Faithful Fethi

To a whirlwind crescendo rose last week the fortunes of the new liberal party, recently founded in Turkey (TIME, Oct. 6) because Dictator Mustafa Kemal ("The Modernizer") wanted his country to have an "opposition party" like other modern states.

Ali Fethi Bey, leader of the new party, knows how an opposition ought to act, has observed as Turkish Ambassador at Paris the antics of one of the most obstreperous parliamentary oppositions on Earth. Last week, inasmuch as Leader Fethi had been recalled to Angora specifically to cut Parisian capers, he cut them in the national assembly, flayed the government, proposed a motion of censure, voted for it with ten of his opposition deputies.

To be sure the motion of censure was snowed under by 214 Kemalist votes, but on thinking the whole matter over Dictator Kemal must have wondered whether the idea of even a ten-deputy opposition was such a good one after all. In Turkey the will of the dictator is communicated by means wondrous, swift and silent. Those who cross it are sometimes found hanged to their own doorposts at dawn. Bright and early on the morn after the vote, Leader Fethi called upon "The Modernizer," informed him that overnight the opposition party had dissolved.

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