Word: gursel
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...trying ex-Premier Adnan Menderes and other leaders of the regime that Kirdar had once served. Present at the obsequies in Istanbul's Sisli mosque was a menacingly large crowd of 1,500 mourners, many genuinely bereaved but many others expressly come to show defiance of General Cemal Gursel's ruling military junta. To do so, they chose to consider Kirdar a martyr...
Among the defiant was a group of bearded Moslem zealots, who loved Menderes for building 8,000 mosques and hated Gursel for his insistence on keeping religious affairs strictly separate from those of the state. As Kirdar's coffin emerged from the mosque, the zealots seized it. Chanting a dirgelike Moslem prayer, they carried the coffin through the streets toward the cemetery. When Istanbul's military governor appeared, his car was pelted with stones. "Take back the freedom you gave us," the bearded men shrieked. "We don't want...
Before long, 22 of the coffin snatchers were securely locked up in Istanbul. The incident served as a reminder that Menderes, though currently on trial for his life, and his Democratic Party, though officially banned, still have a following. Gursel's junta, after nine months in power and nearly as many months of hesitation, recently gave all political parties except Communists and Menderes' Democrats the go-ahead to operate freely once again. Eleven new parties materialized, including one made up wholly of army officers forcibly retired by the junta. The scramble for the Democrats' onetime...
...unknown when he was brought out of retirement by army juniors to head their victorious junta. General Gursel, 66, is becoming Turkey's most popular figure. A simple and conservative sort, he has forbidden display of his picture alongside Ataturk's in government offices, rides about in an open Jeep through Menderes' rural strongholds, talking to the peasants almost as if they were his children...
...Gursel is also unquestionably boss. He dealt with the chief challenge to his authority six weeks ago, when he summarily fired 14 younger members of the ruling junta headed by fanatical Colonel Alpaslan Turkes. These young zealots talked of setting up a thought-control office and remaking the country along authoritarian lines. They were also responsible for bringing charges of adultery and other smear-type cases against Menderes and the other fallen Democratic leaders on the ground that the Turkish peasants understood immorality but would never understand what a crime against the constitution was. When they tried to push through...