World Notes Turkey

During his two-day visit to Turkey, George Bush watched whirling dervishes perform, sailed down the Bosporus and seemed calm and relaxed. That was pretty remarkable, considering that a few days earlier Turkish officials had foiled an elaborate plot to kill the U.S. President. Acting on information developed by Turkey's National Intelligence Organization, police mounted a series of raids on eight safe houses in Istanbul, killing 10 people and capturing 12 others involved in the attempt.

U.S. and Turkish officials identified the conspirators as members of Dev Sol, a leftist group responsible for killing an American near the Incirlik air base, outside Adana, during the allied bombing campaign against Iraq. According to the daily Milliyet, the group was planning to assassinate Bush in Ankara with a remote-controlled bomb that was to be planted either in Ataturk's Mausoleum, which he visited, or in a parked car that would explode as the President's limousine left the mausoleum. Maps found by police suggested that explosives were also to have been placed under the lids of sewage drains on the road. A State Department official told TIME that the raids had seriously diminished, but not ended, the threat from Dev Sol.