HOW KEMAL DOMINATES THE ASSEMBLY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3146, 4 December 1922, Page 7

HOW KEMAL DOMINATES THE ASSEMBLY.

(My Clair Price.) Angora. lies tilted up on its hill, _ a white blanket of flat roofs pierced with minarets and green cypresses, and scarred! across its middle with the ruins of 1915. At its foot lie its requisitioned Government buildings and its railroad station. And everywhere in its streets, from the latticed labyrinth at the top of the town to the weedy marsh at its foot, lie its dogs To wear a hat in Angora is like going about heating a gong. Angora’s sole industry to-day is the Turkish .INationalist Government and its army. The Grand National Assembly meets at 1.30 o’clock ever afternoon but Friday in the grey, granite building at the foot of the town, which was once the local headquarters of the Committee of Union and Progress. A small' framed motto, done in Arabic characters of white on a blue ground, hangs on the wall above the Speaker’s desk in the Assembly’s chamber —a quotation from the Koran such as may bo found in thousands of devout Moslem homes —“Let ms 1 meet together in council and discuss.” Below it is tho Speaker’s chair occupied by Dr Adrian Bey, a lank, thin man with a persistent cough, who would prefer to devote the rest of his life to the Red' Crescent, but who is wearing himself away in political duties which he cordially dislikes. Below the Speaker’s desk is a small wooden rostrum occupied by deputies in addressing the Assembly, and below the rostrum on the lloor of the chamber are the ,‘342 deputies sitting, standing, or walking about among their crowded rows of desks. They vary in personal appearance from the ample and immaculate figure of Dyellaladin Arif Bey, deputy for Erzerum to three Kurdish chiefs who can neither read nor write.

Three mi let; away, on a neighboring hilltop, secure from the summer malaria of the marshes, is the villa of Mustapha Kemal Pasha, who has lifted the obscure' provincial capital into world prominence. Although he holds the highest military honors his nation and' his faith can confer upon him, he is still a bachelor and a comparatively poor man. The villa in which he lives has been given him by the municipality of Angora. The Assembly makes him an entertainment allowance, and pays him' a regular salary per month (at present rates of exchange, about £4O). Angora is dominated by the prestige of “the Pasha.” The personality of no other member of the Turkish Nationalist Government is immune from discussion, but there exists an unwritten but absolute embargo on any discussion of the personality of Kemal. The Assembly lias not hesitated to defeat him on political issues at various times, but there lias never been any attempt to challenge bis personal and military standing. The remarkable spell which the man has cast over bis countrymen is one’s outstanding impression of Angora.