The Anniversary

By official proclamation of the Menderes government, Turkey last week was observing the 100th anniversary of Turkish journalism. But there was precious little cheering among what remains of Turkey's free press--for the government happened to be celebrating the occasion by clapping 72-year-old Ahmed Emin Yalman, dean of Turkish newsmen (TIME, Jan. 18), into jail for violating the oppressive national press laws. His crime: reprinting in his daily Vatan (Nation) articles by U.S. Newspaper Tycoon Eugene C. Pulliam (the Indianapolis Star, nine other papers) that "belittled" Premier Adnan Menderes. For that, Yalman began a 15 1/2-month sentence in Uskudar prison on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus.

A journalist for 53 years, Yalman to the end refused to be humbled. "This sort of thing has happened to me before," wrote Yalman, who has been imprisoned twice before, gunned down once by an assassin, in a farewell to his readers. "But I am grateful to the Almighty to have given me the opportunity to join the ranks of those ready to endure a sacrifice for the sake of country and profession. I am getting old now; my blood pressure is high, my heart doesn't work properly. In spite of the strength of my will, these troubles may not allow me to resist the longtime hardships of prison life. But if I should die during my detention, I shall consider it a fit end to a life of idealistic struggle, for I have still not lost a particle of hope regarding the future of Turkey." At week's end, his health failing but his will still unbowed, old Ahmed Emin Yalman was moved from prison to an Istanbul hospital with a heart ailment.

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