Strongman III

Despite all attempts to hide the facts, word got out last week: Turkey's Strongman General Cemal Gursel, 66 and portly (5 ft. 10 in., 200 Ibs.), had suffered a partial paralysis of the left arm and side that also affected his speech. As relatives secretly gathered at his bedside in Ankara, anxious members of the ruling junta held hurried conferences with Gursel's doctors to determine what to say to the public and when to say it.

General Gursel had been struck at a bad time. A month ago he had expelled 14 young junta officers who wanted to postpone elections and the return of democratic government until the army had enforced drastic authoritarian reforms on virtually every phase of Turkish life. The mass trial of ex-Premier Adnan Menderes and 520 other Turkish ex-leaders, after arousing international uneasiness about Turkey's juridical system with arguments about shaggy dogs and mistresses, was at last beginning to produce serious evidence of the old regime's abuse of power.

One of Gursel's 16 attending physicians, Dr. Ismet Karacan, who had been an assistant to Harvard Neurologist Dr. Raymond Adams, suggested calling him in. Dr. Adams flew from Boston to Ankara. Last week, after Dr. Adams had examined General Gursel, the relieved panel of doctors announced that the general's disability was only a "minor circulatory disturbance in the nervous system." At week's end the general, his paralysis gone, was beginning to transact state business from his bed, was expected to be fully restored and back at his desk in a matter of weeks.

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