the country at large...

...Faced with this proof of the gradual decline of the Democrats' fortunes, the opposition felt that another push would send the Government tumbling and it launched a country-wide political campaign in the wake of the elections...

...Economic liberalization and a large program of investments and public works satisfied the merchants and entrepreneurs...

...There are no constitutional checks on the whims of the majority party in Parliament...

...There is little doubt, for example, that Menderes would have preferred not to make a martyr of Ahmed Emin Yalman by having him imprisoned (and, indeed the sentence was suspended for reasons of health), if there were some other way to stop his newspaper's criticisms...

...Reports and comment calculated to damage the state or to belittle individuals are punishable by heavy fines and imANDREW MANGO is a free-lance European, journalist who has for several years specialized in Turkish affairs...

...Other circumstances also helped—a new spirit of confidence among the commercial classes, now better able to influence Government policy...

...Finally, all people in authority are subject to the powerful pressure of sycophancy, to incessant and traditionally sanctioned demands from needy relatives and friends...

...Adnan Menderes, progressives frown once again as they contemplate Turkish affairs, and the recent student demonstrations are only one indication of how deep seated their dissatisfaction is...

...It would, however, be foolish to expect any lasting or dramatic improvement from a change of Government in Turkey...

...The Democratic party, therefore, came to power with a feeling of overwhelming popular support...

...The merchants wished to see a change in the system of state capitalism introduced by Ataturk, while the intellectuals chafed at restrictions on democratic freedoms and felt that avenues of promotion were blocked to merit...

...No longer able to satisfy all its supporters, the Democratic party Government concentrated on satisfying the farm vote through a policy of subsidies, which were, however, overtaken by inflation in the end— because the Government refused to tax farm incomes and concentrated instead on a program of public works in the countryside...

...It is easy to see which aspects of the Turkish situation occasion the progressives' displeasure...

...Turkish society is slowly evolving to the point where Western democracy, like other forms of Western social organization, will answer its real needs...

...Preferential treatment given to pestering applicants grows into legal abuses...

...But that evolution still has a long way to go...

...In official phraseology, criticism was jeopardizing the nation's development effort...

...Qualifications and excuses for the conduct of the Democratic party can and must be made in plenty...

...Very slowly things were beginning to go wrong...

...And when he unprotestingly handed over power to the opposition Democratic party, whose formation he had authorized four years earlier, the liberals' features softened into a smile...

...The press law is illiberal...

...The electoral law is illiberal...

...This program, incidentally, continued to make the fortunes of a group of entrepreneurs, who now form a conspicuous and not very agreeable element in Turkish society...

...the previous Administration's accumulation of both credit and foreign exchange...

...Here, however, one must halt the catalogue of shortcomings and write in a few qualifications, for Menderes and his party are not responsible for all these regrettable features of Turkish politics...

...The existence of a recently imported and incompletely assimilated democratic framework makes it difficult for the Government to satisfy the expectations of its supporters while keeping its self-respect...

...The intellectuals, also more closelv associated with the Administration, found more opportunities for self-expression and helped to inspire an atmosphere of optimism...

...The Democratic party was brought to power that year by a landslide...

...The independence of the judiciary is not guaranteed by law and judges can be transferred, suspended or pensioned by the Minister of Justice...

...Legal provisions make it impossible to discipline the press by Administrative action or the threat of it, and the more stringent laws which have been introduced are so inelastic that pro-Government journalists have occasionally found themselves in jail for offenses originally meant to apply only to the opposition...

...The Turkish electoral law, for example, has always been mathematically unfair, Menderes having merely added the cunning provision forbidding electoral coalitions...

...More important still is the abiding tradition of paternalism in Turkish society: Disrespect to elders and to those in authority is traditionally bad form...

...Kemal Ata-turk's successor as President of the Turkish Republic and leader of the ruling Republican People's party, gracefully accepted his defeat in free and fairly conducted elections...

...Where the individuals belittled are officers of the state, penalties are heavier and the accused journalists are not allowed to try to prove their allegations...

...Public meetings are subject to authorization...

...The peasants also had complaints against the high-handed behavior of the police, against the corvee system used in building village schools and against a strict forestry law which deprived thousands of villages of charcoal, their traditional and only fuel...

...All the discontents that had piled up for a generation found expression in its victory...

...Even if it could not, it always has the alternative of holding fair elections and risking defeat, which does not as yet imply any danger to the lives of prominent members or supporters of the Government...

...Profiting by these advantages, the Menderes Government could satisfy most of its supporters for a time...

...prisonment...

...At first, criticism in the press or at public meetings was not dangerous, since the Government enjoyed overwhelming popular support...

...Religious concessions, however, were unpopular with the intellectuals, already hit by inflation because most of them were wage-earners, and therefore already-critical of the Government...

...The Government alone has access to the radio...

...Due largely to the electoral changes and also, possibly, to some marginal irregularities, the Democratic party won the 1957 elections for the third time, though by a minority vote...

...This time, however, voices were saying that although the elections were fair by local standards, thev were not as immaculate as those of 1950...

...The Democratic party and its leaders were genuinelv popular and even increased their Parlia-mentary majority in the 1954 elections...

...The difficulties were partly economic and partly sociological in origin...

...The second was the Korean War, which boosted the prices of raw materials and gave more help to primary producer countries than many subsequent aid projects...

...It felt generous and, largely for two reasons, it had the means to be generous...

...In spite of Government retaliation, it looked as if the campaign would succeed in forcing new elections, but at the last moment Menderes drew back and imposed the present ban on political activity...

...Not only does it provide for election by simple majority in multi-member constituencies (so that, theoretically, a party one vote ahead of its nearest rival could capture, say, all 20 seats in a populous province), but it also obliges the opposition to split its vote by forcing all registered political parties to put up separate lists of candidates...

...To explain the reasons for a course of action is not to excuse it...

...an over-ambitious development program, influenced partly by electoral considerations, led to an inflation which in the end forfeited the support of both merchants and civil servants...

...and a succession of good harvests and the belated application of mechanical techniques...

...Now, after 10 years of rule by the Democratic party and its Premier...

...Thus last month Menderes, through the appropriate parliamentary machinery, was able to ban all political activity for three months, and set up machinery which makes it possible for him to obtain approval for laws without the approval of the opposition...

...It is impossible to determine with accuracy whether the Menderes Government could have maintained itself in power by more liberal means...

...Although the Turkish press law is illiberal, it does not allow the Government to close down newspapers by administrative action, as was the practice of Inonu's government when it was in power...

...Personal considerations, such as Menderes' reported impatience of criticism, have also played their part in creating the present difficulties...

...as that support dwindled, however, the Democrats felt that they could no longer afford the same degree of toleration...

...It is true that the Democrats largely succeeded in organizing the new urban proletariat, both by a more daring, and therefore more popular, encouragement of religion, and by providing employment through economically unproductive urban public works...

...Intellectuals found their freedoms diminishing, as well as their incomes...

...The press law was gradually tightened, other restrictions introduced and, finally, the electoral law amended...

...Concessions were made to religious opinion, although the Government continued to keep it in check through measures against the monastic dervish orders, which provided clandestine channels for popular piety and occasionally for fanaticism...

...The first was American aid, initiated during the Inonu regime, but vastly expanded as the cold war heated up...

...The peasantry and the half-Westernized artisans were disaffected by the secular policy of the Republican People's party...