Turkey, Key to the Middle East (1950)

[Music] the dardanelles took his historic waterway link between east and west port over centuries ago by ancient powers and in our own times by modern power techie linchpin of Middle East strategy with the Mediterranean on one side and Soviet Russia on the other Turkey has cradled much to the history came here ruled the he type Kings 2,000 years before Christ [Music] gasps could Troy the city which fell to the subterfuge of the wooden horse these are the ruins of the Temple of Diana one of the seven wonders of the world Jen stood the churches and palaces of the Byzantine Empire twice sacked by the Crusaders and captured by the Ottoman texts the turkey of old merged into the turkey of today the cosmopolitan turkey the Turkish knows the ruins of Byzantium the mosques the sunlit courtyards the bazaar and then what is perhaps the true heart of Turkey the wide sweep of the Anatolian players with its flocks and herds the cornfields the orchards and vineyards the peasants the fishermen the shepherds this is the techie in which Kemal atatürk thirty years ago began his social and political revolution one of the most remarkable the world has seen in 1950 this revolution culminated in free elections fought principally between the People's Party led by president is met in your new and the Democratic Party whose strength lies in the new middle class [Music] power passed peaceably to the Democratic Party led by Columbia under the inspiration have come out turkey had made changes in 30 years more drastic in some ways than in the previous 700 years not the standing with the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire had been almost as spectacular as that of rebel this Ottoman Empire was born at Versailles in Asia Minor in the 13th century it succeeded by war and conquest at Kesava it defeated the Slavonic kingdoms of the balkan later it captured constantinople and smashed the byzantine empire the cousins supplanted the cotton before the time of expansion was finished the Empire had laid siege to Vienna under Suleiman the Magnificent lasted the great soldiers of this Empire which three hundred years earlier had been a tribal kingdom now stretched from Hungary in the north to the Arabian Sea in the side from the Caspian Sea in the east to our chairs in the West it ruled millions of people both Christian and Muslim and so far as territory went was the greatest empire of its time this mighty empire curly oppressive now began its decline and form in a series of wars the Christian powers crippled Turkey on sea and land within her borders oppressed Christians rose in revolt [Music] by the beginning of the 20th century she'd lost most of her European possessions in the war with Italy Tripoli taenia was taken from her a coalition of the four bulkin Kings defeated her on the eve of the first great war [Music] these defeats brought about a revolution inside technique the result of the young texts led by Enver Pacha against Abdul Hameed the second by 1914 three centuries after Suleiman undermined by bad government and disastrous walls Turkey had shrunk to this but the young turks were no wiser than the old text they led their country into the great war on the side of Germany against the might of the Allies [Music] the outstanding incidence of the campaign are still remember the break through the Dardanelles by German warships the Gallipoli campaign the revolt in the desert led by Lawrence of Arabia [Music] allenbys sweeper through Syria and Palestine the entry of Allied beats into the Dardanelles and of Allied troops into Constantinople Sultan Muhammad the six last to the Sultan's signed an ignoble piece pity but not all Turkey accepted Kemal then military commander at ziram did not accept it he raised the standards of revolt both against the Allies and the subtle and after a successful campaign known as the war of independence faced the Allied troops in Istanbul itself the upshot was a new peace treaty negotiated by in your new Kumar's right-hand man which gave the Czechs better terms it did more it opened the road for the creation of modern Turkey it was this ancient techy on which Kemal had to build a tech is still dwelling in the Middle Ages in which women were bailed the church dominant corruption commonplace science and mechanical industries almost unknown and the elementary rights and interests of ordinary people mostly ignored by contrast Kamal's Turkey was to be as he said Republican nationalist populist state socialist secular and reformist he renounced all claims to territories formerly held by Jackie but inhabited by non Turkish people this then was to be the new republic of test among the first reforms Kemal abolished the PES which he looked on as a symbol of hatred of progress he gave women's civil rights which encouraged them to unveil themselves he abolished the Arabic script and introduced the Roman alphabet himself acting a school teacher to his family to officials and later turning the country with a blackboard he reformed the legal system and made all equal before the law the Quranic law was replaced by the Swiss Civil Code courts are public and open women act now but the public prosecutors and defending counsel even sometimes as judges this counts on most Western countries he reformed the army he created a one-party state there had been no popular demand for change he had had to create a pinion rather than reflected his method was that of a dictator a dictator he said so that Turkey would never need another dictator but his work was not completed when he died in 1938 kamaal was succeeded by is met in Yaya is because his associate who continued to Mouse work in the Second World War turkey until 1944 was neutral Germany in the person of front person the German ambassador sort turkeys favors on the one side obtaining from her precious chrome all and other products Britain America and Russia used their influence in the opposite direction and supplied her with war materiel including anti-tank guns and hurricane fighter [Music] in 1944 turkey broke off all relations with Germany finally she had probably one to two million soldiers under arms and a large force of military aircraft a heavy rain on her manpower and finances although not engaged in actual fighting [Music] what then is the turkey that has emerged since the war and how deep have the reforms gone Kemal data the outstanding fact is that in most cases the manners customs clothes and ideas of the children are quite different from those their fathers had a generation ago [Music] the new generation could in some ways be said to speak afresh language this is due to one main thing the reform of education which now includes the much wider education of women and removing education from the control of the church in some schools religious instruction has now been reintroduced sports have become a feature the people's like wrestling and horsemanship are always famous today boxing football swimming and basketball are becoming equally popular science and arts were freed by Kemal from the restriction of Muslim dogma since then the living human form and animal forms have been freely portrayed and sculptured something that had never happened in Texas today Turkey has its Academy of Music and Drama and its Grand Opera classical plays and music seldom if ever performed in Turkey 20 or 30 years ago are now well known alongside this interest in Turkish national art is revived [Music] while it's true that Martin Turkey is a mixture of the old and the new for the first time in her history the interest of the peasant and worker are being looked after that is a balance kept between the rich and the poor a striking feature of the new tech aid has been the building up of industries which although small compared with those of Western countries employed a five or six times as many people as in the old tests the steel industry is entirely new the coal mines have been extended and brought more up to date a new factories have been built for wool paper cement chemicals and cut [Music] the state owns about three-fourths of the manufacturing industries and has a monopoly for such things as cigarettes alcohol sugar and artificial but turkey remains predominantly an agricultural and pastoral country three-quarters of her 19 million people live off the land indeed more land is owned by those who live on it than in any country in Europe but the life of peasants is hard winters of bitter houses of worth indeed some villages are carved out of the rocks and hillsides a [Music] good deal of their farming is primitive quite often the plows are prehistoric an occasionally carts are seen with solid wooden wheels like theirs used by the Hittites animal husbandry tends to be neglected too the government is endeavoring to improve farming by sending out instructors to remote villages [Music] the stage itself cultivates about three-quarters of a million acres where the farming is mechanized this party to demonstrate better methods to the farming community but it is organized centers for the cooperative you subtract as an agricultural machinery but mechanization spreads there is slowly turkey still has large areas that are not adequately cultivated partly because of the lack of irrigation steps are being taken to improve this but it present about one-sixth of the land is described as unproductive another sixth is under forests in the past land was recklessly denuded of timber for war and other purposes but effort at afforestation are now being made timber is one of the principal exports to others high on the list of exports are dried fruits and tobacco in 1949 a fifteenth of Britain's tobacco came from Turkey double the amount of the previous year much of this tobacco is used in Britain for blending with other tobacco's over the fifth of Britain's dried fruits sultanas raisins figs and so forth come from Turkey while the Turks are traditionally good gardeners and husbandmen there remains a lack of modern technical skill and knowledge of the help that modern science can bring the village Institute's a most significant development are doing important work in this direction the directors of these Institute's often create them in a very real way putting up the buildings developing the water supply overcoming disease often turning a wilderness into a farm and Orchard the chief aim is to turn out elementary teachers and in doing it the studies are divided equally book studies and practical weapon the men learning to be land workers builders blacksmiths and so on and the girls busy with spinning weaving and sewing the need for far more teachers and technicians is one of the country's major problems the second urgent need is for better roads and communications Republican techy inherited 2,000 miles of railways and has built as much again affair the 2,000 miles our objective during the next ten years after 27,000 miles of roads and highways only about a third are in good condition and in making more the machinery supplied under Marshall a is of the first importance this lack of railways and roads is at the heart of tech his me they're getting plugins to the port's to enable her to pay her way will help the progress made in the towns to spread to the countryside and to improve the country's efficiency in the matter of defense this question of defense brings us to tech is greatest need of all a long and enduring peace the Strait she controls the Dardanelles of the Bosphorus are a constant anxiety in 1936 the Lord Trek invention allowed her to be fortified the Straits and lay down regulations governing the passage of merchantman and warships in peace and war in 1945 Russia asked for defense in common of the space generally taken to mean a request for naval and air bases in had said the request was refused and the Treaty of non-aggression with Russia lapsed turkey has a front share with Russia 350 miles long the front Jones has very poor communications with the heart attack [Music] although she receives Marshall aid the United States military aid Jackie has to spend like many other countries much too great a proportion of our budget on defense on keeping her army her Air Force and her near the illustrative preparedness Turkey's stands between east and west a link between Europe and Asia firmly attached to the Western powers a member of the Council of Europe and associated with Atlantic pact defense plans in the Mediterranean she's a country with whose filter the statesmen of the world aren't rest they consent the reforms she has carried out in the past 30 years have made her able to face her destiny with greater strength and assurance in this modern age [Music]