The "Sick Man" Suffers a Relapse

Worries about a familiar nightmare in near bankrupt Turkey

Terrorist gun battles and frequent political assassinations. A fratricidal massacre involving warring Muslim sects. Martial law in a third of the country. Shortages of basic commodities and foodstuffs. Unemployment higher than in any continental European country. Inflation that has soared beyond any citizen's desire to measure it.

That description of embryonic anarchy applies not to Iran but to its neighbor, Turkey, where the original "sick man" of 19th century politics appears to have suffered a severe relapse. Last week, a high Israeli official warned that "Turkey will fall as Iran did." Though less pessimistically, a State Department official in Washington agreed that it would be tragic for NATO if it were to lose its second biggest land army and its network of intelligence listening posts next to the Soviet Union. There are some ominous similarities between the situation in Turkey and the roots of the trouble in Iran, but, concludes TIME Rome Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn after a ten-day tour of Turkey, there are important differences. Wynn's analysis:

Turkey does not have the authoritarian one-man rule of a Shah as a unifying target for fragmented opposition. Modernization began earlier and was less hectic. It also produced a wider distribution of wealth and a stronger middle class than it did in Iran. Turkey's overwhelmingly Muslim population of 40 million includes 6 million Shi'ites, who are spiritual kin to those in Iran. But thanks to the secularization imposed on Turkey by its modern (1923) founder, Kemal Atatuerk, religion is not nearly the force it has always been in Iran.

Despite moments of political instability that included two bloodless military coups (in 1960 and 1971), Turkey has a functioning parliamentary democracy that provides a valuable safety valve for venting popular discontent. The people can vote out a regime that they do not like. Says Orhan Kologlu, a spokesman for Premier Bulent Ecevit: "There is no need for a revolution to allow the people to express their feelings."

Nevertheless, politicians and Western observers believe that the incendiary mixture of the country's internal crisis -rampant terrorism and a near bankrupt economy -does make Turkey potentially explosive. At the least, continued economic deterioration could sorely impair Turkey's effectiveness as a NATO ally. At worst, if inflation and unemployment are not checked, the radical extremes could erode the political middle, polarize the population, and set the stage for the familiar nightmare: civil war under banners of fanatical right and left.

As it is, rival gangs of armed youths have carried on a running feud that claimed more than 1,000 lives in 1978 and 30 so far this year. There are signs that the terrorists will now turn to selective assassination of moderate targets like Abdi Ipekc,i, the influential editor of Istanbul's daily Milliyet, whose unsolved murder early this month shocked the country. At the same time, sectarian clashes have broken out between Sunni Muslims, who tend to be right-wingers, and Shi'ite Muslims, who tend toward the left. Last December at Maras in central Turkey, the Sunnis went on a rampage. In retaliation for a street clash, they killed more than 100 Shi'ites and burned hundreds of others out of their homes. The massacre forced Ecevit, an accomplished poet and a prideful civil libertarian, to declare martial law in 13 of Turkey's 67 provinces.

Violence has been intensified by social tensions arising from the economic crisis. Turkey never recovered from the oil price hikes of 1973-74; it has teetered on the edge of bankruptcy since. Turkey has run out of foreign exchange, and its foreign debt has tripled since 1970, to $12 billion. The government says the annual inflation rate is 42%, but independent estimates put it closer to 60%. An industrial slump has idled half of plant capacity and pushed unemployment to 20%. There are daily blackouts of electrical power, and shortages of everything from margarine to light bulbs. Even traditional Turkish coffee is in short supply; replacements are tea and Nescafe. At a recent session of parliament, a fistfight broke out on the floor after an opposition deputy complained that "the streets are full of black market cigarettes" -to which the Customs Minister snapped back, "You probably have some in your pockets!"

Since no party in parliament commands a solid majority, many politicians believe the only hope for a strong government that could impose national belt-tightening lies in a grand coalition between the two biggest political groups: Ecevit's social-democratic Republican People's Party and the main opposition, former Premier Suleyman Demirel's conservative Justice Party. In response to public outrage over the Ipekc,j assassinations last week, there were some signs of renewed political moves toward such a government of national unity, even though Ecevit and Demirel are notorious personal antagonists.

The Soviet Union has been glad to offer $1.8 billion in economic aid over the past decade as part of its courtship aimed at loosening Turkey's ties with NATO. However, despite friendly recent gestures of his own toward Moscow, Ecevit is considered a confirmed Westerner who has no intention of allowing Turkey to drift into neutralism.

Turkish-American relations have decidedly improved since the lifting of the U.S. arms embargo, which had deeply embittered a longtime ally. The continued solidity and loyalty of this large democratic nation bordering on the Soviet Union is important to the West. Turkey provides NATO with airfields, supply and ammunition depots, communication and surveillance stations to monitor Soviet air and naval activities, missile and nuclear-weapons tests.

Lately, Ecevit has been passing the hat among the Western powers and the International Monetary Fund with a forceful pitch for the financial rescue of his country. A simple glance at the map -by the light of the flames in Iran -provides him with a powerful new argument. qed

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