Heroic Scapegoat

One of the world's brightest diplomatic stars, Turkey's Foreign Minister Numan Rifat Menemencioglu (pronounced approximately many-men'-chaw-glue), went into eclipse last week. The latest play in Turkey's shrewd neutrality game, which he had managed skillfully since 1942, forced him to retire.

The Wily Turk. Throughout the war years, Menemencioglu has been guilty only of being pro-Turkish. To that endeavor, he brought his father's knowledge of politics, the burning patriotism of his grandfather, Namik Kemal.

Namik Kemal was one of the leaders of the Tanzimatists, founders of the 19th-Century Young Turks, who first began modernizing their country and turning its ideas westward.

Namik Kemal's son, Mehmed Rifat, a powerful politician, president of the Senate, and for a time Minister of Finance, sent his son Numan to a French lycee, then to Lausanne to study law. World War I was under way when Numan became third secretary of the Turkish legation at Vienna.

By the time Numan entered the Foreign Office at Ankara in 1929 as a departmental head, foreign attaches already knew this sick young man with an abscessed lung and deficient hearing as a cold, hard, calculating bargainer. When, 22 months ago, Numan's gradual ascent up the Foreign Office ladder brought him to the top rung as Minister, no one was surprised.

To his people at home and in the Kamutay (Grand National Assembly), he was already known as the hero of the Hatay.

The 1923 treaty of Lausanne, fixing the country's borders, set up the small sanjak (sub-prefecture) of Alexandretta, between Syria and Turkey, as an "autonomous" region under French control. To the Turks, this Levantine Sudetenland, which they called the Hatay, was a symbol of humiliation. In 1939, Menemencioglu used France's fear of war and need of an ally to win back the Hatay for Turkey, thus forever endearing himself to all Turks.

As Foreign Minister, Menemencioglu did not always endear himself to opposing diplomats. He knew how to use his partial deafness and his lung ailment during diplomatic conversations, failing to hear what did not suit him, throwing tantrums in the midst of serious conversations, stalking away to "recuperate."

Too often for his own comfort, these illnesses were not feigned. Nineteen times in the last 20 years, Menemencioglu submitted to surgical operations, thrice having platinum ribs inserted in his body. Even this hard-case record was chalked up against him by some adversaries who knew that his personal surgeon was a German, General Professor Ferdinand Sauerbruch.

The Squeeze. The curious fact is that Turkey did the Allies a great service in the early war years by staying neutral. A German invasion of Turkey, when Britain was barely able to hold Egypt and Suez, might have been disastrous. Last week, when Anthony Eden (who reportedly dislikes Menemencioglu) complained that German warships, disguised as merchantmen, had been allowed to cruise through Turkey's Dardanelles, Ankara had to give in. Numan Menemencioglu took the fall, handed over his portfolio to Premier Suekrue Saracoglu. But nobody thought brilliant Mr. Menemencioglu was out for a very long count.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.