The case involved a blonde, two deaths and "a certain foreign power." For the third time in 2½ years, an Ankara court last week tried to hand down an acceptable verdict in the famous Arcan murder. By now the court was fairly sure it knew who had committed the crime. The question remained, why?
A Friend Indeed. Dr. Neset Arcan was a well-known Ankara physician, consultant to many embassies, including the Russian. Late one afternoon in October 1945, a young man walked into Arcan's consulting room, pumped seven shots into the doctor and got away—not without being seen. Five eyewitnesses agreed that the youth was slight, fair and high-cheek-boned. Nonetheless, when heavyset, dark, round-faced Resit Merdjan confessed to the crime, the court barreled the case through, carefully refrained from calling the eyewitnesses, and sentenced Merdjan to 25 years. Slight, fair, high-cheekboned Hashmet Orbay, son of the chief of Turkey's general staff, who had been with Merdjan when the murder weapon was bought, was dragged into the case by a slip up. The court sentenced him to one year as an accomplice. Cried Merdjan, when his sentence was read: "I was double-crossed."
When the court of appeals which reviewed the case ordered a new trial, Orbay's father, Chief of Staff Kiazim Orbay, resigned. Ankara's public prosecutor also resigned. At the new trial the eyewitnesses were finally allowed to appear, and unanimously identified Hashmet Orbay as the murderer. Merdjan admitted that he had been persuaded to take the blame, on the promise that highly placed friends of his friend Orbay would get him off lightly. Sole witness in Orbay's defense was shapely, blonde Musherref Ishikman, his "fiancee," who testified that Hashmet had been visiting her at her house at the hour of the crime. The court merely concluded that Orbay had found another friend to help him out. This time the court sentenced Orbay to death for "premeditated murder."
One of the witnesses at the second trial had been the governor of Ankara province, for whom Orbay had worked as private secretary. Day after his testimony the governor was found dead in his bed, shot through the temple by a gun found on a radiator twelve feet away. The official verdict was suicide.
"If or When . . ." Shortly after Orbay's second trial, the uncooperative court of appeals again threw out the verdict of the lower court, on the grounds that since no motive had been proved, the murder could not be called premeditated. Last week's trial sentenced Orbay to 18 years for murder with "motives which are not clear."
Perfectly clear to every pundit in Ankara's buzzing Karpic restaurant was what they swore was the real story. On an emergency call to one of Ankara's major embassies just before the murder, Dr. Arcan saw Orbay there in conference with the embassy's military attaché. Fearing that the doctor would tell what he had seen, Orbay killed him. Commented one Turkish official privately: "The real reason for this murder will only be made public if or when diplomatic relations between Turkey and a certain great neighboring power are broken off."