Adnan Menderes dismissed coup tip-off from army officer

BY İDRİS GURSOY
A major who warned Adnan Menderes -- the prime minister at the time of the May 27, 1960 coup d'état who was hanged along with two of his ministers by the junta after the military intervention -- about the plot three years before it was staged said the coup generals, who surrounded Menderes with their own people, made it impossible to reach out to the prime minister.


In the first and last interview he gave before he died, Maj. Samet Kuşçu, who was arrested after revealing the plans for a coup attempt in 1957, spoke for the first time about what has come to be known in Turkish history as the “nine officers affair.” He said he did his best to warn Menderes about the impending coup, which would take him and some of his ministers to the gallows, in time but the coup plotters had made it impossible for him to do so by placing their own people in positions close to the prime minister. Kuşçu said this during an interview with Mehmet Tekin, a close friend, shortly before he died in 2004. The interview was published for the first time in this week's Aksiyon weekly.

Maj. Kuşçu informed the authorities about a coup plot in the making in 1957. Despite his status as a witness in the case, he was tried in a military court along with the other eight officers whom he had accused of plotting to overthrow the Democrat Party (DP) government of the time. The eight officers were acquitted and promoted to higher ranks over the years, and eventually became members of the core group that led Turkey's first coup d'état.

The first hearing in the trial was held on Jan. 16, 1958. On April 5 of that year, the court announced its final verdict, acquitting eight of the officers of all charges, but sentenced Kuşçu to two years in jail on charges of inciting the military to stage a revolt. Of this, Kuşçu said in his last interview, “It is like punishing an eyewitness who informed the police about a traffic accident.” He was also expelled from the military, and labeled a “snitch” by his fellow officers for the rest of his life.

Kuşçu spoke about the nine officers affair at length with his good friend Tekin in the interview, explaining his role in the nine officers affair to Tekin, in this interview that is likely to shed light on details about the pre-1960 period that have so far remained in the dark, Kuşçu said: “I wanted an investigation. I told them that certain things were happening around me. I told the government to look into these.” On his failure to get through to the prime minister to warn him in time, Kuşçu said, “We didn't get along at all with Muzaffer Ersü, the prime minister's chief assistant, who had a military background. … He deliberately kept me from reaching the prime minister.” Kuşçu said the when the investigation into the 1957 plot that he had revealed began, the plotters wove an invisible wall around the prime minister.
He said the investigation didn't get anywhere because he didn't have enough evidence. “They told me that I had to have certain things on tape. Kazım Özfırat was recording the conversation, but İlhami Barut [a senior colonel at the time and one of the eight officers Kuşçu accused of plotting] didn't talk because he had been warned beforehand. He had good connections with the police and he was cunning as a fox. Özfırat was a friend of Barut from Çankırı earlier. I knew about the relationship; they definitely were close. They felt it, they warned him. He didn't talk.”

He said although Menderes knew about the incident, he didn't push for a deeper investigation. “He prepared his own end. It was all in his hands.” He said all the personal assistants were of military background, making it impossible to reach important figures in the government.

Samet lived the last years of his life in Antakya province, where he moved to after he retired from the Soil Products Office (TMO), where he worked as a civil protection guard.