Exit Laughter

First Comedian: I feel so terrible, I think I'll jump into the Bosporus.

Second Comedian: Buck up. Go home, have a drink of raki, eat some good white cheese and meat, put plenty of butter on your bread, relax, have a good cigarette and give thanks for a roof over your head. Tomorrow you'll feel fine.

First Comedian: But that's just the trouble. It's thinking about high rent, the rising prices of cheese, meat, butter, raki and cigarettes that makes me want to jump into the Bosporus.

Such jokes did not have to be very funny to evoke bitter laughter from Turks in Istanbul last week. The government monopoly had just raised its prices on state-produced cigarettes, liquor, matches and tea. Premier "Adrian" 'Menderes, who cannot take it when newspapers dish it out. was also proving thin-skinned about satiric songs and nightclub jokes.

Last week, on orders from his superiors, Istanbul's police boss summoned the city's top comedians, songwriters, cabaret and theater owners into his office to lay down the law. Citing a police regulation forbidding public utterances "prejudicial to public morale and to the security and policy of the government," the director announced that any theater or nightclub that permits jokes about the high cost of Menderes would be closed for three months.

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