Yok

Of all the nations now embroiled in the Middle East, Turkey is the only one that the U.S. is treaty-bound (in NATO) to defend. The sturdy and staunchly anti-Communist Turks are caught by geography between the Soviet Union and Syria. To guard their freedom, they keep 500,000 men under arms, and even with U.S. aid have a heavy defense burden. In addition, after centuries of feudalistic Ottoman rule, the Turks have tried to rush pell-mell into a modern industrial economy. Turkish Premier Adnan Menderes has spent more for public improvements than the economy could stand, and the Turkish economy today is plagued by inflation and hobbled by a shortage of consumer goods. The Turks have a word for it. The word is yok, which means, "There isn't any." It is yok for coffee and chocolate, knives and forks, writing paper and ink, appliances and spare parts. Had it not been for U.S. aid, it would have been yok this year for flour and oil.

Last week, aware of the yak about yok, Premier Menderes called for parliamentary elections on Oct. 27 instead of next May, when they ordinarily would have been held. By spring the yok situation will be worse and might catch up with the farmers, who form more than 80% of the electorate, and the core of Menderes' strength. Before dissolving itself for the elections, the one-house Grand National Assembly, which is dominated by Menderes' Democratic Party, rushed through appropriations for new highways and schools and even repairs on mosques in farm villages. It declared a one-year moratorium on $345 million in farmers' debts to the government. This was familiar pork-barrel politics. But in his determination to win the October election, Menderes added another touch. His supporters rammed through a law that forbids Turkey's three other parties to form an election coalition against Menderes. The law prevents candidates from changing parties and bars mixed tickets.

At this point those who might be willing to forgive Menderes for rushing the economy ahead too fast were less willing to forgive his rushing Turkey's democracy backward so quickly. Democracy came to modern Turkey during the long, enlightened dictatorship of Kemal Ataturk (1923-38); his chosen successor, Ismet Inonu, was beaten at the polls in 1950, and obeying the popular mandate, turned over power to the Democrats. Last week Republican Inonu, a frail but forthright 72, waved Turkey's bill of rights before the assembly and charged that the Menderes government had trampled on freedom, suppressed the press, corrupted the courts and undermined justice. And with evident regret Fuat Koprulu, once Menderes' Foreign Minister, abruptly resigned from the Democratic Party, which he had helped found. "I don't approve of the methods of the Democratic Party," said Koprulu. "I have lost all hope for its future."

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