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Premier Menderes reacted in a manner characteristic of autocrats, but puzzling for one duly elected and re-elected by great majorities and seemingly backed by 500 of the 541 delegates in Parliament. He blamed the whole thing on the Communists, summoned the Assembly to approve a state of martial law. It was not, however, the first demonstration of Democrat Menderes' liberties with democratic procedure. Under its repressive, criticism-squelching 1954 press law, the Menderes regime has arrested some 40 journalists. The once independent judiciary has been placed under the public prosecutor's thumb.
Fund of Maneuver
Thirty years of Turkish politics have calloused any soft spots in Menderes' disposition. Born to cotton-planting wealth (in a family that took its name from the River Meander of classic fame), he studied at the American College in Izmir, took a law degree but has never practiced. Menderes dislikes criticism—none of his original Cabinet has survived in the same office. "Anybody who shows any spirit goes out," says a British observer. Because 90 Democratic Deputies showed enough spirit to object to his quick decree of martial law after the riots, Menderes last week fired one of their leaders out of the party central committee, later expelled nine other Deputies from the party. Next day, ten more Deputies quit the party with an angry cry of "dictatorship." But even though his popular and political support may have slumped, there are no Turks in view to challenge Menderes for the right to govern Turkey.
Those concerned with Turkey's sore plight wish that the Premier had shown himself as diligent in dealing with Turkey's deepening economic crisis as in dealing with his critics. They attribute much of this inconsistency to the man whom Menderes has chosen to direct economic affairs, a suave and resourceful protégé named Fatin Rustu Zorlu.
Zorlu is an ambitious, Paris-schooled diplomat who has risen swiftly to the posts of Deputy Premier and Acting Foreign Minister by his talent for improvising debt settlements, spouting statistics, and providing his boss with arguments to show that Turkey's economic situation is basically shipshape. Turkey's foreign-exchange deficits, Zorlu explains, are paltry little imbalances caused by the passing inconvenience of a couple of drought-shriveled harvests in a row. All the country needs is a "fund of maneuver," say $300 million, to see it through till the development program starts paying off around 1958. This, Zorlu insists, is where the U.S. should step in with its purse. Says Zorlu: "Turkey is confident of itself. We can overcome our difficulties even alone—but we will arrive more quickly if we are aided."