A New Year's Warning

As terrorism runs mid, the military gets impatient

In Turkey the shadow of the military has never receded very far from politics. Last week it suddenly loomed larger and closer than usual. The country's military leaders issued a stern warning to the politicians to get together and resolve the country's manifold crises--especially its rampant terrorism--before it is too late. The warning was contained in a special memorandum delivered on New Year's Day to President Fahri Korutuerk and later broadcast. It was signed by the chief of staff, General Kenan Evren, as well as the commanders of the army, navy, air force and national gendarmerie. The memorandum demanded that the politicians "join hands as soon as possible" to stamp out "anarchy, terror and separatism."

There was no explicit "or else" clause, but then none was really needed. The warning served as an immediate reminder of the fact that twice in the past two decades, in 1960 and again in 1971, the armed forces had taken over the country. "This is a serious situation," admitted conservative Premier Suleyman Demirel, who has been in office only since Nov. 19. Said left-of-center Opposition Leader Buelent Ecevit, Demirel's predecessor as Premier: "The crisis has assumed a new dimension."

With Iran obviously in mind, the generals also pointedly castigated those "who would like to return to Islamic law," as well as "those who sing the Communist Internationale instead of our national anthem." They showed their concern, too, over events in Afghanistan, expressing alarm over "developments in the Middle East [that] at any moment can develop into a hot war." As one Washington analyst summed up the Turkish military's entrance on the political stage, "The soldiers are telling the civilians that they have one last chance to put politics aside and look reality in the face."

The generals clearly had been provoked by an ugly outbreak of Turkey's apparently incurable disease: political violence. The week before New Year's, in defiance of the martial law in force in 19 of Turkey's 67 provinces, the left-leaning, 150,000-member national teachers union called a nationwide strike. The result: six people were killed and more than 3,500 students and teachers were detained in clashes between strikers and government forces in Istanbul, Ankara and the Mediterranean city of Adana. In Ankara, when police and troops pursued rioters into the teeming, jerry-built slums outside the city, some demonstrators opened fire on them with machine guns.

The latest mayhem brought the death toll from two years of extremist violence in Turkey to more than 2,500. Eight to ten people have been killed each day since Demirel, 55, became Premier. The combatants in the daily armed street battles are from both extremes. On one side are rightist gangs like the "Gray Wolves," often associated with the National Action Party, an ultraconservative group. On the other are the more numerous leftist, often campus-based, organizations such as the Marxist-Leninist Armed Propaganda Squad and the Turkish Workers and Peasants Liberation Army. There have also been signs, some of them ominous, of a possible fundamentalist Muslim revival. In November, for example, Muslim gangs demonstrated against Americans in Izmir and other cities after false radio reports that the U.S. had been behind the seizure of the Sacred Mosque in Mecca.*

One major cause of Turkey's political polarization and consequent violence is economic. Turkey has still not pulled away from the edge of bankruptcy that it faced last year, when 24 predominantly Western nations promised it $1.5 billion in emergency assistance. Since then inflation has soared to an annual rate close to 100%, unemployment continues to hover stubbornly around 20% and industry, because of oil and other raw material shortages, is running at less than 50% capacity.

Some observers believe that the sheer intractability of Turkey's economic woes may be the surest deterrent to a military takeover: the generals themselves do not believe they have any solutions. Another restraining factor may be the delicate state of U.S.-Turkish negotiations and the question of U.S. use of Turkish bases. In 1975 the U.S. imposed an arms embargo on Turkey as a penalty for its 1974 invasion of Cyprus. In return, Ankara closed down four of the U.S.'s 26 bases and listening posts in the country. When Congress lifted the embargo in 1978, Turkey received new U.S. arms shipments and reciprocated by reopening four of the American bases for a period that ends Jan. 9. Now both sides are confident of initialing a new arms/bases agreement before the deadline. Accordingly, the military would be reluctant to take any action--like a coup--that might invite a new U.S. arms embargo.

Meanwhile, there seemed little likelihood of the political unity that the memorandum seemed to call for. The personal animosity between Demirel and the intellectual Ecevit, who have exchanged the premiership six tunes since 1974, seems to rule out a so-called grand coalition alliance between Demirel's right-of-center Justice Party and Ecevit's left-of-center Republican People's Party. Yet there was one sign of a benefit from the memorandum. As the Assembly last week began discussing tougher antiterrorism legislation, Ecevit announced that his party would support the package with only minor changes. If that sort of cooperation should also fail, Turkey's military could well feel compelled to install its own system of government.

*Turkey's relations with Iran are nonetheless strained. Ankara last month recalled the families of its Iran-based diplomats after the Ayatullah Khomeini declared, "The regimes of Egypt, Iraq and Turkey are standing up thanks to bayonets."

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