Word: gursel
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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TURKEY A month after they seized power, Turkey's new military masters were still everybody's heroes. Even onetime Democrats were claiming they had been taken in by deposed Premier Adnan Menderes and hailing General Cemal Gursel's 38-member Committee of National Unity as Turkey's saviors. But abroad fears grew that Turkey's military rulers might be planning a permanent Nasser-or Kassem-type dictatorship rather than turn the country back to civilian rule...
Unequivocal Disavowal. Last week General Gursel staged a public ceremony to reassure the doubters. Before an overflow audience of Turkish citizens, foreign diplomatic and press representatives in the flag-decked Parliamentary chamber, he summoned all 38 members of the junta to a public oath-taking. "As your leader, I will take the oath first," said Gursel. One by one, in alphabetical order, the officers swore "that I will not depart from the aim of organizing a democratic republic according to the constitution, and from turning over the government to an elected parliament...
Second Roundup. In the first hours after the almost bloodless overthrow of former Premier Adnan Menderes, the task of putting the Turkish Republic back on the democratic track seemed as straightforward as taking a hilltop. The army was solidly behind Gursel and his "National Union Committee" of generals, colonels and junior officers; the people had welcomed them with joy; their enemies were in their hands. Moderation was the order of the day. Leaders of Menderes' Democratic Party were released almost as fast as they were arrested; at the start of the week only 150 were in custody. General Gursel...
...death. The hysterical suicide of the boss of Menderes' national police, the man held responsible for beatings and killings of anti-Menderes student demonstrators, shocked the new government and stirred the avenging wrath of the soldiers behind it. Abruptly abandoning his live-and-let-live attitude, Premier Gursel declared sternly: "Former ministers will have to account for their deeds." Once more jeeps rolled through Ankara making mass arrests. By midweek 403 out of 406 Democratic Deputies were in jail, most of them on Yassiada Island, eleven miles out to sea from Istanbul...
...nonstop in one room of Ankara's government building, the junta held round-the-clock sessions a few doors down the hall. Eating meals brought from a nearby restaurant and sleeping in his office ("I make the bed myself. That's why it looks so bad"), General Gursel hopped from one meeting to the other...