Turkey Plans for Reform:
TUTSCH, HANS E.
Turkey Plans for Reform By Hans E. Tutsch Shaping new economic policy will be regime's hardest job Ankara ALMOST WITHOUT EXCEPTION the educated classes criticize the Bayar-Menderes regime for...
...The intellectuals had been tormented by the previous regime by an endless series of annoyances and pressures, until in the end they turned against the regime almost as one man...
...Kemal Ataturk's prohibition of Arabic and his clothing regulations were just as symbolic in character as the reintroduction of Arabic prayers under Adrian Menderes, the toleration of the veil and the building of new mosques in every village...
...To gain votes, the regime reduced itself to the lowest common denominator...
...The revolution was directed against the restriction of all intellectual rights, against the suppression and corruption of the representatives of science, scholarship and the free press...
...Gursel declared in a speech to doctors that there were 40.000 housing groups with 18 million inhabitants without medical facilities of any kind...
...Under the stimulus of high purchasing prices for grain, wheat has been grown even on slopes with a gradient of over 8 per cent...
...In return, the peasants will be promised relief in repayment of agricultural credits...
...While there are still peasants in the countryside who rebel against schooling their children, above all the girls, there is a tremendous enthusiasm for education in the towns...
...Fruit growing is to be encouraged in the western part of the country and terracing is to be carried out on the Lebanese model...
...This thirst for education is also evident in the Arab countries, and nothing is more characteristic of regimes like those of Menderes and Nuri Said than the fact that they criminally neglected education...
...Over 2 million hectares of salty soil are to be turned into arable land by internal colonization...
...According to the Minister of Agriculture such landed property constitutes in all two to two-and-a-half per cent of the total arable land area...
...It is intended to eliminate from public worship the elements introduced by obscurantist hocas...
...The present Government, under General Cemal Gursel, has stated its unlimited belief in the principle of laicism and its condemnation of the misuse of religion for political ends, although it includes more faithful Moslems than any government since the time of Ataturk...
...As in many underdeveloped countries, the Army is an element of progress, first in the technical and then in a wider cultural sense, and on May 27 it appeared as the strong arm of the intelligentsia...
...According to Gursel 100,000 children are without care or shelter...
...The cult in the traditional form, the Koran and prayers in Arabic, are regarded as symbols of this reaction, which spreads from the mosque and puts obstacles in the way of all progress toward Western civilization...
...Only the price of gold has been reduced by 20 to 30 per cent thanks to anti-inflationary measures...
...On Gursel's National Unity Committee is an urgent demand for decisive steps...
...A planning committee is dealing with these problems, but its work has been crippled so far by strong differences of opinion about its tasks...
...There is also largescale landed property in the area of Izmir and of Adana, where in recent years large cotton plantations have come into being...
...It seems that Turkey has now reached this third stage: Mastering it is going to be an extraordinarily difficult task...
...Turkish parents queue up all night with stools and mattresses—like the English at the Coronation—to enroll their children...
...Turkey has only 12,000 doctors, 6,500 of whom work in the large cities of Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, Adana and Bursa...
...In the textile industry firings have already taken place, and will probably continue...
...These officers and ministers are, however, not prepared to burden themselves with the ancient forms of worship or to lend their ears to the whispering of the hocas...
...Production is not satisfactory in all fields and even this year 450,000 tons of grain have to be imported from America in spite of a harvest of 1.2 million tons...
...The deficit balance of trade is apparently increasing in spite of all possible restrictions—including those on foreign travel...
...Hans E. Tutsch, a hading authority on the Middle East and North Africa, writes for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung...
...After replacement of Koranic law by Western laws, which has been carried through not only in Turkey but in other Islamic countries, either partly (preserving only the rights of the person) or wholly (as in Tunisia), the religious system is to be cleansed of its later accretions...
...The Government would also like to eliminate large-scale land ownership...
...To this end an emergency program is to be carried through with the utmost energy...
...Up to now over 70 per cent of the population which lives on agriculture did not have to pay any income tax...
...In the last 30 years arable land has been increased from 7 to 25 million hectares...
...The Government itself is adopting the same wait-and-see attitude...
...groups of Nakashabendi and followers of the Bahai sects and also the religious community known as Only, in the District of Izmir, have been secretly active, too...
...The Islamic world will therefore follow the new Turkish experiment with attention but also with great suspicion...
...but the number of TB victims amounted to 250,000, of whom 25,000 died annually...
...the final date for repayment will be extended from 10 to 20 years and during this period loans will be free of interest...
...It is now proposed to make the minimum limit for taxation an income of 25,000 liras (about $2,750) per annum...
...Of every 1,000 births, 165 children and six mothers die...
...In Turkey the reactionaries are not above but below...
...The Government intends to leave individual families with 600 to 700 hectares, and buy up the rest for transfer to landless peasants...
...Menderes himself abolished the teachers' training colleges in the countryside, which represented an especially interesting and promising element in development of the educational system...
...they are not the capitalists and well-to-do peasants, but the simple peasants in whose ears the Islamic scribe, the hoca, whispers anti-progressive ideas...
...For the peasants, who immediately change all the money they earn into gold and only change it back when the need is urgent, this means a higher return for their products...
...The Government is taking a strong line against the brotherhoods which have been forbidden since Ataturk's time but a few of which, such as the Mevlevi (the "dancing dervishes"), had been secretly allowed to revive...
...The economy has, however, not quit its waitand-see attitude and will not do so before the end of the trials on Yassiada, or possibly even before the elections in October 1961...
...There were 10,000 hospital beds available for tubercular cases and 21,000 for all other cases...
...Finally the new regime intends to tackle the thorny problem of a tax on farm incomes...
...But the fact that, for example, about threequarters of the pistachio harvest is sent to Syria through the black market and sold on the world market from there means that Turkey loses the foreign exchange...
...Now it is intended to withdraw about 5 million hectares from production...
...The religion proclaimed by Mohammed is to be purged of later heresies...
...Meanwhile the economy is stagnating...
...About 1,000 have emigrated to the United States...
...According to Ziya Gokalp, the ideologist of Turkish nationalism, national movements run through three phases: cultural awakening, political decision and formulating an economic policy...
...The main goal is to remove illiteracy since even today nearly two-thirds of the population still cannot read or write...
...So far it has not taken any of the various offers of help from the West and from Russia...
...The Government is also planning to convene a national Islamic Conference shortly, which will deal with the reform of public worship but leave the principles of religion untouched...
...Other plants, such as legumes, could be planted between the fruit trees, and so more intensive agriculture made possible...
...Turkey Plans for Reform By Hans E. Tutsch Shaping new economic policy will be regime's hardest job Ankara ALMOST WITHOUT EXCEPTION the educated classes criticize the Bayar-Menderes regime for disregarding the principles of Kemalism, unleashing the dark forces of reaction and diverting the people from the direction leading to progress as understood by Western civilization...
...The Minister of Agriculture regards erosion as the greatest problem of all...
...The Koran is to be read in Turkish, and Arabic prayers are already beginning to vanish again, though no decree has yet been issued on this from Ankara...
...Outlines of long-term planning are discernible only in agriculture...
...These conditions still predominate in the Kurdish areas—the Turks describe the Kurds as Turks, incidentally—and the Government coldly spurns questions about the political background of the reform of property...
...Even graduates of the military schools and officers in the reserve are to be sent to the country as teachers, and people who refuse to be taught will be threatened with extra taxation...
...The state of the economy will sooner or later force the revolutionary committee to take decisive measures...
...Before the end of this year, a Five Year Plan is to be set up intended to promote production and productivity...
...The controls and inquiries which have been carried out, often as the result of malicious denunciations, have been stopped since the beginning of October...
...But since accurate records are not available, the collection of taxes will no doubt be fraught with considerable difficulty, and it is obvious that it is "political poison...
...It has also been crippled by the "spies" of the revolution who seek signs of corruption in every state and private office—and all too often find them...
...They practice their religion in a way that is at first sight reminiscent of Protestantism, but which has its origins in Islamic mysticism, which was particularly widespread in Turkey and which, in the centuries of Islamic decadence, has always been a most important source of strength...
...The problem of transport to markets—even 10 years ago many parts of the country were still inaccessible and substantial parts of the harvests were ruined for lack of silo space— was to some extent solved during the Menderes regime by some modern road-building...
...Half a million syphilitics, 150,000 sufferers from trachoma, 20,000 lepers and other shocking figures complete the terrible statistics...
...Politically speaking, there will always be a danger that reaction may gather in a party again...
...Closely related to the religious reforms are the measures planned to promote the educational system...
...The borderline between binding traditions (Haddid) and "unnecessary additions" is however extremely difficult to draw...
...Medical care, which has hitherto been very poor, is also to be given to the country people...
...It is still impossible to foresee in what direction they will move...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 2
