Virtue's Reward

Early this year President Ismet Inoenue and his Republican People's Party won wide respect by promising Turkey the first unrigged elections in her history, but some Turks felt the respect had been cheaply earned. Nearly everyone thought that the People's Party would come through the elections with a safe majority and that it would keep on running the government as it had ever since the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923.

Last week, however, the "first honest elections" lived up to their advance billing in a surprising way. Almost 80% of the country's voters turned out to cast their ballots. The majority of them plumped for the five-year-old Democratic Party.

The Democrats, headed by Banker-Politician Celal Bayar, had promised to free the Turkish economy from government control. This promise had won for them the support of Istanbul and Smyrna businessmen.

At week's end with the returns still coming in, the Democrats claimed they would control at least 375 of the National Assembly's 487 seats. Likeliest candidate to replace Inoenue as President was Halil Ozyoruk, the judge who led in the framing of the "honest election law." (Under Turkish law a President's term ends when his party loses its majority in the Assembly.) Democratic Boss Bayar, however, had become Turkey's new top political figure.

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